Geminos's Introduction to the Phenomena


Book Description

This book is generously illustrated with diagrams from medieval manuscripts of Geminos's text, as well as drawings and photographs of ancient astronomical instruments. It will be of great interest to students of the history of science, to classicists, and to professional and amateur astronomers who seek to learn more about the origins of their science."




Geminos's Introduction to the Phenomena


Book Description

This is the first complete English translation of Geminos's Introduction to the Phenomena--one of the most important and interesting astronomical works of its type to have survived from Greek antiquity. Gracefully and charmingly written, Geminos's first-century BC textbook for beginning students of astronomy can now be read straight through with understanding and enjoyment by a wider audience than ever before. James Evans and Lennart Berggren's accurate and readable translation is accompanied by a thorough introduction and commentary that set Geminos's work in its historical, scientific, and philosophical context. This book is generously illustrated with diagrams from medieval manuscripts of Geminos's text, as well as drawings and photographs of ancient astronomical instruments. It will be of great interest to students of the history of science, to classicists, and to professional and amateur astronomers who seek to learn more about the origins of their science. Geminos provides a clear view of Greek astronomy in the period between Hipparchos and Ptolemy, treating such subjects as the zodiac, the constellations, the theory of the celestial sphere, lunar cycles, and eclipses. Most significantly, Geminos gives us the earliest detailed discussion of Babylonian astronomy by a Greek writer, thus offering valuable insight into the cross-cultural transmission of astronomical knowledge in antiquity.




Hellenistic Alexandria: Celebrating 24 Centuries – Papers presented at the conference held on December 13–15 2017 at Acropolis Museum, Athens


Book Description

This proceedings volume includes high-level dialogues and philosophical discussions between international experts on Hellenistic Alexandria. The goal was to celebrate the 24 centuries which have elapsed since its foundation and the beginning of the Library and the Museum of Alexandria.




Hands on History


Book Description

In an increasingly electronic society, these exercises are designed to help school and collegiate educators use historical devices of mathematics to balance the digital side of mathematics.




The Antikythera Mechanism


Book Description

In Antikythera Mechanism: The Story Behind the Genius of the Greek Computer and Its Demise, Evaggelos Vallianatos, historian and ecopolitical theorist, shows that after the conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great in the late fourth century BCE, the Greeks, especially in Egypt, reached unprecedented heights of achievements in science, technology, and civilization. The Antikythera Mechanism, an astronomical computer probably crafted in Rhodes in the second century BCE, was proof of that prowess. It’s the grandfather of our computers. Greek sponge divers discovered the Antikythera Mechanism in 1900 on a 2,100-year-old Roman-era shipwreck. The hand-powered device reveals a sophisticated Greek technology previously unknown to scholars and historians, not seen and understood again until the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The book not only describes how the sophisticated political and technological infrastructure of the Greeks after Alexander the Great resulted in the Antikythera celestial computer, and the bedrock of science and technology we know today, but also how the influence of Christianity on Greek civilization destroyed the nascent computer age of ancient Greece. Vallianatos, born in Greece and educated in America, is a historian, author, and journalist. He is a passionate champion of Greek culture and a well-suited guide to this historical account. Vallianatos explains how and why Greek scientists employed advanced engineering in translating the beautiful conception of the Antikythera Mechanism into an astronomical computer of genius: a bronze-geared device of mathematical astronomy, predicting the eclipses of the Sun and the Moon; calculating the risings and settings of important stars and constellations, and the movements of the planets around the Sun; while mechanizing the predictions of scientific theories. The computer’s accurate calendar connected these cosmic phenomena to the Olympics and other major Panhellenic religious and athletic celebrations, bringing the Greeks closer to their gods, traditions, and the Cosmos.




Scandalous Error


Book Description

The Gregorian calendar reform of 1582, which provided the basis for the civil and Western ecclesiastical calendars still in use today, has often been seen as a triumph of early modern scientific culture or an expression of papal ambition in the wake of the Counter-Reformation. Much less attention has been paid to reform's intellectual roots in the European Middle Ages, when the reckoning of time by means of calendrical cycles was a topic of central importance to learned culture, as impressively documented by the survival of relevant texts and tables in thousands of manuscripts copied before 1500. For centuries prior to the Gregorian reform, astronomers, mathematicians, theologians, and even Church councils had been debating the necessity of improving or emending the existing ecclesiastical calendar, which throughout the Middle Ages kept losing touch with the astronomical phenomena at an alarming pace. Scandalous Error is the first comprehensive study of the medieval literature devoted to the calendar problem and its cultural and scientific contexts. It examines how the importance of ordering liturgical time by means of a calendar that comprised both solar and lunar components posed a technical-astronomical problem to medieval society and details the often sophisticated ways in which computists and churchmen reacted to this challenge. By drawing attention to the numerous connecting paths that existed between calendars and mathematical astronomy between the Fall of Rome and the end of the fifteenth century, the volume offers substantial new insights on the place of exact science in medieval culture.




Star Tales


Book Description

Every night, a pageant of Greek mythology circles overhead. Perseus flies to the rescue of Andromeda, Orion faces the charge of the snorting Bull, and the ship of the Argonauts sails in search of the Golden Fleece. Constellations are the invention of human imagination, not of nature. They are an expression of the human desire to impress its own order upon the apparent chaos of the night sky. Modern science tells us that these twinkling points of light are glowing balls of gas, but the ancient Greeks, to whom we owe many of our constellations, knew nothing of this. Ian Ridpath, award-winning astronomy writer and popularizer, has been intrigued by the myths of the stars for many years. Star Tales is the first modern guide to combine all the fascinating myths in one book, illustrated with the beautiful and evocative engravings from two of the leading star atlases: Johann Bode’s Uranographia of 1801 and John Flamsteed’s Atlas Coelestis of 1729. This classic book, now in a revised and expanded edition, presents additional information on the constellations with new and enchanting illustrations. For anyone interested in the stars and classical mythology, for anyone who is an armchair astronomer, this is the perfect gift.




Zodiac Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Their Reception


Book Description

The ancient mathematical basis of the Aramaic calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls is analysed in this investigation. Helen R. Jacobus re-examines an Aramaic zodiac calendar with a thunder divination text (4Q318) and the calendar from the Aramaic Astronomical Book (4Q208 - 4Q209), all from Qumran. Jacobus demonstrates that 4Q318 is an ancestor of the Jewish calendar today and that it helps us to understand 4Q208 - 4Q209. She argues that these calendars were taught in antiquity as angelic knowledge described in 1 Enoch and the Book of Jubilees. The study also encompasses Babylonian, Hellenistic, Byzantine astronomy and astrology, and classical and Jewish writings. Finally, a medieval Hebrew zodiac calendar related to 4Q318 with an astrological text is published here for the first time.




Geographers of the Ancient Greek World: Volume 2


Book Description

Ancient Greek geographical writing is represented not just by the surviving works of the well-known authors Strabo, Pausanias, and Ptolemy, but also by many other texts dating from the Archaic to the Late Antique period. Most of these texts are, however, hard for non-specialists to find, and many have never been translated into English. This volume, the work of an international team of experts, presents the most important thirty-six texts in new, accurate translations. In addition, there are explanatory notes and authoritative introductions to each text, which offer a new understanding of the individual writings and demonstrate their importance: no longer marginal, but in the mainstream of Greek literature and science. The book includes twenty-eight newly drawn maps, images of the medieval manuscripts in which most of these works survive, and a full Introduction providing a comprehensive survey of the field of Greek and Roman geography.




The World of Ancient Greece [2 volumes]


Book Description

This book opens the world of the ancient Greeks to all readers through easily accessible entries on topics essential to understanding Greek high culture and daily life. The ancient Greeks provided the foundation for Western civilization. They made significant advances in science, mathematics, philosophy, literature, and government. While many readers might have heard of Plato and Aristotle, however, or be familiar with the classic works of Greek tragedy, most people know significantly less about daily life in the ancient Greek world. This encyclopedia opens the world of the ancient Greeks, spanning Greek history from the Bronze Age through Roman times, with an emphasis on the Classical and Hellenistic Eras. The encyclopedia provides roughly 270 easily accessible entries on topics essential to understanding everything from Greek high culture to daily life. These entries are grouped in topical sections on the arts, science and technology, politics and government, domestic life, and other subjects. Sidebars on particularly noteworthy people, places, and concepts provide related information, while primary documents allow readers to delve into the mindset and feelings of the ancient Greeks themselves. Extensive bibliographic references give curious readers direction for further research.