| Chapter 1: | The New Astronomy |
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in the thinking of Aristarchus, Seleucus the Babylonian (fl.150 BC), Seneca (4 BC–AD 65), Aryabhatta (476–550), Brahmagupta (c.598–c.665), Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179), Bernardus Silvestris (fl.1147), and Copernicus, but they did not flourish fully until 1576 when Thomas Digges published his short essay, A Perfit Description of the Caelestiall Orbes according to the most aunciente doctrine of the Pythagoreans, latelye revived by Copernicus and by Geometricall Demonstrations approved. He appended it to an almanac titled A Prognostication Everlasting that his father Leonard Digges (c.1521–1571?) had founded. Unlike conventional almanacs, this dealt with recurrent cyclic phenomena and therefore did not need continual updating.
As the title of Thomas'essay indicates, he credits Copernicus for reviving the Pythagorean theory of a moving Earth, but to this he adds the further notion of a physically infinite Universe (figure 1.7). This
Figure 1.7. The unbounded heliocentric model of Thomas Digges, from
A Perfit Description (1576).
