Concept

Ptolemy

Overview

2nd-century Roman mathematician, astronomer, geographer

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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Ptolemy, then, perceiving that the eighth sphere is moved by many movements, seeing its circle to depart from the right circle, which turns from East to West, constrained by the principles of Philosophy, which of necessity desires a Primum Mobile, a most simple one, supposed another Heaven to be outside the Heaven of the fixed stars, which might make that revolution from East to West which I say is completed in…
Dante Alighieri, The Banquet
States what Ptolemy is; opens on Ptolemy.
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When she came to Egypt, and understood that Ptolemy entertained proposals and overtures of peace from Antigonus, and that Cleomenes, though the Achaeans invited and urged him to an agreement, was afraid, for her sake, to come to any, without Ptolemy's consent, she wrote to him, advising him to do that which was most becoming and most profitable for Sparta, and not, for the sake of an old woman and a little child…
Plutarch, Plutarch
Names Ptolemy several times; opens on Ptolemy.
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They had, however, before this, made some considerable improvements: they had measured the obliquity of the Ecliptic, with more accuracy than had been done before. The tables of Ptolemy had, by the length of time, and by the inaccuracy of the observations upon which they were founded, become altogether wide of what was the real situation of the heavenly bodies, as he himself indeed had foretold they would do. It…
Adam Smith, The Essays of Adam Smith
Names Ptolemy several times.
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Philosophers who discussed Ptolemy

Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

Pythagoreanism

Place in the tradition

Part of Cosmology.

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