Francis Jeffrey Quotes
Damn the Solar System. Bad light; planets too distant; pestered with comets; feeble contrivance; could make a better myself.
Cockburn, Henry. Life of Lord Jeffrey, With a Selection from His Correspondence. Vol. 2, A. & C. Black, 1852.
Note that Da Vinci predated Galileo. One big difference was that Da Vinci did not publish his heretical views, but wrote them in his private notebook. The church authorities likely did not know about his heresy.
Greece claims him as well since the Greek culture was dominant throughout the Mediterranean at the time. While he was wrong about light being able to completely circle the earth, note that his view of the Earth is spherical. Most thinkers had rejected the flat earth even 400 years before Christ. It was the Church that solidified the flat earth concept.
The Roman Catholic Church had stultified scientific thinking for over a thousand years where differing with accepted church doctrine was not only discouraged but was dangerous. Hicletas—see {590328}—realized that the earth rotated around its own axis three centuries before Christ, and his view was in the literature to which learned people had access. Copernicus later communicated this idea to the Pope but in much more delicate terms—see {590327}. He did not have the problems that Galileo endured with the Church for several reasons. There were different men controlling the church, the printing press had been invented and Galileo published a book that many could read, the Protestant Reformation had really frightened the Church fathers who felt more vulnerable and less tolerant.
Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey was a Scottish judge and literary critic.
