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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Universe of the ancient Greeks.
From: Frank Reed CT
Date: 2006 Mar 3, 22:28 EST
From: Frank Reed CT
Date: 2006 Mar 3, 22:28 EST
George H wrote: "Ptolemy, in the early pages of his "Almagest", in about 200 AD, considers the arguments for and against motion of the Earth, and decides that indeed the Earth is stationary at the centre of the Universe. I doubt if many of us would have argued otherwise, if we had found ourselves in the same situation, in the same state of knowledge." I agree with that completely, and I would even go a little farther. If we were placed back in time 1800 years with our modern sense of scientific methodology and principles intact, we would still reach the same conclusion. The most damning evidence against the motion of the Earth is the apparent lack of stellar parallax. The reply from advocates of a moving Earth --"well... maybe the stars are really far away..."-- would immediately strike us an ad hoc assumption designed to avoid facing up to observational evidence that clearly rules out the theoretical model. That the ad hoc assumption turns out to be entirely correct is one of those things that makes the history of science interesting... -FER 42.0N 87.7W, or 41.4N 72.1W. www.HistoricalAtlas.com/lunars
