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    The Pictorial Ptolemy and Copernicus
    The Pictorial Ptolemy and Copernicus
    The Pictorial Ptolemy and Copernicus
    Ebook79 pages40 minutes

    The Pictorial Ptolemy and Copernicus

    By John Cramer

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    About this ebook

    Teaching and learning about the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems is a challenge. The defining texts are all but unreadable even in translation. Here is a systematic exposition (pun intended) of the two great systems with 36 diagrams to aid you. Most of these diagrams, original work of the author, are unavailable outside of this source. Many of them are to-scale, greatly enhancing the perception of the tremendously impressive intellectual achievements of these two great scientists. And there are no equations! The diagrams do all the work. Well, most of it. The accompanying text lays out the background and the phenomena in need of explanation and then provides commentary and clarification of system details as they appear in the diagrams.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJohn Cramer
    Release dateFeb 10, 2019
    ISBN9780463943977
    The Pictorial Ptolemy and Copernicus
    Author

    John Cramer

    Dr. John A. Cramer is an emeritus Professor of Physics at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Georgia having earned his PhD. Degree from Texas A&M University. He has some forty years of experience teaching undergraduate physics and physical sciences and has authored numerous popular science articles. An avid outdoorsman and shell collector, his science interests extend well beyond physics.Dr. Cramer’s books include: A Brief History of Physical Science, How Alien Would Aliens Be? Why You Can't Shoot Straight: the basic Science of Shooting and Science Activities for K-5. All these are available in ebook formats. A Brief History of Physical Science, and How Alien Would Aliens Be?, are also available in print at most online retailers.

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      Book preview

      The Pictorial Ptolemy and Copernicus - John Cramer

      THE PICTORIAL PTOLEMY AND COPERNICUS

      by

      John A. Cramer

      Copyright 2019 by John A. Cramer

      Smashwords Edition

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you.

      This book is also available in print at most online retailers.

      Table of Contents

      Introduction

      Background

      The Basic Observations

      Devices of the Systems

      Planetary Models of the Ptolemaic System

      The Sun

      Saturn, Jupiter and Mars

      Venus

      The Moon

      Mercury

      Planetary Models of the Copernican System

      The Earth, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars

      Venus

      Mercury and the Moon

      Changes in Latitude

      Which System was Better?

      Order in the Copernican System

      Naturalness of the Copernican System

      End Notes

      Introduction

      Claudius Ptolemy’s The Mathematical Treatise which the Arabs named Almagest, (the greatest,) is surely one of the greatest of human intellectual achievements and an important part of our western heritage. Written in or near Alexandria, Egypt in the middle of the second century A.D., it unfortunately was (and remains) unreadable by all but a very small number of scholars willing to devote the necessary effort to the task. In its time, few had the requisite facility in geometry to follow the theory. Then too, the Greek in which Ptolemy wrote was just beginning to develop the scientific precision that sharpen and make efficient modern scientific discourse. With the passage of time, matters have only become less congenial for the would-be reader as the concepts and mindset of the ancient world have faded into quaint and fuzzy impressions of a distant past. In spite of these difficulties, this classic work deserves study if only because it was the spring from which modern physical science flowed.

      More than a millennium later and dissatisfied with problems inherited from Claudius Ptolemy, Nicholas Copernicus produced a heliocentric system to replace Ptolemy’s geocentric system. His eponymous system was first circulated privately in manuscript form as the Commentariolus (written about 1507) and then more fully and finally in his book, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Orbs) published as he lay dying in 1543.

      The Revolutions was no more readable than the Almagest for much the same reasons. Copernicus was answering the same questions as Ptolemy with much the same data using the same methods of geometry. Ptolemy’s Greek and Copernicus’ Latin mean too that modern readers additionally need the assistance of a translator to read either work. Nonetheless, both are great scientific classics, imposing monuments to intellectual achievement, and, if for no other reason, deserve serious study.

      As the first great work of physical science, the Almagest became the model for scientific presentation of results. Even a cursory comparison reveals the enormous debt Copernicus’ On the Revolutions of the Celestial Orbs and Newton’s great work, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), owe to the Almagest. Reading Newton especially requires learning a new and very strange language, his early and immature version of the calculus, so The Principia is arguably the most difficult to read. Taken together, these three books set the standard for reporting scientific results that still obtains today.

      While

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