Ptolemy's starry sphere was a cosmic jewel box

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An example of metapor in writing about science:

"No stellar parallax is visible to the naked eye in Copernicus' geokinetic astronomy because the starry sphere is no longer adjacent to Saturn's, but is enormously remote. Gone forever was Ptolemy's cosmic jewel box, with its shining stars some 20,000 earth-radii away from us."

Edward Rosen

Rosen, E. (1995). Copernicus and his successors (E. Hilfstein, Ed.). The Hambledon Press.

[Please be aware that a word may have different nuances, or even a different meaning, according to context.]« Back to Index