These are the principal discoveries and
inventions, relating to astronomy, which were made prior to the eighteenth
century, so far as they are connected with the advancement of the art of
navigation and the science of geography.
The discoveries of Columbus and Gama necessarily overturned the systems of
Ptolemy, Strabo, and the other geographers of antiquity. The opinion that
the earth was a globe, which had been conjectured or inferred prior to the
voyage of Magellan, was placed beyond a doubt by that voyage. The heavenly
bodies were subjected to the calculations of man by the labours of
Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, and Galileo. Under these circumstances it was
necessary, and it was easy, to make great improvements in the construction
of maps, in laying down the real form of the earth, and the relative
situations of the countries of which it is formed, together with their
latitudes and longitudes. The first maps which displayed the new world were
those of the brothers Appian, and of Ribeiro: soon afterwards a more
complete and accurate one was published by Gemma Frisius. Among the
geographers of the sixteenth century, who are most distinguished for their
science, may be reckoned Sebastian Munster; for though, as we have already
mentioned, he joins Greenland to the north of Lapland in his map, yet his
research, labour, and accuracy were such, that he is compared by his
contemporaries to Strabo.
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