Timeline for Did Archimedes use epicycles in his planetarium?
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5 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Nov 24, 2014 at 21:37 | comment | added | Alexandre Eremenko | I agree. Everything that we know about that time is very weakly supported. The principal source is Ptolemy, but he lived centuries later. And the authors Plutarch or Pliny or Cicero just did not understand what they were writing about (speaking of exact science). Like the modern authors who are not scientists:-) | |
| Nov 24, 2014 at 21:32 | vote | accept | Conifold | ||
| Nov 24, 2014 at 21:31 | comment | added | Conifold | However, the conventional story is very weakly suppported, it entirely hinges on a single passage from Almagest, which is directly contradicted by Theon of Smyrna, who wrote around the same time. According to Goldstein "the role of Apollonius in the history of astronomy has been exaggerated. Moreover, the evidence for Hipparchus’s knowledge of the equivalence of the eccentric and epicyclic models is very weak, and there is no evidence for his familiarity with the theorem on stationary points." On the other hand, familiarity of Hipparchus with epicycles is confirmed independently of Almagest. | |
| Nov 24, 2014 at 21:31 | comment | added | Conifold | We should add that there appears to be no plausible mechanical reconstruction of Archimedes's planetarium, with or without gears. Ironically, if the conventional story is true and Apollonius worked with epicycles Archimedes was most likely aware of them through his Alexandrian correspondents, but there is no evidence he used them in the planetarium, even if he did use gears. | |
| Nov 20, 2014 at 12:59 | history | answered | Alexandre Eremenko | CC BY-SA 3.0 |