Outside of England, Newton's theory took some time to become established. Descartes' theory of vortices held sway in France, and Huygens, Leibnitz and Cassini accepted only parts of Newton's system, preferring their own philosophies. It wasn't until Voltaire published a popular account in 1738 that the tide changed.[61] In 1748, the French Academy of Sciences offered a reward for solving the perturbations of Jupiter and Saturn which was eventually solved by Euler and Lagrange. Laplace completed the theory of the planets towards the end of the century. Edmund Halley succeeded Flamsteed as Astronomer Royal in England and succeeded in predicting the return in 1758 of the comet that bears his name. Sir William Herschel found the first new planet, Uranus, to be observed in modern times in 1781. The gap between the planets Mars and Jupiter disclosed by the Titius–Bode law was filled by the discovery of the asteroids Ceres and Pallas in 1801 with many more following. At first, astronomical thought in America was based on Aristotelian philosophy,[62] but interest in the new astronomy began to appear in Almanacs as early as 1659.[63] |
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