A Short History of Astronomy by Arthur Berry (best novels for students .TXT) π
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Aristotle then argues that as one heavenly body is spherical, the others must be so also, and supports this conclusion by another argument, equally inconclusive to us, that a spherical form is appropriate to bodies moving as the heavenly bodies appear to do.
29. His proofs that the earth is spherical are more interesting. After discussing and rejecting various other suggested forms, he points out that an eclipse of the moon is caused by the shadow of the earth cast by the sun, and argues from the circular form of the boundary of the shadow as seen on the face of the moon during the progress of the eclipse, or in a partial eclipse, that the earth must be spherical; for otherwise it would cast a shadow of a different shape. A second reason for the spherical form of the earth is that when we move north and south the stars change their positions with respect to the horizon, while some even disappear and fresh ones take their place. This shows that the direction of the stars has changed as compared with the observerβs horizon; hence, the actual direction of the stars being imperceptibly affected by any motion of the observer on the earth, the horizons at two places, north and south of one another, are in different directions, and the earth is therefore curved. For example, if a star is visible to an observer at A (fig. 12), while to an observer at B it is at the same time invisible, i.e. hidden by the earth, the surface of the earth at A must be in a different direction from that at B. Aristotle quotes further, in confirmation of the roundness of the earth, that travellers from the far East and the far West (practically India and Morocco) alike reported the presence of elephants, whence it may be inferred that the two regions in question are not very far apart. He also makes use of some rather obscure arguments of an a priori character.
There can be but little doubt that the readiness with which Aristotle, as well as other Greeks, admitted the spherical form of the earth and of the heavenly bodies, was due to the affection which the Greeks always seem to have had for the circle and sphere as being βperfect,β i.e. perfectly symmetrical figures.
30. Aristotle argues against the possibility of the revolution of the earth round the sun, on the ground that this motion, if it existed, ought to produce a corresponding apparent motion of the stars. We have here the first appearance of one of the most serious of the many objections ever brought against the belief in the motion of the earth, an objection really only finally disposed of during the present century by the discovery that such a motion of the stars can be seen in a few cases, though owing to the almost inconceivably great distance of the stars the motion is imperceptible except by extremely refined methods of observation (cf. chapter XIII., §§ 278, 279). The question of the distances of the several celestial bodies is also discussed, and Aristotle arrives at the conclusion that the planets are farther off than the sun and moon, supporting his view by his observation of an occultation of Mars by the moon (i.e. a passage of the moon in front of Mars), and by the fact that similar observations had been made in the case of other planets by Egyptians and Babylonians. It is, however, difficult to see why he placed the planets beyond the sun, as he must have known that the intense brilliancy of the sun renders planets invisible in its neighbourhood, and that no occultations of planets by the sun could really have been seen even if they had been reported to have taken place. He quotes also, as an opinion of βthe mathematicians,β that the stars must be at least nine times as far off as the sun.
There are also in Aristotleβs writings a number of astronomical speculations, founded on no solid evidence and of little value; thus among other questions he discusses the nature of comets, of the Milky Way, and of the stars, why the stars twinkle, and the causes which produce the various celestial motions.
In astronomy, as in other subjects, Aristotle appears to have collected and systematised the best knowledge of the time; but his original contributions are not only not comparable with his contributions to the mental and moral sciences, but are inferior in value to his work in other natural sciences, e.g. Natural History. Unfortunately the Greek astronomy of his time, still in an undeveloped state, was as it were crystallised in his writings, and his great authority was invoked, centuries afterwards, by comparatively unintelligent or ignorant disciples in support of doctrines which were plausible enough in his time, but which subsequent research was shewing to be untenable. The advice which he gives to his readers at the beginning of his exposition of the planetary motions, to compare his views with those which they arrived at themselves or met with elsewhere, might with advantage have been noted and followed by many of the so-called Aristotelians of the Middle Ages and of the Renaissance.16
31. After the time of Aristotle the centre of Greek scientific thought moved to Alexandria. Founded by Alexander the Great (who was for a time a pupil of Aristotle) in 332 B.C., Alexandria was the capital of Egypt during the reigns of the successive Ptolemies. These kings, especially the second of them, surnamed Philadelphos, were patrons of learning; they founded the famous Museum, which contained a magnificent library as well as an observatory, and Alexandria soon became the home of a distinguished body of mathematicians and astronomers. During the next five centuries the only astronomers of importance, with the great exception of Hipparchus (Β§ 37), were Alexandrines.
32. Among the earlier members of the Alexandrine school were Aristarchus of Samos, Aristyllus, and Timocharis, three nearly contemporary astronomers belonging to the first half of the 3rd century B.C. The views of Aristarchus on the motion of the earth have already been mentioned (Β§ 24). A treatise of his On the Magnitudes and Distances of the Sun and Moon is still extant: he there gives an extremely ingenious method for ascertaining the comparative distances of the sun and moon. If, in the figure, E, S, and M denote respectively the centres of the earth, sun, and moon, the moon evidently appears to an observer at E half full when the angle E M S is a right angle. If when this is the case the angular distance between the centres of the sun and moon, i.e. the angle M E S, is measured, two angles of the triangle M E S are known; its shape is therefore completely determined, and the ratio of its sides E M, E S can be calculated without much difficulty. In fact, it being known (by a well-known result in elementary geometry) that the angles at E and S are together equal to a right angle, the angle at S is obtained by subtracting the angle S E M from a right angle. Aristarchus made the angle at S about 3Β°, and hence calculated that the distance of the sun was from 18 to 20 times that of the moon, whereas, in fact, the sun is about 400 times as distant as the moon. The enormous error is due to the difficulty of determining with sufficient accuracy the moment when the moon is half full: the boundary separating the bright and dark parts of the moonβs face is in reality (owing to the irregularities on the surface of the moon) an ill-defined and broken line (cf. fig. 53 and the frontispiece), so that the observation on which Aristarchus based his work could not have been made with any accuracy even with our modern instruments, much less with those available in his time. Aristarchus further estimated the apparent sizes of the sun and moon to be about equal (as is shewn, for example, at an eclipse of the sun, when the moon sometimes rather more than hides the surface of the sun and sometimes does not quite cover it), and inferred correctly that the real diameters of the sun and moon were in proportion to their distances. By a method based on eclipse observations which was afterwards developed by Hipparchus (Β§ 41), 1β3 that of the earth, a result very near to the truth; and the same method supplied data from which the distance of the moon could at once have been expressed in terms of the radius of the earth, but his work was spoilt at this point by a grossly inaccurate estimate of the apparent size of the moon (2Β° instead of 1β2Β°), and his conclusions seem to contradict one another. He appears also to have believed the distance of the fixed stars to be immeasurably great as compared with that of the sun. Both his speculative opinions and his actual results mark therefore a decided advance in astronomy.
Timocharis and Aristyllus were the first to ascertain and to record the positions of the chief stars, by means of numerical measurements of their distances from fixed positions on the sky; they may thus be regarded as the authors of the first real star catalogue, earlier astronomers having only attempted to fix the
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