5 quotes
Newton solved not only the universal problem of determining the trajectory and the motion in it for any given centripetal force, but also its converse.
Inaugural Lecture by David Gregory M.D. Savilian Professor of Astronomy (1692)
Descartes's cosmic system, which he jokingly called his fable of the world, is shown to be a fable indeed.
Inaugural Lecture by David Gregory M.D. Savilian Professor of Astronomy (1692)
Thus Descartes’s rectilinear cometary trajectory, which he filched from Kepler, collapses, and many things about comets in his fable of the world may be added, which almost two thousand years ago had been shown to be impossible by Lucretius.
Inaugural Lecture by David Gregory M.D. Savilian Professor of Astronomy (1692)
The most renowned Wren found that the required law of gravity was such that the centripetal forces were reciprocally as the squares of the distances from the centre of forces, and that no other law would agree with what was observed.
Inaugural Lecture by David Gregory M.D. Savilian Professor of Astronomy (1692)
The phenomena prove that the tail of a comet is vapour from its head which, when the comet is greatly heated in the neighbourhood of the sun in perihelion, continually rises up and moves away into the regions opposite the sun.
Inaugural Lecture by David Gregory M.D. Savilian Professor of Astronomy (1692)