"Those who devised the eccentrics seen thereby in large measure to have solved the problem of apparent motions with approximate calculations. But meanwhile they introduced a good many ideas which apparently contradict the first principles of uniform motion. Nor could they elicit or deduce from the eccentrics the principal consideration, that is, the structure of the universe and the true symmetry of its parts. On the contrary, their experience was just like someone taking from various places hands, feet, a head, and other pieces, very well depicted it may be, but for the representation of a single person; since these fragments would not belong to one another at all, a monster rather than a man would be put together from them."
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Philosophers from PolandLatin authorsAstronomers from PolandMathematicians from PolandEconomists from Poland
Original Language: English
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Preface Letter to Pope Paul III, Tr. E. Rosen, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (1978) pp. 4-7.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus
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Nicolaus Copernicus
1473 – 1543
preuĂźischer Astronom, Domherr, Jurist und Mediziner
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