TO THE KIND READER

It is not for nothing that we little humans original: "Homuncionibus", who live in this world surrounded on all sides like worms in cheese, engage in such great disputes concerning its construction—specifically, whether this seat and home of ours which we call the Earth runs around the Sun on high along with other globes of its kind, or whether the Sun runs around the Earth. We are indeed such tiny creatures that, like a mouse in a ship, we know almost nothing of these matters; just as if a mouse were to look out upon a calm sea to debate the point, he could never determine whether the ship—their common home—is moving or remains fixed in one and the same place. These matters are therefore judged by many to be of deeper mystery than they might seem to the common people, especially after so many new things in the celestial globes were discovered through that optical instrument which the Lyncean Philosophers The Academy of the Lynxes, a Roman scientific society founded in 1603, famously including Galileo Galilei, known for their "lynx-like" sharp vision in science. call a Telescope. However, although certain presumptuous men—who wish to be addressed as "philosophers" by the public—frequently witness these discoveries, their willful ignorance original: "voluntarius stupor" should not be valued so highly that it turns everyone else away from a more diligent investigation of the truth. Indeed, many Theologians scholars of religious doctrine from both sides of the debate strive to weigh down this inquiry with the unyielding authority of the Holy Scriptures. Whether this is done rightly or wrongly is something that a lover of truth must discern above all else...