NOT by human will, nor as by act of legislation, but by results, the truth is established. Upon the hypothesis that the earth is stationary and the sun revolves about it, the study of astronomy was more a detriment than an aid to human progress. The more zealously a student gave himself up to astronomic study and observation on that basis, the deeper he was plunged into confusion and mystery. No single plan appeared to which everything conformed; all was empirical, fragmentary, theoretical, chaotic, taught dogmatically rather than scientifically. There was conflict, personal opinion, and sharp division among students. What was offered as truth was not subject to proof.
What the celebrated Greek astronomer Ptolemy had said, came to be accepted without proof. Authority took the place of demonstration, and vet millions who had received the teaching that the sun revolves about the earth must still have felt that a mistake was being made somewhere and have wondered what it was. In due time this was located, and found to have grown out of a wrong point of view. Copernicus was the bold explorer who ventured upon the experiment of trying the new and hitherto untested hypothesis that the sun is a center around which the earth and planets revolve. All that was needed to overcome the difficulties was a look at the stars from this point of view. But what proof was forthcoming that this was the right point of view and the other the wrong? The results. The heavens, looked at and studied thus, no longer appeared disorderly and confusing, for all the old inconsistencies and mysteries vanished. But this was not all, since the most astonishing results of a practical nature, affecting daily living, followed as tangible proofs that the new view-point was correct.
Studied from this vantage point, the cause of day and night, climate, the seasons, of the earth's velocity, weight, size, and shape, of latitude, longitude, the eclipses, the moon's phases, the exact length of the solar year, together with all those wonderfully minute calculations tabulated in our almanacs and text-books on astronomy,—all this proved that a satisfactory clue had been found. The mariners at sea were able to prove to themselves the practical value, and therefore the truth, of the correctness of the new standpoint announced by Copernicus. Even the inventing and making of clocks received an impetus, for there was now an accurate standard by which to regulate them.
