Quote#Time
Thus Descartes’s rectilinear cometary trajectory, which he filched…
Quote byDavid Gregory · 1659–1708
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Inaugural Lecture by David Gregory M.D. Savilian Professor of Astronomy (1692).
English (original)
Thus Descartes’s rectilinear cometary trajectory, which he filched from Kepler, collapses, and many things about comets in his fable of the world may be added, which almost two thousand years ago had been shown to be impossible by Lucretius.
— David Gregory
More from David Gregory
[I]f we look back to the first Rise of Astronomy... we shall find nothing better approv'd of, nothing more universally entertained among the several Sects of Philosophers, than this notion of the Gravity of the Celestial Bodies.
Although in every age there have been those who cultivated astronomy, either by... observations... or by theories and systems made up according to the state of understanding of any period, or by a talent for exposition, yet the …
It is... most gratifying to my soul that, after spending a large part of my life in other universities, I can be linked in the University of Oxford with the prince of geometers Dr John Wallis as colleague and the most scholarly Dr as …
[T]he easier, simpler and less composite these theories are, the more they will be consonant not only with what has already been observed... but with what is yet to be observed, and with the very machine of the world which was constructed …
[W]e do still tread in the steps of the Ancients in this Physical Astronomy; inasmuch as they knew that the Celestial Bodies gravitated towards each other, and were retain'd in their Orbits by the force of Gravity; and were also apprized …
[I]t is by the help of geometry that all the arts necessary for improving life,.. as geography,.. rules of navigation,.. determining of times... [etc.], have been carried to such an incredible pinnacle of distinction.