Concept

Comet

Overview

icy small astronomical object

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.

1. Some of the Pythagoreans say, that a comet is one of those stars which do not always appear, but after they have run through their determined course, they then rise and are visible to us. Others, that it is the reflection of our sight upon the sun, which gives the resemblance of comets much after the same manner as images are reflected in mirrors.

   Plutarch, Complete Works of Plutarch — Volume 3

   The chapter “CHAPTER II. OF COMETS AND SHOOTING FIRES, AND THOSE WHICH R…” is titled for Comet; names Comet several times.

   Read the chapter · Open in the reader

2. When I first discovered this Comet, it appeared to the naked eye like a dull star of the 5th or 6th magnitude; but viewing it thro’ a seven-foot Telescope, I could perceive a small Nucleus (surrounded, as usual, with a nebulous atmosphere), and a short tail extended in a direction opposite to the sun. Some small stars then appearing in the field of the telescope with the Comet, I measured its distance from them with…

   Various, Philosophical transactions, Vol. L. Part I. For the year 1757.

   Names Comet several times; opens on Comet.

   Read the chapter · Open in the reader

3. Comets have hitherto, of all the appearances in the Heavens, been the least attended to by Astronomers. The rarity and inconstancy of their appearance, seemed to separate them entirely from the constant, regular, and uniform objects in the Heavens, and to make them resemble more the inconstant, transitory, and accidental phenomena of those regions that are in the neighbourhood of the Earth. Aristotle, Eudoxus…

   Adam Smith, The Essays of Adam Smith

   Opens on Comet; names Comet.

   Read the chapter · Open in the reader

Philosophers who discussed Comet

• Olympiodorus the Younger

Related ideas

• Springer Science+Business Media
• Isaac Newton
• Immanuel Kant
• Ancient Greek
• Johannes Kepler
• Latin
• Middle Ages
• Neptune
• Moon
• Molecule
• Mercury (planet)
• Oxford English Dictionary
• Old English
• Lutheranism
• Photon
• Metaphysics (Aristotle)
• Sun
• Science fiction
• Solar System
• Scientific American
• Galileo Galilei
• The New York Times
• Aristotle
• Mawangdui

Place in the tradition

Part of Universe.

Explore Comet in the interactive graph →