As to the scientific element in this compromise, De Angelis holds,
in his general introduction regarding meteorology, that the main
material cause of comets is "exhalation," and says, "If this
exhalation is thick and sticky, it blazes into a comet." And again
he returns to the same view, saying that "one form of exhalation
is dense, hence easily inflammable and long retentive of fire, from
which sort are especially generated comets." But it is in his third
lecture that he takes up comets specially, and his discussion of
them is extended through the fourth, fifth, and sixth lectures.
Having given in detail the opinions of various theologians and
philosophers, he declares his own in the form of two conclusions.
The first of these is that "comets are not heavenly bodies, but
originate in the earth's atmosphere below the moon; for everything
heavenly is eternal and incorruptible, but comets have a beginning
and ending--_ergo_, comets can not be heavenly bodies." This, we may
observe, is levelled at the observations and reasonings of Tycho
Brahe and Kepler, and is a very good illustration of the scholastic
and mediaeval method--the method which blots out an ascertained
fact by means of a metaphysical formula.
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