no bigger than a Cart-wheel,It is not impossible with the circumference of a small circle few times revolved to measure and describe a line bigger than any great circle whatsoever. with making not 365, but lesse than 20 revolutions, to describe and measure the circumference, not onely of the grand Orb, but of one a thousand times greater; and this I s y to shew, that there do not want far greater subtilties, than this wherewith your Author goeth about to detect the errour of Copernicus: but I pray you, let us breath a little, that so we may proceed to the other Philosopher, that opposeth of the same Copernicus.
Sagr.To confesse the truth, I stand as much in need of respite as either of you; though I have onely wearied my eares: and were it not that I hope to hear more ingenious things from this other Author, I question whether I should not go my ways, to take the air in my * Gondola.* Pleasure-boat.
Simpl.I believe that you will hear things of greater moment; for this is a most accomplished Philosopher, and a great Mathematician, and hath confuted Tycho in the businesse of the Comets, and new Stars.
* The name of the Author is Scipio Claramontius.Salv.Perhaps he is the same with the Author of the Book, called Anti-Tycho?
Simpl.He is the very same: but the confutation of the new Stars is not in his Anti-Tycho, onely so far as he proveth, that they were not prejudicial to the inalterability and ingenerability of the Heavens, as I told you before; but after he had published his Anti-Tycho, having found out, by help of the Parallaxes, a way to demonstrate, that they also are things elementary, and contained within the concave of the Moon, he hath writ this other Book, de tribus novis Stellis, &c. and therein also inserted the Arguments against Copernicus: I have already shewn you what he hath written touching these new Stars in his Anti-Tycho, where he denied not, but that they were in the Heavens; but he proved, that their production altered not the inalterability of the Heavens, and that he did, with a Discourse purely philosophical, in the same man¦ner as you have already heard. And I then forgot to tell you, how that he afterwards did finde out a way to remove them out of the Heavens; for he proceeding in this confutation, by way of computations and parallaxes, matters little or nothing at all understood by me, I did not mention them to you, but have bent all my studies upon these arguments against the motion of the Earth, which are purely natural.
Salv.I understand you very well: and it will be convenient after we have heard what he hath to say against Copernicus, that we hear, or see at least the manner wherewith he, by way of Parallaxes, proveth those new stars to be elementary, which so many famous Astronomers constitute to be all very high, and amongst the stars of the Firmament; and as this Author accomplisheth suchan
