Critical Reception of Aphra Behn

“I cannot but take his part as a Woman’s Reasoning can go. I shall not venture upon the Astronomical part, but leave that to the Mathematicians; but because I know, that when this Opinion of Copernicus (as to the Motion of the Earth, and the Sun’s being fixed in the Centre of the Universe, without any other Motion, but upon his own Axis) was first heard of the in the World, those who neither understood the old system of Ptolemy, nor the new one of Copernicus, said That this new Opinion was expressly contrary to the holy Scriptures, and therefore not to be embraced;…After it had been examined by the best Mathematicians in Europe, and they found it answered all the Phaenomena’s and Motions of the Spheres and Stars better than the System of Ptolemy;…several of these learned Men therefore embraced this…”

Aphra Behn, The Translator’s Preface in A Discovery of New Worlds (1688)