Hipparchus,Plutarch,SchroderandHough 1.HipparchusandPlutarch.PlutarchwasaGreekbiographerand RichardP.Stanley
نویسنده
چکیده
1. Hipparchus and Plutarch. Plutarch was a Greek biographer and philosopher from Chaeronea, who was born before a.d. 50 and died after a.d. 120. He is best known for his Parallel Lives, which inspired such Renaissance writers as Montaigne, Shakespeare, Dryden, and Rousseau. His many other works have been gathered together under the name Moralia, \a collection of comparatively short treatises and dialogues which cover an immense range of subjects, literary, ethical, political, and scientiic" 21, p. 8]. Part of the Moralia consists of the Table-Talk, \a collection of dialogues purporting to reproduce the after-dinner conversation of Plutarch and his friends and relatives on various occasions" 20, p. 2]. In the Table-Talk 20, VIII.9, 732] appears the following statement: Chrysippus says that the number of compound propositions that can be made from only ten simple propositions exceeds a million. (Hipparchus, to be sure, refuted this by showing that on the aar-mative side there are 103,049 compound statements, and on the negative side 310,952.) Chrysippus (c. 280{207 b.c.) came to Athens around 260 and became a leading Stoic philosopher. Hipparchus was a Greek astronomer (c. 190{after 127 b.c.) from Nicaea in Bithynia (now Iznik, Turkey) who spent much of his life at Rhodes. He was perhaps the greatest astronomer of antiquity. He is most famous for his discovery of the precession of the equinoxes, based on his own observations and those of Timocharis 160 years earlier. For further information on the work of Hipparchus, see 19, Book I, E]]32]. Hipparchus was an excellent mathematician (though for a contrary view see 33, p. 211]); he was the rst person to make systematic use of trigonometry, and he was probably the inventor of stereographic projection. However, for many centuries no one was able to make sense of the statement of Plutarch. For instance, T. L. Heath 12, vol. 2, p. 256], a standard older authority on Greek mathematics, says of Plutarch's statement that \it seems impossible to make anything of these gures," while the more recent authority O. Neugebauer 19, p. 338]
منابع مشابه
Hipparchus, Plutarch, Schröder and Hough
1. Hipparchus and Plutarch. Plutarch was a Greek biographer and philosopher from Chaeronea, who was born before a.d. 50 and died after a.d. 120. He is best known for his Parallel Lives, which inspired such Renaissance writers as Montaigne, Shakespeare, Dryden, and Rousseau. His many other works have been gathered together under the name Moralia, \a collection of comparatively short treatises an...
متن کاملAnalysis of the Farnese Globe
The constellations on the Farnese Atlas are based on the now-lost star catalogue of Hipparchus. This is proved by S1.1) the virtually perfect match with the constellation figures used by Hipparchus and only for these, S1.2) the perfect match with the date of Hipparchus (with the exclusion of all other known candidate sources), S1.3) the requirement that the source be a star catalogue such as th...
متن کاملAnalysis of the latitudinal data of Eratosthenes and Hipparchus
The handed down latitudinal data ascribed to Eratosthenes and Hipparchus are composed and each tested for consistency by means of adjustment theory. For detected inconsistencies new explanations are given concerning the origin of the data. Several inconsistent data can be ascribed to Strabo. Differences in Hipparchus’ data can often be explained by the different types and precision of the data....
متن کاملMathematical Methods in Ancient Astronomy
1. Chronological remarks. The main source for our knowledge of ancient astronomy is Ptolemy. His Mathematical composition, commonly known as the Almagest, quotes observations of his own ranging from 127 to 142 A.D. [35; 36; 37]. This work seems to be the earliest of a whole series of fundamental works, such as his Geography [41 ], the Tetrabiblos [39; 40], and so on, whose influence on mediaeva...
متن کاملFour Lost Episodes in Ancient Solar Theory
The most widely known solar theory from antiquity is that of Hipparchus. All ancient sources are agreed that Hipparchus’ model was a simple eccentric or an equivalent epicycle. The eccentric version of the model is shown in Figure 1. The Earth E is displaced a distance e from the center Z of the deferent. The purpose of the displacement is to allow the Sun at S to appear to move alternately slo...
متن کامل