Ancient Greek planetary theory was brought into its final, very successful form with Ptolemy’s masterpiece in Alexandria in the second century AD. James Evans explains in his book The History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy:A History of Mathematical Astronomy - Part 2
“The original title was something like The 13 Books of the Mathematical Composition of Claudius Ptolemy. Later the work may simply have been known as Megale Syntaxis, the Great Composition. The superlative form of the Greek megale (great) is megiste. Arabic astronomers of the early Middle Ages joined to this the Arabic article al-, giving al-megiste, which was later corrupted by medieval Latin writers to Almagest….The Almagest is one of the greatest books in the whole history of the sciences – comparable in its significance and influence to Euclid’s Elements, Newton’s Principia, or Darwin’s Origin of Species.”
Friday, 8 January 2010
From the desk of Fjordman on Fri, 2010-01-08 11:09
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