NATS 1745 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Ancient Greek Astronomy, Atomism, The Roots
22 Feb 2019
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Introduction: 3 main traditions, literary, philosophical, and scientific, literary tradition, many classical greek works by people such as ovid and homer have many references to astronomy. In the ionian region there are many smaller political/trading entities: each city-state had its own views/ways of doing things. Tuesday, may 15, 2012: these states traded/interacted extensively, so there would have been great exchange of ideas/knowledge, comparisons of different ways probably lead to greater scope of thought/development of science. Greeks: beginning of western astronomy is found in work of various greek scientists/philosophers. Anaximenes (550-475 bc: believes that basic material making up cosmos is air, one of the first to suggest that the solar system is made up of a set of concentric spheres made of a crystalline substance. 4 for each of the visible 5 planets and 1 sphere for the fixed stars: student of eudoxus" will add additional spheres and produce a model of 34 spheres, this became the basis of aristotle"s model.
