Britannica Great Books: Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler
by Encyclopedia Britannica
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(Ptolemy's Almagest) This is one of the most difficult books I have ever read. Ptolemy's system is beautiful, and it boggles my mind to think that he was able to conceive of a model that fit nearly all the observable phenomena. He wrote the book for people with a well developed sense of Euclidean geometry as well as some conics, and does not over-exert himself in explaining the steps of his logic. This is probably the main reason for its being so difficult for me. In any case, it is a work of astounding genius and worth becoming acquainted with if you can bring yourself to work through it, though you may need to do so as part of a group. Taliaferro's translation is fairly good, though there are some annoying errors. As far as I know, show more there is only one other English translation of the book, and it has a comparable number of errors. show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Britannica Great Books: Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler
- First words
- Those who have been true philosophers, Syrus, seem to me to have very wisely separated the theoretical part of philosophy from the practical.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)At Linz, the capital of Austria—above the Enns.
- Disambiguation notice
- This "work" should ONLY contain the omnibus of various works of pre-Newtonian astronomy listed below (often referred to as volume 16 of Britannica's Great Books of the Western World), but should not be combined with any of th... (show all)e individual works.
- The Almagest, by Ptolemy
- On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres by Nicolaus Copernicus
- Epitome of Copernican Astronomy, books IV and V, by Johannes Kepler
- The Harmonies of the World, book V, by Johannes Kepler
- The Almagest, by Ptolemy
Classifications
- Genres
- Science & Nature, Nonfiction, History, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 522 — Natural sciences & mathematics Astronomy Techniques, procedures, apparatus, equipment, materials
- LCC
- AC1 .G72 — General Works Collections. Series. Collected works Collections. Series. Collected works Collections of monographs, essays, etc. American and English
Statistics
- Members
- 468
- Popularity
- 64,712
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.83)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ASINs
- 33
