Abstract
Two major world views predominated in early European astronomy: the geocentric model, which placed the Earth in the center of the universe, and the heliocentric model, which placed the Sun in the center. There also were hybrid models where some of the planets revolved around the Sun, but the Sun and its retinue and possibly some of the other planets revolved around the Earth (the so-called geoheliocentric world view). All of the stars and even God’s heaven surrounded the central Earth or Sun, and there was no real separation between our Sun and planets and the rest of the universe until the 17th Century.
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- 1.
Heath, Greek Astronomy, p. xxxiii.
- 2.
Ibid., p. xl; Dreyer, A History of Astronomy from Tholes to Kepier, 2nd edn, pp. 168-169. In Timaeus, Plato clearly states that the Moon is nearest the Earth, followed by the Sun, then Venus (“the morning star”) and Mercury ("the one called sacred to Hermes"). However, he leaves the relative order of Venus and Mercury vague, and he promises to discuss the other planets “at some later time” (Lee, 1977, pp. 52-53). However, in the Republic, Book X, the order of the planets can be deciphered from the text, since Plato cites the relative order of the heavenly bodies in terms of their colors (e.g., “reddish” for Mars, “the whitest” for Jupiter, etc.) and their relative west-to-east speeds with reference to the background stars. See excerpts in Heath, pp. 48-49, Dreyer, pp. 59-60, and Toulmin and Goodfield, pp. 85-86. The last two excerpts have conveniently added the modern planetary names in brackets for ease of recognition.
- 3.
Dreyer, A History of Astronomy from ThaIes to Kepler, 2’" edn, pp. 168-169.
- 4.
Aristotle clearly articulated this point in On the Heavens (De Caelo), where he states in reference to the 24-hour movement of the outermost sphere of the heaveuly fixed stars that “the body which is nearest to that first simple revolution should take the longest time to complete its circle [in the reverse motion to that of the heavens 1, and that which is farthest from it the shortest, the others taking a longer time the nearer they are and a shorter time the father away they are”. See Stocks, p. 61. See also footnote 21 in Evans and Berggren, p. 120.
- 5.
Dreyer, A History of Astronomy from ThaIes to Kepler, 2nd edn, p. 98.
- 6.
For an interesting discussion of the evolution of the images in Theoricae Planetarum Navae, see Pantin,lournalfor the History of Astronomy, vol. 43, pp. 3-26.
- 7.
For a discussion of Hipparchus’s starcatalog, see Kanas,Star Maps, 2nd edn, p. 109.
- 8.
Dreyer, A History of Astronomy from ThaIes to Kepler, 2’" edn, pp. 168-169.
- 9.
Geminos’s listing contains ancient secular and divine names for the planets (e.g., “star of Kronos” for Saturn, “Phaethon, called the star of Zeus” for Jupiter, etc.). However, in the translation provided by Evans and Berggren, a table in a footnote translates these names into the common English planetary names. See Evans and Berggren (2006), pp. 118-120.
- 10.
Like Geminos, Cleomedes’s list uses ancient secular names, although the translation includes current English planetary names as well. See Bowen and Todd, pp. 39-41.
- 11.
Clagett, Greek Science in Antiquity, p. 22; and Toomer, Ptolemy and his Greek predecessors, Walker, pp. 68-91.
- 12.
Swerdlow,Journal for the History of Astronomy, vol. 35, pp. 249-271. See also the excellent translation of the Almagest by Toomer (1998).
- 13.
Goldstein, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 57, p. 6.
- 14.
Ibid., p. 8.
- 15.
For a fuller discussion of Mercury’s orbit as diagrammed in old manuscripts (plus some interesting comments on how such diagrams might have been printed), see Shank, Journalfor the History of Astronomy, vol. 43, pp. 27-55.
- 16.
For more on the development of the Greek constellation system, see Dekker,Illustrating the Phoenomena, pp. 49-115; Ridpath, Star Tales, pp. 1-11; and Kanas, Star Maps, 2nd edn, pp. 107-114. See also articles by Kanas (2002,2003,2005,2007,2011).
- 17.
Ibid., pp. 114-131. See also Warner, Star maps: Acon1luence of art and astronomy, in D. DeVorkin (ed.) , Beyond Earth, pp. 72-83.
- 18.
Kanas, Star Maps, 2nd edn, p. 358.
- 19.
Eastwood and Grasshoff, Planetary Diagrams for Roman Astronomy in Medieval Europe, CA. 800-1500, p. 24.
- 20.
Ibid., p. 55. The authors point out that early manuscripts of the Commentary on the Dream of Scipio that contain a planetary diagram erroneously show the order advocated by Pliny the Elder, not the Neoplatonic view clearly described in Macrobius’s textseep.
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Kanas, N. (2014). Earth-Centered World Views in Classical Europe. In: Solar System Maps. Springer Praxis Books. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0896-3_2
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