Lucky you, readers: you get to look now at a page of one of the most important texts in recorded history – the _Almagest_, by Ptolemy. I’d say go ahead and fight me if you disagree, but our times call for gentler interaction with each other, so instead I will just try to convince you.
Although this picture is from a 1515 Italian edition of the work, Ptolemy wrote the _Almagest_ about 150 CE. The title comes from the Medieval Arabic meaning “the greatest” — obviously, these translators didn’t need convincing.
The _Almagest_ was all about mathematical astronomy, and predicted the motions of celestial objects — the page you see here lists out the times when eclipses would happen. And sure, Ptolemy got a lot wrong, but he got a heck of a lot right. As physicist Richard Fitzpatrick notes, “no subsequent astronomer, even Copernicus, was able to come up with an more accurate approximation” to the elliptical orbits of the planets until the whole geocentic model fell apart.
That essentially meant that Ptolemy’s mathematical models endured close to two thousand years. And here’s the thing — that sort of learning was not only exquisitely rare, but it germinated: generations of people benefited who didn’t have to discover the placement of the planets, etc, for themselves.
The ability of humans to transmit their knowledge across time and place is unique to our own planet, and every single person feels the results of this cultural inheritance today. Ptolemy’s work is one of the most profound examples of this.
Source(s): Richard Fitzpatrick, “Ptolemy’s Almagest: Fact and Fiction,” univ of Austin, Texas @farside.ph.utexas.edu/talks/AlmagestNotes.pdf. image. Venice 1515 Library of Congress.
