CHAPTER VIII.
FROM GALILEI TO NEWTON.
"And now the lofty telescope, the scale
By which they venture heaven itself t'assail,
Was raised, and planted full against the moon."
Hudibras
152. Between the publication of Galilei's Two New Sciences (1638) and that of Newton's Principia (1687) a period of not quite half a century elapsed; during this interval no astronomical discovery of first-rate importance was published, but steady progress was made on lines already laid down.
On the one hand, while the impetus given to exact observation by Tycho Brahe had not yet spent itself, the invention of the telescope and its gradual improvement opened out an almost indefinite field for possible discovery of new celestial objects of interest. On the other hand, the remarkable character of the three laws in which Kepler had summed up the leading characteristics of the planetary motions could hardly fail to suggest to any intelligent astronomer the question why these particular laws should hold, or, in other words, to stimulate the inquiry into the possibility of shewing them to be necessary consequences of some simpler and more fundamental law or laws, while Galilei's researches into the laws of motion suggested the possibility of establishing some connection between the causes underlying these celestial motions and those of ordinary terrestrial objects.
153. It has been already mentioned how closely Galilei was followed by other astronomers (if not in some cases actually anticipated) in most of his telescopic discoveries.
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