 Thus, while the early phase of Ramus’ academic career was concentrated on the disciplines of the trivium, in the later period, from around 1560, he moved on to the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy), though in practice his interest was largely restricted to mathematics. He could never fully endorse Copernicus’ new heliocentric astronomy because he was unable to accept an hypothesis as a scientific argument (see  §2.4  below). The famous Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) left a report of an encounter he had with Ramus in Augsburg in 1569, registering his own amazement at this attitude. It was Brahe’s view that, according to Ramus, the astronomer’s task in describing the movements of the planets must be based solely on observation: he was not allowed to use hypotheses such as assuming a circular planetary movement. Ramus even promised to let anyone who could create an astronomy without hypotheses take over his own royal chair. Of course, no one seriously claimed to have succeeded until Kepler in 1597 mockingly declared himself entitled to it (Skalnik 2002: 59; Hooykaas 1958: 64–67; Jardine &amp; Segonds 2001).