Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Ptolemy explains Hipparchus' discovery of the precession of the equinoxes and begins explaining the theory of epicycles. Books IV and V cover the motion of the Moon, lunar parallax, the motion of the lunar apogee, and the sizes and distances of the Sun and Moon relative to the Earth. Book VI covers solar and lunar eclipses.
Reason is employed in another way, not as furnishing a sufficient proof of a principle, but as confirming an already established principle, by showing the congruity of its results, as in astronomy the theory of eccentrics and epicycles is considered as established, because thereby the sensible appearances of the heavenly movements can be ...
Despite Ptolemy's prominence as a philosopher, the Dutch historian of science Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis criticizes the Tetrabiblos, stating that "it only remain puzzling that the very writer of the Almagest, who had taught how to develop astronomy from accurate observations and mathematical constructions, could put together such a system of ...
The basic elements of Ptolemaic astronomy, showing a planet on an epicycle (smaller dashed circle), a deferent (larger dashed circle), the eccentric (×) and an equant (•). Equant (or punctum aequans) is a mathematical concept developed by Claudius Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD to account for the observed motion of the planets. The equant is ...
A printed map from the 15th century depicting Ptolemy's description of the Ecumene. (1482, by Nicolaus Germanus) Claudius Ptolemy (90–168 AD) lived in Alexandria, the centre of scholarship in the 2nd century. In the Almagest, which remained the standard work of astronomy for 1,400 years, he advanced many arguments for the spherical nature of ...
Newton was known for his book The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy (1977). In Newton's view, Ptolemy was "the most successful fraud in the history of science". Newton claimed that Ptolemy had predominantly obtained the astronomical results described in his work The Almagest by computation, and not by the direct observations that Ptolemy described.
A 16th-century engraving of Ptolemy. Ptolemy's Optics is a 2nd-century book on geometrical optics, dealing with reflection, refraction, and colour. The book was most likely written late in Ptolemy's life, after the Almagest, during the 160s. [1] The work is of great importance in the early history of optics. The Greek text has been lost completely.
Swerdlow specialized in the history of exact sciences, astronomy in particular, from antiquity through the 17th century. [2] He earned his Ph.D. at Yale University in 1968; his doctoral dissertation, Ptolemy's Theory of the Distances and Sizes of the Planets: A Study of The Scientific Foundations of Medieval Cosmology, was supervised by Asger Aaboe.