Posted by tzury 1 day ago
The historian was looking for conceptual connections between Ptolemy and Galileo, but the discovery of Galileo’s handwriting in Ptolemy’s book seemed to be a surprise.
I would really love to hear about this. (:
Probably the most impressive effort I stumbled upon was a woman from rural Indiana who collected (and typed up) thousands of pages of local history & genealogy in the mid-20th century. Was interesting reading personal accounts of Morgan’s Raid, for example.
In other words: Today some of those will cost more than a Ferrari to make. They use Vellum paper that is much better that today's but require killing hundreds of animals each.
Only very rich people could afford that. I had access to European books collections of the 16th that are in Color, much much better than any normal book we have.
If you think about that it is normal. Color require more printing plates in a printer, but just changing your ink if you do it manually.
It's relatively recent that we've found out some of these "universal" rules might not have been so important all along and together with technology as another factor things changed.
According to history, the Caliph once back off his plan of conquering Constantinople (that were later achieved by Ottoman Caliph Fatih) due the Roman (Byzantine) offered him an offer he cannot refused, the original copy of Ptolemy Almagest as important part of the truce arrangements. He certainly capable of overcoming and conquering the Constatinople since during his time, Afghanistan was conquered under Islamic rule for hundred of years that modern Russia and USA cannot achieved. The fact that his mother Marajil, was a princess originally from Afghanistan. This is where the popular saying that asserted only Afghanistan people can conquer Afghanistan. Point in case, the most recent Afghanistan conqurer was Mughal Empire, who was originated from Indian sub-continent Afghanistan. During his time, Al-Khwarizmi published his infamous Algebra book namely Kitāb al-Mukhtaṣar fī Ḥisāb al-Jabr wal-Muqābalah (The Concise Book of Calculation by Restoration and Balancing), where we got the word algebra, and from his name Al-Khwarizmi now we have the word "algorithm" [2].
In addition to having translation Baitul Hikmah in Baghdad, Iraq and in other Islamic knowledge center in Toledo Spain (before fall to Spanish Christian and started the European Renaissance), the Islamic civilization also engaged in contributing to science, math, astronomy, etc. Al-Haitham (Alhazen), the founder of optics, and he's also the founder of modern scientific methodology [3].
Having said that, there several Islamic astronomers (Arab/Persian/etc) already proposing against the geocentric idea that most probably that was inspired Galileo. I think he most probably did not come with the original idea of heliocentric model and the Islamic astromoners mosy probably have proposed it before Galileo, but he failed to credit them properly as normally practiced by European scientists at the time.
[1] al-Ma'mun:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ma%27mun
[2] Graeco-Arabic translation movement:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeco-Arabic_translation_move...
[3] Ibn al-Haytham:
Math can be hard, but calling that book "infamous" is a bit too much... /s
Where's the article wrong?
"Ancient history is a time period from the beginning of writing and recorded human history through late antiquity."
Perhaps you are mixing up "ancient" and "prehistoric".
It is, as if we refer to Isaac and Albert when speaking about Gravity and Relativity.
Surnames are optional in Italy at that time. Galileo is how he refers to himself and how people refer to him.
Resident of, son of, father of, family of. Leonardo of Pisa of the family of Bonacci being another well known one.
I suppose it is not specific to those cultures and was a more widespread convention.