O
crassa ingenia.
O
caecos coeli spectatores.
Tycho
Brahe, (1546-1601)
Danish
astronomer
Brahe
made a splash when he published De
nova stella in 1573,
challenging the Aristotelian doctrine of a perfected, unchanging celestial
sphere.
Living
before the advent of practical telescopes, the Danish gentleman-scientist was the last
of the principal "naked eye" astronomers, working without telescopes.
He
was in the van of astronomer-scientists who gradually debunked the Ptolemaic concept
of the cosmos as an Earth-centric (geocentric) system. Brahe proposed a cosmos with
the sun and the moon orbiting the Earth, and the other planets orbiting the sun,
with stars in the classical "fixed spheres."
The
Copernican cosmological system was at odds with Brahe's geo-heliocentric system,
and Kepler later proposed a more correct orbital system based substantially on Brahe's
astoundingly detailed and (for his time) spectacularly accurate astronomical observations.
Brahe
wasn't in the mainstream, and he was not shy about promoting his own system.
Hence,
his less-than-tactful characterization of others with divergent views:
O
crassa ingenia.
O
caecos coeli spectatores.
O,
thick wits.
O,
blind watchers of the sky.
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