The Anti-Tycho: Sunspots
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We do have in our age new observations that would change Aristotle’s opinion if he were alive now.
This is easily inferred from his own manner of philosophizing, for when
He wrote that the heavens are inalterable, etc. because:
- no new thing was seen to be generated
- no old thing was seen dissolved
He implies that if he had seen any such event, then he would have:
- reversed his opinion
- properly preferred the sensible experience to natural reason
Aristotle first laid the basis of his argument a priori. He showed the necessity of the inalterability of heaven by means of natural, evident, and clear principles.
He afterwards supported the same a posteriori, by the senses and by the traditions of the ancients.
What you refer to is the method he uses in writing his doctrine.
But I do not believe it to be that with which he investigated it.
Rather, I think he first obtained it through the senses, experiments, and observations.
- This is to assure himself as much as possible of his conclusions.
Afterwards, he sought means to make them demonstrable.
This comes about because when the conclusion is true, one may by making use of analytical methods hit on some proposition which is already demonstrated, or arrive at some axiomatic principle.
But if the conclusion is false, one can go on forever without ever finding any known truth – if indeed one does not encounter some impossibility or manifest absurdity.
Pythagoras was sure that the square on the side opposite the right angle in a right triangle was equal to the squares on the other two sides.
- This was long before he discovered the proof for which he sacrificed a hecatomb,
The certainty of a conclusion assists not a little in the discovery of its proof – meaning always in the demonstrative sciences.
Aristotle preferred sensible experience to any argument.
Excellent astronomers have observed many comets beyond the lunar orbit, besides the two new stars of 1572 and 1604, which were beyond all the planets.
They would have seen dark matter [sunspots] produced and dissolved on the sun’s surface with the aid of the telescope.
- These appear dense much like the clouds on the earth.
Many of these are so vast as to exceed:
- the Mediterranean Sea
- all of Africa with Asia thrown in
If Aristotle had seen these things, what do you think he would have said and done, Simplicio?
Aristotle was the master of all science.
As to the comets, have not these modem astronomers who wanted to make them celestial been vanquished by the Anti-Tycho?
Vanquished, moreover, by their own weapons; that is, by means of parallaxes and of calculations turned about every which way, and finally concluding in favor of Aristotle that they are all elemental.
A thing so fundamental to the innovators having been destroyed, what more remains to keep them on their feet?
What do you say about the new stars of 1572 and 1604, and of the sunspots?
I care little whether comets are generated below or beyond the moon. Nor have I ever set much store by Tycho’s verbosity.
I believe that the matter of comets is elemental.
- They may rise as they please without encountering any obstacle from the impenetrability of the Peripatetic heavens, which I hold to be far more tenuous, yielding, and subtle than our air.
I doubt whether comets are subject to parallax.
Besides, the inconstancy of the observations upon which they have been computed renders me equally suspicious of both his opinions and his adversary’s.
I think that the Anti-Tycho sometimes trims to its author’s taste those observations which do not suit his purposes, or else declares them to be erroneous.
The Anti-Tycho explains that:
- the new stars are not heavenly bodies
- if his adversaries wish to prove any change and generations in heavenly bodies, they must show the mutations made in stars which have already been described for a long time
This can never possibly be done.
He does not mention sunspots at all. I think he sees them as an illusion of the telescope or some phenomenon produced by the air.
Some say that they are stars which go around the sun in orbits like Venus and Mercury.
- We see them as sunspots when they pass over the sun.
- They often collect together, and then again to separate.
Others believe them to be figments of the air or illusions of the lenses.
I think that they are a collection of opaque objects, coming together accidentally.
We often see that in one spot there can be 10 or more of irregular shapes that look like snowflakes, or tufts of wool, or flying moths.
They change places with each other, separating and congregating. But most are right under the sun revolving around the sun as their center.
So it is therefore not necessary to say that they are generated or decay.
Rather, they are sometimes hidden behind the body of the sun.
At other times, though far from it, they cannot be seen because of their proximity to its immeasurable light.
For in the sun’s eccentric sphere there is established a sort of onion composed of various folds, one within another.
- Each fold is moving, studded with certain little spots even if their movements seem at first to be inconstant and irregular.
Nonetheless, after a certain time, the same spots are sure to return.
This seems to me to be the most appropriate expedient that has so far been found to account for such phenomena, and at the same time to
This is explanation is consistent with the incorruptibility and ingenerability of the heavens.
The conclusions of the natural sciences:
- are true and necessary, and
- have nothing to do with human will
One must not defend error.
Otherwise, a thousand Demostheneses and Aristotles would be left in the lurch by every mediocre wit who happened to hit on the truth for himself.
So Simplicio, give up this idea and hope of yours that there would be men so much more learned than the rest of us that can make the false become true in defiance of nature.
I have 2 observed facts against your explanation of sunspots.
- These spots are seen to originate in the middle of the solar disc.
Many dissolve and vanish far from the edge of the sun. This means that they are generated and dissolved.
Without generation and corruption, they:
- could appear there only through local motion
- should enter and leave by the edge
- The spots change in shape and speed
This means that:
- they are in contact with the sun’s body
- they move either with it or on it
- they do not orbit the sun
This is proven by:
- them moving very slow around the edge of the solar disc, but fast toward its center.
- the shapes of the spots appearing very narrow around the sun’s edge compared with those near the center.
Around the center, they are seen as they really are.
- But around the edge, they look foreshortened because of the curvature of the spherical surface.
This has been abundantly demonstrated by our mutual friend in his Letters to Mark Welser on the Solar Spots.
This means that none of these spots are stars or spherical bodies since a sphere is never seen foreshortened but is always round.
If a sunspot was a round body like a star, then it would present the same roundness in the middle of the sun’s disc as at the extreme edge.