Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c9.96

c9.96

57. Though it cannot be denied that, in this reasoning, there is some weight, yet it must be observed, that the introduction of the third hypothesis did not rest among the Greeks altogether on the coincidence above mentioned. It was suited to their progress in mathematical knowledge, and offered almost the only system, after the two former were exploded, which rendered the planetary motions the subject of geometrical reasoning, to men little versed in the methods of approximation. This was the circumstance then, which, more than any other, probably influenced them in the choice of this hypothesis, though we are not to look for it as an argument stated in their works, but may judge of the influence it had, from the frequency with which, many ages afterwards, the *ageometresia* (Transliterated from the original Greek letters: Editor.) of Kepler’s system was objected to him by his adversaries; an objection to which that great man seemed to pay more attention than it deserved.