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قراءة كتاب Man's Place in the Universe A Study of the Results of Scientific Research in Relation to the Unity or Plurality of Worlds, 3rd Edition
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Man's Place in the Universe A Study of the Results of Scientific Research in Relation to the Unity or Plurality of Worlds, 3rd Edition
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CONTENTS
CHAP. | PAGE | |
I. | Early Ideas, | 1 |
II. | Modern Ideas, | 7 |
III. | The New Astronomy, | 24 |
IV. | The Distribution of the Stars, | 47 |
V. | Distances of Stars: the Sun's Motion, | 73 |
VI. | Unity and Evolution of the Star-System, | 99 |
VII. | Are the Stars Infinite? | 135 |
VIII. | Our Relation To the Milky Way, | 156 |
IX. | The Uniformity of Matter and its Laws, | 183 |
X. | The Essential Characters of Organisms, | 191 |
XI. | Physical Conditions essential for Life, | 206 |
XII. | The Earth in relation to Life, | 218 |
XIII. | The Atmosphere in relation to Life, | 243 |
XIV. | The Other Planets are not Habitable, | 262 |
XV. | The Stars: Have they Planets? Are they useful to Us? | 282 |
XVI. | Stability of the Star-System: Importance of Central Position: Summary and Conclusion, | 295 |
Index, | 326 |
EIGHT DIAGRAMS IN THE TEXT AND
TWO STAR CHARTS AT END.
F.T. Palgrave.
MAN'S PLACE IN THE UNIVERSE
CHAPTER I
EARLY IDEAS AS TO THE UNIVERSE AND ITS
RELATION TO MAN
When men attained to sufficient intelligence for speculations as to their own nature and that of the earth on which they lived, they must have been profoundly impressed by the nightly pageant of the starry heavens. The intense sparkling brilliancy of Sirius and Vega, the more massive and steady luminosity of Jupiter and Venus, the strange grouping of the brighter stars into constellations to which fantastic names indicating their resemblance to various animals or terrestrial objects seemed appropriate and were soon generally adopted, together with the apparently innumerable stars of less and less brilliancy scattered broadcast over the sky, many only being visible on the clearest nights and to the acutest vision, constituted altogether a scene of marvellous and impressive splendour of which it must have seemed almost impossible to attain any real knowledge, but which afforded an endless field for the imagination of the observer.
The relation of the stars to the sun and moon in their respective motions was one of the earliest problems for the astronomer, and it was only solved by careful and continuous observation, which showed that the invisibility of the former during the day was wholly due to the blaze of light, and this is said to have been proved at an early period by the observed fact that from the bottom of very deep wells stars can be seen while the sun is shining. During total eclipses of the sun also the brighter stars become visible, and, taken in connection with the fixity of position of the pole-star, and the course of those circumpolar stars which never set in the latitudes of Greece, Egypt, and Chaldea, it soon became possible to frame a simple hypothesis which supposed the earth to be suspended in space, while at an unknown distance from it a crystal sphere revolved upon an axis indicated by the pole-star,