AST 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Deferent And Epicycle, Natural Philosophy, Celestial Sphere

• School: Syracuse University
• Department: Astronomy
• Course: AST 101
• Professor: Walter Freeman

Document Summary

Branch of natural philosophy : saw behavior of nature as something we can understand, proposed natural, not supernatural causes for things when possible, proposed models for things in nature. Any model made had to agree with observation: saw astronomy as a separate discipline from natural philosophy (split between groups of people) Learned earth was round and moon is lit by the sun, not from within in solar eclipse model. Concerned with predicting the motions of stars and planets. Not all that concerned with the transcendent truth of models. Wrote almagest a treatise on astronomy. Celestial sphere doesn"t account for ellipses orbits ad retrograde motion. Circle being orbited by loop to loop motion: it worked not far off from actuality. Alexandria in egypt center of scholarly work burned down. Muslims accumulated knowledge about motions of the sky, named stars, refined. Europe ptolemaic model was known, mostly just applied (didn"t have scientific tradition)