y, the Lyceum, in Athens about 335 BCE. Aristotle's philosophy involved the qualitative study of all natural phenomena, pursued without the aid of mathematics, which was deemed to be too "perfect" for application on an imperfect terrestrial sphere. In Aristotelian cosmology, the "imperfect" Earth was situated at the center of the Universe. It was composed of the four elements: earth, air, water, and fire, each of which sought its natural place in the Universe. Earthen bodies fall to Earth, rain falls from the sky, traveling through rivulets, to streams, to rivers and finally to the sea. (Smith, 6) For 1,500 years people believed in this theory until Copernicus, a Polish chu
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