Aristarchus of Samos, the Ancient Copernicus
Aristarchus of Samos, the Ancient Copernicus
£41.00
GBPThe Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos was active in the third century BCE, more than a thousand years before Copernicus presented his model of a heliocentric solar system. It was Aristarchus, however, who first suggested - in a work that is now lost - that the planets revolve around the sun. Edited by Sir Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940), this 1913 publication contains the ancient astronomer's only surviving treatise, which does not propound the heliocentric hypothesis. The Greek text is based principally on the tenth-century manuscript Vaticanus Graecus 204. Heath also provides a facing-page English translation and explanatory notes. The treatise is prefaced by a substantial history of ancient Greek astronomy, ranging from Homer's first mention of constellations to work by Heraclides of Pontus in the fourth century BCE relating to the Earth's rotation. Heath's collection of translated ancient texts, Greek Astronomy (1932), is also reissued in this series.
Product details
September 2013Paperback
9781108062336
440 pages
229 × 152 × 25 mm
0.64kg
34 b/w illus.
Available
Table of Contents
- Preface
- Part I. Greek Astronomy to Aristarchus of Samos:
- 1. Sources of the history
- 2. Homer and Hesiod
- 3. Thales
- 4. Anaximander
- 5. Anaximenes
- 6. Pythagoras
- 7. Xenophanes
- 8. Heraclitus
- 9. Parmenides
- 10. Anaxagoras
- 11. Empedocles
- 12. The Pythagoreans
- 13. The atomists, Leucippus and Democritus
- 14. Oenopides
- 15. Plato
- 16. The theory of concentric spheres
- 17. Aristotle
- 18. Heraclides of Pontus
- 19. Greek months, years, and cycles
- Part II. Aristarchus on the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and the Moon:
- 1. Aristarchus of Samos
- 2. The treatise on sizes and distances
- 3. Content of the treatise
- 4. Later improvements on Aristarchus's calculations
- Greek text, translation and notes
- Index.
