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The fact that a great many usually thoughtful and well-informed French journals have been casting serious doubt on this question has aroused the amazed wrath of the astronomer M. Camille Flammarion. Speaking of these various newspaper articles discussing the fixity of the earth, in La Revue, he says:
“To conclude from these dissertations, these jeux d’esprit, that modern astronomers doubt the movement of the earth, is to ignore the very fundamental framework of their geometrical discussions. A Jesuit, in the eighteenth century, Father Boscovich, greatly embarrassed as to how to finish off his astronomical calculations on the hypothesis—still taught by his superiors—of the earth’s stability, calmly adds as his justification: ‘The earth’s movement is not demonstrated; nevertheless, I will act as if it did turn round.’ Great heavens! what else could he do? And was it not the pious Pascal who, without so much as daring to take any side, declared simply that if it were proved that the earth turned round the whole of mankind together could not oppose this movement,—could not avoid turning round with it? Since that time, we know with certainty that the earth turns round. * To doubt the movement of the rotation of the earth is to go back, not merely two or three centuries, but more than two thousand years, for the Pythagoreans taught this movement. And Aristotle and ‘his learned cabal’ opposed the opinion down to Copernicus.”— Review of Reviews.
The Flaming Sword · Vol. 19, No. 7 · Jul 25, 1905 · PDF p. 13