Already 1400 years! the image that the astronomers defended was contained in a book originally written in Griego Alredador from 150 by an astronomer, mathematician and geographer. Claudius Ptolemy (ca. 100-175), that we know he was active in Alexandria, the capital of Greco-Roman Egypt.
According to the original name, it seems so mathematics (Systematic mathematical processing). However, this ornament was lost over the years and was known by the medieval Latin form of its Arabic name (Al-Megists), Almagestumthis example The Almagesta detail that marks the path that followed again to Europe, where it was practically forgotten: the path of Arab culture that traveled through Muslim Spain.
The name is formed by combining the Arabic article side by side Al and the corruption of the adjective gray mayor: “el Mayor de los libros”, “el más grande”).
A culmination of symbols of work in observation and astronomical theory, The Almagest contains a complete exposition de Mathematical astronomy as understood by the authors: Earth is stationary at the center of the universe (geocentric model).
Ptolemy converted the observational data into numerical parameters for his models of the planets, and based on this he constructed tables with which he could calculate the positions of the planets, the Sun and the Moon at any past or future moment, as well as the description of eclipses.
Galileo, who joined Kepler as a great defender of heliocentric cosmology, carefully studied Ptolemy’s book
It is possible that there were earlier treatises with similar endings, but they were not related to us, for example, the very result of the book Ptolemy, which discouraged us from copying ancient texts that became obsolete.
It is well known that geocentric cosmology experienced a major upheaval in 1543 with the publication of one of those books whose memory lives on and I hope will survive oblivion, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the revolutions of the heavenly bodies) of the Polish canon Nicolás Copernicus (1473-1543).
In this book he argued that it was not the Earth that occupied the center of the universe until the Sun and our planet revolved around it (heliocentric model). In fact, much earlier than Copernicus, Aristarchus of Samos (c. 310-230 BC) proposed a model which was the Sun, which was found at the center, but all disappeared and we knew nothing of it, nor of the Hubies mentioned by Arquímedes in one of his works, Sandstone.
The only surviving work of Aristarchus is Above the dimensions and distances of the Sun and the Moonwhich was published in 2007 by the Public Service of the University of Cádiz from the Latin version of 1632 preserved in the Royal Institute and Observatory of the Armada San Fernando (a facsimile of the Latin text was reproduced after translation to the Governor).
In 2020, Barcelona published a new translation of the castellan, along with the gray text and commentaries that the Renaissance physician and mathematician Commandino included in the Latin edition used by the University of Cádiz.
This type of “pérdidas” is something common in history: Archimedes’ own creation suffered not a bit from these “old people”, surviving in unsuspecting places.
Of a different nature, but also rescuing valuable information from the past, the historian of the University of Milan Ivan Malara discovered on the pages of a sample from 1551 The Almagestmade in Basel and containing Latin translations of most of Ptolemy’s known works, preserved in the Central National Library in Florence, some handwritten notes that have been identified as belonging to Galileowho seems to have been born in 1590. So he was very young, 25 or 26 years old.
The implications of this hall vary. On the one hand, it confirms something you knew that Galileo, along with Kepler, the great advocate of heliocentric cosmology, carefully studied the book of Ptolemy.
If he knew, but didn’t know where and what kind of reminders he might have. Malara searched for all the examples The Almagest that the existence of the notes is met with in the Florentine libraries, in order to ascertain whether any can be attributed to Galileo, should they be encountered. And your investigation is successful.
This shows one of the characteristics of science: that it progresses, New theories emerge only after they have been studied before existing ones. Newton knew what Kepler and Galileo had, Darwin knew the contributions of Buffon and Lamarck. Y Einstein with Maxwell and Lorentz.
Some of the signed notes discussed in the Almagest reveal ideas about the movement that Galileo manipulated before he devoted himself to a public defense of Copernican cosmology, which only began with the publication of his book. Sidereus nuncio (1610), which was based on observations of the Moon, Jupiter, and the Milky Way that he made with a Chinese telescope.
Some of these ideas written in the notes of The Almagest They also appear in a set of texts, the so-called De motu antiquiorawhich he wrote during the years he lived in Pisa (1589-1592) and which were not published. An example in this sense is a note that appears in the third chapter of book (part) 3 The Almagestin which I criticized Ptolemy by appealing to experience.
Another very interesting note is what it contains Transcription of Psalm 145 The Biblein which David proclaims the greatness and majesty of God. “I will exalt you, my God, my King – the beginning of the psalm – and I will bless your name forever and ever.” To which is further added: “In the contemplation of the glory of thy majesty and in those wondrous thou shalt meditate”, a phrase which can be understood as what Galileo wanted to analyze and understand “here wondrous things – determine the rules to which you submit – works, nature”, God in what he created.
Because weighing the conflict with the Roman Inquisition, which led to the maximum with the publication of his great work, andl A dialogue about the world’s two largest systems, Ptolemy and Copernicus (1632), Galileo was a good Catholic, although he did not share some of the interpretations of the sacred writings that supported the Catholic religion.
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