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Mechanical Astronomy: A Route to the Ancient Discovery of Epicycles and Eccentrics
James Evans,Christián Carlos Cannan +1 more
- pp 145-174
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In this paper, the authors examine the relation of astronomy to mechanics in the ancient Greek world, and argue that we should imagine astronomy and mechanics in conversation with one another, rather than in a simple, one-way transmission of influence.Abstract:
The ancient Greek art of spbairopoiia was devoted to the building of models of the universe such as celestial globes and annillary spheres. But it also included the construction of geared mechanisms that replicated the motions of the Sun, Moon, and planets, such as the famous orrery that Cicero attributed to Archimedes or the spectacular Antikythera mechanism, found in an ancient shipwreck of about 60 BC. Was sphairopoiia merely an imitative art, in which the modelers followed the precepts of the theoretical astronomers? Or could theoretical astronomy also learn something from the art of mechanics? In this paper, we examine the relation of astronomy to mechanics in the ancient Greek world, and argue that we should imagine astronomy and mechanics in conversation with one another, rather than in a simple, one-way transmission of influence.read more
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Scale, Space and Canon in Ancient Literary Culture
TL;DR: In this article, the authors retell the history of ancient literary culture through the lenses of canon, space and scale, with about a thousand authors active at any given moment in the Hellenistic era.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Antikythera mechanism and the mechanical universe
TL;DR: In this article, the Antikythera Mechanism, an artefact from ancient Greece, reinforces a view that the mechanical conception has been around for a much longer time - indeed certainly as far back as the third century BC.
Journal ArticleDOI
On the epoch of the Antikythera mechanism and its eclipse predictor
Christián C. Carman,James Evans +1 more
TL;DR: A series of constraints are applied, in a sort of sieve of Eratosthenes, to sequentially eliminate possibilities for the epoch date of the Antikythera mechanism, finding that the solar eclipse of month 13 of the Saros dial almost certainly belongs to solar Saros series 44.
Journal ArticleDOI
Platonic Astronomy and the Development of Ancient Sphairopoiia
TL;DR: A passage from Theon of Smyrna's treatise on Platonic mathematics relates this project with the construction of mechanical models of the cosmos, which is found in the so-called Antikythera mechanism, found nearly 100 years ago in an ancient shipwreck in the Aegean.
Journal ArticleDOI
The planetary increase of brightness during retrograde motion: An explanandum constructed ad explanantem
TL;DR: It is shown that the rejection of Eudoxus' homocentric spheres in favor of the epicycle and deferent system was that the first cannot explain the manifest planetary increase of brightness during retrograde motion, while the second can.
References
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A history of Greek mathematics
TL;DR: A text which looks at the history of Greek mathematics is presented in this article, a subject on which the author established a special authority by his succession of works on Diophantus, Apolonius of Perga, Archimedes, Euclid and Aristarchus.
Buenos Aires, Argentina
TL;DR: In this paper, the Flag City Country School Latitude (°) +N/-S Longitude +E/-W Buenos Aires ENS1 Argentina ENS No 1 -34.455 -58.544
Journal ArticleDOI
The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages
A. Rupert Hall,Marshall Clagett +1 more