Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c9.95

c9.95

But when more accurate observations had shown the insufficiency even of this second hypothesis, what ought naturally to be the third, may be thought not quite so obvious; and if the Greeks made choice of that which has been described above, it may seem to have been owing to certain metaphysical notions concerning the simplicity and perfection of a circular and uniform motion, which inclined them to recede from that supposition, no farther than appearances rendered absolutely necessary. The same coincidence between the ideas of metaphysics and astronomy, cannot be supposed to have taken place in other countries; and therefore, where we find this third hypothesis to have prevailed, we may conclude that it was borrowed from the Greeks.