Ptolemy's Universe / Edition 1

by Liba Chaia Taub, Liba C. Taub

Overview

"One of the first scholarly and systematic looks at the natural philosophy of Ptolemy, its ethical implications, and its departure from the thought of Aristotle. Taub's writing is clear and succinct, and her ability to handle original texts is outstanding…a unique contribution of our understanding of the history of science and philosophy in late antiquity."

—The Modern Schoolman

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780812692297
Publisher:	Open Court Publishing Company
Publication date:	09/10/2001
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.48(d)

Table of Contents

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