A example of personification in writing about science
"…The Sun sitting on his throne commands all things
To tend downward toward himself, and does not allow the chariots of the heavenly bodies to move
Through the immense void in a straight path, but hastens them all along
In unmoving circles around himself as center.
…From this treatise we learn at last why silvery Phoebe moves at an unequal pace,
Why, till now, she has refused to be bridled by the numbers of any astronomer,
Why the nodes regress, and why the upper apsides move forward…."
Edmund Halley, from the Ode he wrote to Newton's Principia.
Pheobe, the moon of Saturn, was not discovered till 1899. Halley, writing in 1687 was using Phoebe as a poetic name for the Earth's moon.
Read about personification in science texts
