"We having divided the Universe into two parts, one of which is necessarily moveable, and the other immoveable; for the obtaining of whatsoever may depend upon, or be required from such a motion, it may as well be done by making the Earth alone, as by making all the rest of the World to move: for that the operation of such a motion consists in nothing else, save in the relation or habitude which is between the CĹ“lestial Bodies, and the Earth, the which relation [with an exchange in the two terms] is all that is changed. Now if for the obtaining of the same effect ad unguem [to a nail's thickness], it be all one wheÂther the Earth alone moveth, the rest of the Universe standing still; or that, the Earth onely standing still, the whole Universe moveth with one and the same motion; who would believe, that Nature (which by common consent, doth not that by many things, which may be done by few) hath chosen to make an innumerable number of most vast bodies move, and that with an unconceivable velocity, to perform that, which might be done by the moderate motion of one alone about its own Centre? ...which self same effect falls out exactly in the same manner, if, without troubling so great a part of the Universe."
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Salviati, p. 99-100.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Systeme_of_the_World%3A_in_Four_Dialogues
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The Systeme of the World: in Four Dialogues
The Systeme of the World: in Four Dialogues is the original 1661 English translation, by Thomas Salusbury, of Galileo Galilei's DIALOGO sopra i due MASSI SISTEMI DEL MONDO (1632). Galileo's publication is more generally recognized under the title of Stilman Drake's English translation, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, published in 1953. A revised and annotated edition of the Salusbury translation was also introduced in 1953 by Giorgio de Santillana under the title Dialogue on the
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