Fred Hoyle | Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside
“Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside, is available…a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose.“
Fred Hoyle
Zitate
John Herschel | In entering upon any scientific pursuit, one of the student’s first endeavours
"In entering upon any scientific pursuit, one of the student’s first endeavours ought to be, to prepare his mind for the reception of truth, by dismissing, or at least loosening his hold on, all such crude and hastily adopted notions respecting the objects and relations he is about to examine as may tend to embarrass or mislead him.; and to strengthen himself, by something of an effort and a resolve, for the unprejudiced admission of any conclusion which shall appear to be supported by careful observation and logical argument, even should it prove of a nature adverse to notions he may have previously formed for himself, or taken up, without examination, on the credit of others."
John Frederick William Herschel (A Treatise on Astronomy 1833)
Salviati | there is no limit to my astonishment when I reflect that
"You wonder that there are so few followers of the Pythagorean opinion [that the earth moves] while I am astonished that there have been any up to this day who have embraced and followed it.
Nor can I ever sufficiently admire the outstanding acumen of those who have taken hold of this opinion and accepted it as true:
they have, through sheer force of intellect, done such violence to their own senses as to prefer what reason told them over that which sensible experience plainly showed them to be the contrary.
For the arguments against the whirling [the rotation] of the earth we have already examined are very plausible, as we have seen; and the fact that the Ptolemaics and the Aristotelians and all their disciples took them to be conclusive is indeed a strong argument of their effectiveness.
But the experiences which overtly contradict the annual movement [the movement of the earth around the sun] are indeed so much greater in their apparent force that, I repeat, there is no limit to my astonishment when I reflect that Aristarchus and Copernicus were able to make reason so conquer sense that in defiance of the latter, the former became mistress of their belief."
Salviati