Editing Thomas Digges (section)

==Work==
{{more citations needed|section|date=October 2024}}
Digges attempted to determine the [[parallax]] of the 1572 [[SN 1572|supernova]] observed by [[Tycho Brahe]], and concluded it had to be beyond the orbit of the Moon. This contradicted Aristotle's view of the universe, according to which no change could take place among the fixed stars.

In 1576, he published a new edition of his father's perpetual almanac, ''A Prognostication everlasting''. The text written by Leonard Digges for the third edition of 1556 was left unchanged, but Thomas added new material in several appendices. The most important of these was ''A Perfit Description of the Caelestiall Orbes according to the most aunciente doctrine of the Pythagoreans, latelye revived by Copernicus and by Geometricall Demonstrations approved''. Contrary to the [[Ptolemaic system|Ptolemaic]] [[cosmology]] of the original book by his father, the appendix featured a detailed discussion of the controversial and still poorly known [[Copernicus|Copernican]] heliocentric model of the Universe. This was the first publication of that model in English, and a milestone in the popularisation of science.

[[Image:ThomasDiggesmap.JPG|thumb|An illustration of the Copernican universe from Thomas Digges's book]]
For the most part, the appendix was a loose translation into English of chapters from Copernicus' book ''[[De revolutionibus orbium coelestium]]''. Thomas Digges went further than Copernicus, however, by proposing that the universe is infinite, containing infinitely many stars, and may have been the first person to do so, predating [[Giordano Bruno]]'s (1584)<ref>{{cite book |last=Bruno |first=Giordano |title=On the infinite universe and worlds |chapter=Third Dialogue |chapter-url=http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/brunoiuw3.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120427091405/http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/brunoiuw3.htm |archive-date=27 April 2012 |df=dmy-all}}</ref> and [[William Gilbert (physician)|William Gilbert]]'s (1600)<ref>{{cite book |last=Gilbert |first=William |title=De Magnete |url=https://archive.org/details/williamgilbertof00gilb |translator-last=Mottelay |translator-first=P. Fleury |date=1893 |chapter=Book 6, Chapter III|publisher=Dover Publications |location=New York |isbn = 0-486-26761-X|others=(Facsimile)}}</ref> same views. According to [[Edward Robert Harrison|Harrison]]:
<ref name="Harrison1987">{{cite book | last=Harrison | first=E.R. | title=Darkness at Night: A Riddle of the Universe | publisher=Harvard University Press | series=Emersion: Emergent Village Resources for Communities of Faith Series | year=1987 | isbn=978-0-674-19271-3 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IRKYueWVftYC&pg=PA35 | access-date=17 Oct 2024 | page=35,37}}</ref>
{{blockquote|1=Copernicus had said little or nothing about what lay beyond the sphere of fixed stars. Digges's original contribution to cosmology consisted of dismantling the starry sphere, and scattering the stars throughout endless space.<p>By grafting endless space onto the Copernican system and scattering the stars throughout this endless space, Digges pioneered&nbsp;... the idea of an unlimited universe filled with the mingling rays of countless stars.</p>}}

An illustration of the Copernican universe can be seen above right. The outer inscription on the map reads (after spelling adjustments from [[Elizabethan English|Elizabethan]] to [[Modern English]]):
{{blockquote|1=This orb of stars fixed infinitely up extends itself in altitude spherically, and therefore immovable the palace of felicity garnished with perpetual shining glorious lights innumerable, far excelling our sun both in quantity and quality the very court of celestial angels, devoid of grief and replenished with perfect endless joy, the habitacle for the elect.}}

In 1583, [[William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley|Lord Burghley]] appointed Digges, along with [[Henry Savile (Bible translator)]] and [[John Chamber (academic)|John Chamber]], to sit on a commission to consider whether England should adopt the [[Gregorian calendar]], as proposed by [[John Dee]]; in fact Britain did not adopt the calendar until 1752.<ref name=mosley>Adam Mosley, 'Chamber, John (1546–1604), in ''[[Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]]'' (Oxford University Press, 2004)</ref>