He affirms that the moon's attraction causes the tides, and that the planets must impress irregularities on the moon's motions.
The progress of astronomy is obviously divisible into three periods: 1.

The period of observation of the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies.
2.

The period of discovery of their real motions, and particularly of the laws of the planetary revolutions; this was signally illustrated by Copernicus and Kepler.
3.

The period of the ascertainment of the causes of those laws.

It was the epoch of Newton.
The passage of the second into the third period depended on the development of the Dynamical branch of mechanics, which had been in a stagnant condition from the time of Archimedes or the Alexandrian School.
In Christian Europe there had not been a cultivator of mechanical philosophy until Leonardo da Vinci, who was born A.D.1452.