Note 18 — Chapter IV

Dr. Ward makes a curious mistake in one point; he speaks in one of the articles of The Dublin Review (which he then edited) of Copernicanism as destroying the old ideas as to above and below; that is to say, for instance, your idea of ascending on high towards heaven was thereby nullified, and ascending from the surface of the earth meant going in any direction which the earth’s rotation might place above your head at any particular moment. But Dr. Ward, who was doubtless thinking of the very old and exploded notion that the earth was a flat surface, does not seem to have been aware that this objection applies in principle to the Ptolemaic system also; Ptolemy knew that the earth was spherical in its shape, and consequently that what would be above a person in the eastern parts of India, to take an example, would be widely different from that which would be so at the westernmost point of Africa. It may, however, be admitted that an additional cause for bewilderment was presented by the diurnal rotation of the Earth, since it then appeared that the same point in space above you at noon would be far away below you at midnight.