‘The Earth but a Satellite of the Sun’

Extract

I Have read Professor Taylor's article with great enjoyment. There are, however, two matters of fact on which, though they do not affect her main thesis, the record should, I think, be set right, (a) The earliest experimental proof of the Earth's revolution round the Sun was neither Bessel's detection of the relative parallax of 61 Cygni, nor Henderson's determination of the absolute parallax of α Centauri (both of which occurred in 1838) but Bradley's very beautiful discovery of aberration in 1725, together with his slightly later explanation. The discovery was made in a deliberate search for parallaxes; and although that particular proof of the Earth's movement was not then achieved, it was at once recognized that aberration provided a different and equally cogent one. Bradley's work was indeed resisted, in some quarters and for a short while, for reasons which Professor Taylor will by no means find unexpected. His later discovery of one term in the nutation was also a discovery of something which would have embarrassed Ptolemy, and delighted Newton; it certainly tended to confirm the picture, if that were needed. By the time parallaxes actually were discovered, though there still were individuals, sometimes of high rank, whose prejudices were stronger than their intellects, the only point of genuine doubt was the question how far away the nearest stars really were.