Ptolemy's Universe

by Taub, Liba Chaia

• ISBN13: 9780812692280
• ISBN10: 0812692284
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1993-02-01
• Publisher: Open Court Pub Co

Summary

Claudius Ptolemy, one of the greatest scientists of all time, probably lived in Alexandria in the second century A.D. His writings dominated astronomy and cosmology in medieval times. The replacement of his Earth-centered cosmology by the Sun-centered cosmology of Copernicus is the most celebrated event in the history of science.
Yet, although there has been much scholarly discussion of the mathematical aspects of Ptolemy's astronomy, little attention has been paid to the philosophical, and particularly the ethical, ideas which animate the astronomy. Ptolemy's Universe is the first modern examination of Ptolemy's thought as a whole, and its place in Greek intellectual culture.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
A Note on Editions and Abbreviations
Illustrations
About the Illustrations
Introduction	p. 1
Ptolemy and the Historians	p. 7
The Philosophical Preface to the Syntaxis	p. 19
The Hypotheses Underlying the Syntaxis	p. 39
That the heaven moves spherically	p. 45
That the Earth, taken as a whole, is sensibly spherical	p. 61
That the Earth is in the middle of the heavens, with regard to the senses	p. 71
That the Earth has the ratio of a point relative to the size of the heavens	p. 79
That the Earth makes no motion involving change of place	p. 84
That there are two different primary motions in the heavens	p. 100
Ptolemy's Cosmology	p. 105
The Divinity of the Celestial Bodies and the Ethical Motivation for the Study of the Heavens	p. 135
The Greek Cosmological Tradition and the Search for the Divine	p. 138
The Ethical Motivation to Study Astronomy	p. 146
Notes	p. 155
Bibliography	p. 173
Index	p. 185
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