Princes are like to heavenly bodies, which cause good or evil times,
and which have much veneration but no rest.
-- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
-- Of Empire
Nevertheless, in the system of Copernicus there are found many and
great inconvenience for both the loading of the earth with a triple
motion is very incommodious, and the separation of the sun from the
company of the planets, with which it has so many passions in common,
is likewise a difficulty, and the introduction of so much immobility
in nature, by representing the sun and stars as immoveable, especially
being of all bodies the highest and most radiant, and making the moon
revolve about the earth in an epicycle, and some other assumptions
of his, are the speculations of one who cares not what fictions he
introduces into nature, provided his calculations answer....
