For What Could Be More Beautiful Than

So, Influenced By These Advisors And This Hope, I Have At Length Allowed My Friends To Publish The Work, As They Had Long Besought Me To Do.

Therefore I Would Not Have It Unknown To Your Holiness, The The Only Thing Which Induced Me To Look For Another Way Of Reckoning The Movements Of The Heavenly Bodies Was That I Knew That Mathematicians By No Means Agree In Their Investigation Thereof.

So Far As Hypotheses Are Concerned, Let No One Expect Anything Certain From Astronomy, Which Cannot Furnish It, Lest He Accept As The Truth Ideas Conceived For Another Purpose, And Depart From This Study A Greater Fool Than When He Entered It.

In First Place We Must Observe That The Universe Is Spherical. This Is Either Because That Figure Is The Most Perfect, As Not Being Articulated, But Whole And Complete In Itself; Or Because It Is The Most Capacious And Therefore Best Suited For That Which Is To Contain And Preserve All Things.

Therefore, In The Course Of The Work I Have Followed This Plan: I Describe In The First Book All The Positions Of The Orbits Together With The Movements Which I Ascribe To The Earth, In Order That This Book Might Contain, As It Were, The General Scheme Of The Universe.