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Updated: June 5, 2025
To account for every new appearance, every deviation from circular perfection, a new cycloid was supposed, till all the simplicity of the original hypothesis was lost in a complication of epicycles: "The sphere, With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er, Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb."
In the case of the moon, however, Ptolemy traced the variable inequality noticed sometimes by Hipparchus at first and last quarter, which vanished when the moon was in apogee or perigee. This he called the evection, and introduced another epicycle to represent it.
This epicycle was a deviation from the limit to which philosophy had been ultimately brought by Kant; and at that point I took it up again afterwards, to carry it further.
And the first moving of a planet is made in its own circle that is called Eccentric, and it is called so for the earth is not the middle thereof, as it is the middle of the circle that is called Zodiac. Epicycle is a little circle that a planet describeth, and goeth about therein by the moving of its body, and the body of the planet goeth about the roundness thereof.
After Ptolemy had published his book there seemed to be nothing more to do for the solar system except to go on observing and finding more and more accurate values for the constants involved viz., the periods of revolution, the diameter of the deferent, and its ratio to that of the epicycle, the distance of the excentric from the centre of the deferent, and the position of the line of apses, besides the inclination and position of the plane of the planet's orbit.
The inner economy of such a man's daily life would present a most strange picture, if I could allow myself to amuse the reader at his expense. Even with my limited opportunities for observing what went on, I saw many scenes of London intrigues and complex chicanery, "cycle and epicycle, orb in orb," at which I sometimes smile to this day, and at which I smiled then, in spite of my misery.
Such was the theory advanced by Copernicus: The earth moves in an epicycle, on a deferent whose centre is a little distance from the sun. The planets move in a similar way on epicycles, but their deferents have no geometrical or physical relation to the sun. The moon moves on an epicycle centred on a second epicycle, itself centred on a deferent, excentric to the earth.
But the great minds, who really bring the race further on its course do not accompany it on the epicycles it makes from time to time. This explains why posthumous fame is often bought at the expense of contemporary praise, and vice versa. An instance of such an epicycle is the philosophy started by Fichte and Schelling, and crowned by Hegel's caricature of it.
So that to these Three Movements there are Three Movers. Again, if the whole of this Heaven moves and turns with the Epicycle from East to West once in each natural day, that movement, whether it be caused by some Intelligence or whether it be through the rapid movement of the Primum Mobile, God knows, for to me it seems presumptuous to judge.
centrics and eccentrics scribbled o'er Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb, which disfigured the theories of the ancients; but he is quite unconscious that every one of those scribblings had a real meaning, each being intended to account for some observed peculiarity of planetary motion, which must be accounted for by any theory which is to claim acceptance.
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