30                                Robert A. Wolven

duce few effects more far-reaching or of greater import than those
following on the comet of 1577.

After 1618, no new, bright comets were observed in Fairopc for
over thirty years, and new theorizations became somewhat less
pronounced. By that time, about the only commonly accepted be¬
lief about comets which had survived unscathed for the past fifty
years was the trust in their astrological importance. At the same
time, great changes had been wrought in cosmological thought.
A\'hile general agreement would not be possible for many years,
the position of the Copernican theory (assisted by the new con¬
clusions concerning comets) had changed from that of an interest¬
ing mathematical exercise to a plausible explanation of physical
reality.