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Updated: May 15, 2025
It was badly served with railways, difficult of access from the soil lying to the east, and backed by that sparsely inhabited belt of Russian territory in which the modern capital of St. Petersburg has been artificially erected, but which is excentric to the vital process of Russia.
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.
He noted the irregular motion of the sun, and, to explain it, assumed that it revolved uniformly not exactly about the earth but about a point some distance away, called the "excentric". The line joining the centre of the earth to the excentric passes through the apses of the sun's orbit, where its distance from the earth is greatest and least.
A circle having this centre was called the equant, and he supposed that a radius drawn to the sun from the excentric passes over equal arcs on the equant in equal times. He then computed tables for predicting the place of the sun. He proceeded in the same way to compute Lunar tables. The motion of this plane round the pole of the ecliptic once in eighteen years complicated the problem.
Copernicus could not sever himself from this obnoxious tradition. It is true that neither the Pythagorean nor the Egypto-Tychonic system required epicycles for explaining retrograde motion, as the Ptolemaic theory did. Furthermore, either system could use the excentric of Hipparchus to explain the irregular motion known as the equation of the centre.
Proof: Water could only be higher than the Earth, 1. If it were excentric, or 2. If it were concentric, but had some excrescence. But since x. Water naturally moves downwards, and y. Water is naturally a fluid body: 1. Cannot be true, for three impossibilities would follow: a. Water would move upwards as well as downwards; b. Water and Earth would move downwards in different directions; c.
Our planet may be supposed to have rendered its orbit less excentric, and thereby more habitable, by planning a long series of explosions, analogous to those from which, according to the best hypotheses, comets proceed. Judiciously reproduced, similar shocks may have rendered the inclination of the earth's axis better adapted to the future wants of the Grand Etre.
Strange, that while the earth preserved her monotonous course, I dwelt with ever-renewing wonder on her antique laws, and now that with excentric wheel she rushed into an untried path, I should feel this spirit fade; I struggled with despondency and weariness, but like a fog, they choked me.
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