Yavetz, Ido: "On the Homocentric Spheres of Eudoxus", _Archive for History
of Exact Sciences_, vol. 52, no. 3, pp. 221-278, 1998.
Best wishes,
Julio GC
| It is well known that Eudoxus used three concentric spheres to model the
| moon's motion, but there is disagreement over the speeds of rotation he
| applied to these spheres. Simplicius and Aristotle state that the second
| sphere rotates once in a month and that the third sphere, which is inclined
| slightly to the second, rotates slowly to account for the moon's motion in
| latitude.
|
| However, ever since the pioneering work of Ideler and Schiaparelli in the
| 19th century, leading scholars have assumed that Simplicius and Aristotle
| got it wrong and that in fact that the rotation rates of the second and
| third spheres should be reversed. This 'corrected' scheme models the motion
| of the moon in lattitude much better.
|
| In 1970, Dicks [1] criticised this view, describing it as "yet another
| example of a misleading interpretation of early astronomical thought by
| attributing to it concepts which were only discovered much later". However
| Thoren [2] defended the standard interpretation against Dicks' criticism.
|
| My question is: Does anyone know of any references to more recent
| discussions of this disagreement?
|
|
| [1] D.R. Dicks (1970), "Early Greek astronomy to Aristotle", Thames & Hudson.
|
| [2] Victor E. Thoren (1971), "Anaxagoras, Eudoxus, and the regression of
| the lunar nodes", Journal for the History of Astronomy, vol 2, pp. 23-28.
|
| Chris Linton
|
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| * Department of Mathematical Sciences * Fax: 01509-223969 *
| * Loughborough University * E-mail: *
| * Leicestershire LE11 3TU * C.M.Linton@lboro.ac.uk *
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