Original Language: Greek
I read the Almagest on the Internet Archive. (archive.org)
Sidebar: I am very thankful for the Internet Archive. I just donated a small amount of money to them and if you can, I urge you to.
The ancients rendered years by the Roman Emperors. For example
Year 11 of Hadrian
Hadrian 9
Antonine 14
and in Egypt they had a month named Thoth.
Ptolemy believed the world was spherical. And one of his proofs of that is time differences between the east and the west. But his model was geocentric. There is a good deal of geometry, and geometrical proofs, in his book. They didn’t know at that time that anybody lived south of the Equator. Ptolemy was a genius. He also knew that there were 6 months of light and 6 months of darkness at the North Pole. And I see why Ptolemy is on the list of great books.
The Almagest is an awesome book. I’m happy the Arabs preserved it. Even though Ptolemy was wrong about the geocentric part, it is full of detailed and (presumably) accurate observations, and geometric proofs.
Last thoughts on Ptolemy
Wow. I’m impressed. And an appendix explained you could use Ptolemy’s calculations in the Copernican heliocentric system.
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