CHANAKYA NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY, PATNA

FINAL DRAFT: WORLD HISTORY

TOPIC:PTOLEMY

SUBMITTED TO: -

DR. PRIYA DARSHINI

Assistant professor of History

Submitted By:

NIKHIL BHARTI

ROLL NO – 2131

B.A LLB (Hons), 3rd SEMESTER

[1]
 DECLARATION

I, NIKHIL BHARTI, hereby declare that the work reported in B.A LLB (Hons) Project
report entitled “ptolemy” submitted at Chanakya National Law University is an authentic
record of my work carried out under supervision of Dr.Priya Darshini. I have not submitted
this work elsewhere for any other degree or diploma. I am fully responsible for the contents
of my project work.

SIGNATURE OF CANDIDATE:

NAME OF CANDIDATE: NIKHIL BHARTI

ROLL NO- 2131

CHANAKYA NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY

[2]
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

It feels great pleasure in submitting this research project to Dr. Priya Darshini
Assistant professor of History without whose guidance this project would not have
been completed successfully.

Next, I would like to sincerely thank my parents, grandparents and my seniors, whose
suggestions and guidance assisted me throughout the entire tenure of making the
project.

Last but not the least, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude towards my
parents and friends who guided me and helped me at every possible step.

NIKHIL BHARTI

B.A LLB

3rd Semester

Roll No. 2131

[3]
 INTRODUCTION

Ptolemy, or in Latin Claudius Ptolemaeus (ca. 90 – ca. 168 C.E.), was a mathematician,
philosopher, geographer, map maker, astronomer, theologian, and astrologer who lived in
Alexandria, Egypt. He is most remembered because of his development of the geocentric
(Earth-centered) cosmological system, known as the Ptolemaic system or Ptolemaic
cosmology, which was one of the most influential and longest-lasting, intellectual-scientific
achievements in human history. Although his model of the universe was erroneous, he based
his theory on observations that he and others had made, and he provided a mathematical
foundation that made a powerful case in support of the geocentric paradigm and ensured its
continued use well into the future. He may have been a Hellenized Egyptian. Aside from that,
almost nothing is known about Ptolemy's life, family background, or physical appearance.

Much of medieval astronomy and geography were built on his ideas: his world map,
published as part of his treatise Geography in the 2nd century, was the first to use
longitudinal and latitudinal lines. This idea of a global coordinates system was highly
influential, and we use a similar system today.

However, he is most known for refining the cycles and epicycles that made the geocentric
theory of the universe tenable for 14 centuries, as established in his book The Almagest on
the motions of the stars and planets. This is the theory which Galileo Galilei and Isaac
Newton eventually overthrew more than a thousand years later. For this reason Ptolemy is a
controversial figure in the history of science. Robert Newton argues in his book The Crime of
Claudius Ptolemy, that despite his skill as an astronomer, Ptolemy was simply an
astronomical fraud.

. Being a brilliant expositor, he also wrote a popular account of his great Syntaxis, as well as
serious work on optics and on geography, which was still used in relatively modern times by
travellers attempting to circumnavigate the globe.

In Ptolemy’s great 13 volume work, The Syntaxis, (otherwise known as The Almagest),
Ptolemy made observations about the planets that are surprising. Compared with modern
astronomical tables, some are so accurate that, Newton claims, he simply couldn’t have made
them with the instruments he describes. Others are extraordinarily error prone: Ptolemy’s

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sighting of the autumn equinox at 2PM on 25 September AD132 — a measurement that he
said he made “with greatest care” — was wrong by more than a day.

Newton says that Ptolemy simply fitted his measurements to his theories, rather than vice
versa, often adapting observations made centuries before his time. “We can say that all of
Ptolemy’s observations that can be tested are fabricated,” says Newton. “Further, we can say
that all of his theories depend heavily on fabricated data, and some of them seem to depend
completely upon such data.

“Overall, The Syntaxis has done more damage to astronomy than any other work ever
written, and astronomy would be better off if it had never existed … Ptolemy is not the
greatest astronomer of history, but he is something still more unusual: he is the most
successful fraud in the history of science.”

That assessment hardly endeared Newton to other historians of ancient science. One refutal
by Owen Gingrich ruefully admits that The Syntaxis contains some fishy data, but he suggest
that Ptolemy merely followed the practice of his time by selecting only those observations
that supported his theory. “Certainly,” Gingerich says, “Ptolemy did not commit fraud. And
his great contribution of the geocentric theory,” he adds, “was the true testament to Ptolemy’s
greatness as an astronomer.” More recent studies of his work suggest that a “combination of
observational, calculation and rounding errors, plagiarism of existing data and selection of the
best examples… could account for the appearance of fraud. But, in the absence of categorical
evidence, the verdict must remain ‘not proven.

The observation and theory given by Ptolemy were very criticized by many scientists but the
theory proved very fruitful for mankind.

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[6]
[7]
 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

• To understand who is Ptolemy?

• To understand the theory given by Ptolemy.
• To understand notable work of Ptolemy.
• To understand how did Ptolemy impact the world?
• To understand what is Ptolemy best known for?
• To understand what were Ptolemy achievements?

HYPOTHESIS
 The researcher presumes that Ptolemy theories were so ambiguous.
 The researcher presumes that Ptolemy theories were proved fruitful for development
of other theories

RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1. What are the theories given by Ptolemy?
2. Are the theories given by Ptolemy is right?

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 Early Life
Claudius Ptolemy was a Greek mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer and poet
believed to have been born in 90 AD in a town named Ptolemais Hermiou in Thebaid.
However according to some historians he lived his whole life in Alexandria. Only a few
details about his life are known. Some believe he was a Roman citizen but other scholars say
he was Greek and is known to have used Babylonian data for his astronomical findings.

Ptolemy lived in Egypt around AD 85-Little is known of Ptolemy’s life, but we do know
something of his astronomical antecedents. In the Bible we read of famous Chaldean
astronomers, now known as Babylonians, whose careful observations over hundreds of years
paved the way for their method of eclipse prediction, using what the Greeks later called Saros
cycles. There are about 40 of these cycles in operation at any one time, and they are still used
today and appear on the NASA website.1

Ptolemy’s Works

Ptolemy said that he used selected astronomical observations that were made by his
predecessors eight centuries ago, to derive his geometrical models. He used tables to present
his models. These tables could also be used to calculate the position of the planets. Ptolemy’s
geocentric models were accepted till the heliocentric models were introduced during the
scientific revolution. ‘The Almagest’ was the only treatise that had survived presenting
astronomical techniques and star catalogues. At first its name translated in English meant
‘The Mathematical Compilation’ which was later changed to mean ‘The Greatest
Compilation’. He also introduced a useful tool for astronomical calculations in his ‘Handy
Tables’. These tables had all the data needed to calculate the position of the sun, moon and
other planets. It could also compute the rising and setting of the stars and solar and lunar
eclipses. Ptolemy’s mathematical works consists of theorems and geometrical proofs. He
describes his work in the following words:

1
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Ptolemy

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‘We shall try to note down everything which we think we have discovered up to the present
time; we shall do this as concisely as possible and in a manner which can be followed by
those who have already made some progress in the field. For the sake of completeness in our
treatment we shall set out everything useful for the theory of the heavens in the proper order,
but to avoid undue length we shall merely recount what has been adequately established by
the ancients. However, those topics which have not been dealt with by our predecessors at all,
or not as usefully as they might have been, will be discussed at length to the best of our
ability’.2

Other major works by Ptolemy include ‘Geographia’ which is a compilation of world

geography known to people in the Roman Empire during his time. He was also very well
known as an astrologist. He is mentioned to as a ‘pro-astrological authority of the highest
magnitude’. His astrological treatise ‘Tetrabiblos’ was a series of four books and is said to
have had almost the same importance as the Bible to people of that time. His work ‘Optics’
was about light and its reflection, refraction and color. Ptolemy’s expertise did not restrict
only to the mathematical fields but he also wrote a highly significant work on the music
theory called ‘Harmonics’.

2
https://www.famousscientists.org/claudius-ptolemy/

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 An Astronomer in Ancient Times

Claudius Ptolemy (about 85–165 CE) lived in Alexandria, Egypt, a city established by
Alexander the Great some 400 years before Ptolemy’s birth. Under its Greek rulers,
Alexandria cultivated a famous library that attracted many scholars from Greece, and its
school for astronomers received generous patronage. After the Romans conquered Egypt in
30 BCE (when Octavian defeated Cleopatra), Alexandria became the second-largest city in
the Roman Empire and a major source of Rome’s grain, but less funding was provided for
scientific study of the stars. Ptolemy was the only great astronomer of Roman Alexandria.

Befitting his diverse intellectual pursuits, he had a motley cultural makeup: he lived in Egypt,
wrote in Greek, and bore a Roman first name, Claudius, indicating he was a Roman citizen
probably a gift from the Roman emperor to one of Ptolemy’s ancestors.

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 Ptolemaic system

Ptolemaic system, also called geocentric system or geocentric model, mathematical model of
the universe formulated by the Alexandrian astronomer and mathematician Ptolemy about
150 CE and recorded by him in his Almagest and Planetary Hypotheses. The Ptolemaic
system is a geocentric cosmology; that is, it starts by assuming that Earth is stationary and at
the centre of the universe. The “natural” expectation for ancient societies was that the
heavenly bodies (Sun, Moon, planets, and stars) must travel in uniform motion along the
most “perfect” path possible, a circle. a Geocentric Solar System which placed the “stellar”
universe on a crystal sphere. Earth stood still (didn’t rotate) and the Sun orbited Earth,
producing our day and night cycles. To account for the retrograde of the planets, Ptolemy
used looping small circles called epicycles on the orbits. It was an ingenious system accepted,
as Law… except a Geocentric Universe was wrong

However, the paths of the Sun, Moon, and planets as observed from Earth are not circular.
Ptolemy’s model explained this “imperfection” by postulating that the apparently irregular
movements were a combination of several regular circular motions seen in perspective from a
stationary Earth. The principles of this model were known to earlier Greek scientists,
including the mathematician Hipparchus (c. 150 BCE), but they culminated in an accurate
predictive model with Ptolemy. The resulting Ptolemaic system persisted, with minor
adjustments, until Earth was displaced from the centre of the universe in the 16th and 17th
centuries by the Copernican system and by Kepler’s laws of planetary motion.3

A Geocentric View

Ptolemy synthesized Greek knowledge of the known Universe. His work enabled
astronomers to make accurate predictions of planetary positions and solar and lunar eclipses,
promoting acceptance of his view of the cosmos in the Byzantine and Islamic worlds and
throughout Europe for more than 1400 years.

Ptolemy accepted Aristotle’s idea that the Sun and the planets revolve around a spherical
Earth, a geocentric view. Ptolemy developed this idea through observation and in
mathematical detail. In doing so, he rejected the hypothesis of Aristarchus of Samos, who

3
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ptolemy

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came to Alexandria about 350 years before Ptolemy was born. Aristarchus had made the
claim that the Earth revolves around the Sun, but he couldn’t produce any evidence to back it
up.

This is view of geometric view of earth

Based on observations he made with his naked eye, Ptolemy saw the Universe as a set of
nested, transparent spheres, with Earth in the center. He posited that the Moon, Mercury,
Venus, and the Sun all revolved around Earth. Beyond the Sun, he thought, sat Mars, Jupiter
and Saturn, the only other planets known at the time (as they were visible to the naked eye).
Beyond Saturn lay a final sphere — with all the stars fixed to it — that revolved around the
other spheres.

This idea of the Universe did not fit exactly with all of Ptolemy’s observations. He was aware
that the size, motion, and brightness of the planets varied. So he incorporated Hipparchus’s
notion of epicycles, put forth a few centuries earlier, to work out his calculations. Epicycles
were small circular orbits around imaginary centers on which the planets were said to move
while making a revolution around the Earth. By using Ptolemy’s tables, astronomers could
accurately predict eclipses and the positions of planets. Because real visible events in the sky

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seemed to confirm the truth of Ptolemy’s views, his ideas were accepted for centuries until
the Polish astronomer, Copernicus, proposed in 1543 that the Sun, rather than the Earth,
belonged in the center.

After the Roman Empire dissolved, Muslim Arabs conquered Egypt in 641 CE. Muslim
scholars mostly accepted Ptolemy’s astronomy. They referred to him as Batlamyus and called
his book on astronomy al-Magisti, or “The Greatest.” Islamic astronomers corrected some of
Ptolemy’s errors and made other advances, but they did not make the leap to a heliocentric
(Sun-centered) universe.

Ptolemy’s book was translated into Latin in the 12th century and known as The Almagest,
from the Arabic name. This enabled his teachings to be spread throughout Western Europe.

The Almagest

The name Almagest came from Islamic astronomers, who combined the Arabic prefix “al”
with the adjective of the Greek title, Megistē Syntaxis (greatest compendium). It was a
beautifully written work, whose observations and methods held sway until the earth-based
model of the universe that it propounded was overtaken by the solar-based model that
emerged from the work of Copernicus, and later Kepler.

Ptolemy’s most famous work is the Almagest, an astronomy textbook and star catalogue.

The Almagest was a substantial, ambitious work. It taught its students how to predict the
location of any heavenly body at any time from anywhere on Earth using Ptolemy’s

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mathematical model of planet movements. Ptolemy presented his model’s output in the form
of data tables. Using his tables, one could also predict eclipses.

Ptolemy first entitled his book Mathematical Treatise. Almagest is a later fusion of Arabic

and Greek words – ‘Al’ is Arabic for ‘the’ and ‘megiste’ is Greek for ‘greatest,’ the title
indicating the books status in astronomy.

To create the Almagest, Ptolemy assembled observations of the heavens spanning many

hundreds of years, beginning with data compiled in Babylon in 747 BC. He used state-of-the-
art mathematics to analyze and interpret the data to create his model.

The Almagest is divided into 13 books, each of which deals with certain astronomical
concepts pertaining to stars and to objects in the solar system (the Earth and all other celestial
bodies that revolve around the Sun). It was, no doubt, the encyclopaedic nature of the work
that made the Almagest so useful to later astronomers and that gave the views contained in it
so profound an influence. In essence, it is a synthesis of the results obtained by Greek
astronomy; it is also the major source of knowledge about the work of Hipparchus, most
probably the greatest astronomer of antiquity. Although it is often difficult to determine
which findings in the book are those of Ptolemy and which are those of Hipparchus, Ptolemy
did extend some of the work of Hipparchus through his own observations, apparently using
somewhat similar instruments. For example, whereas Hipparchus had compiled a star catalog
(the first of its kind) containing 850 stars, Ptolemy expanded the number in his own catalog
to 1,022 stars.

On the motions of the Sun, Moon, and planets, Ptolemy again extended the observations and
conclusions of Hipparchus--this time to formulate his geocentric theory, which is popularly
known as the Ptolemaic system. (See Ptolemy's theory of the solar system.) In the first book
of the Almagest, Ptolemy describes his geocentric system and gives various arguments to
prove that, in its position at the center of the universe, the Earth must be immovable. Not
least, he showed that if the Earth moved, as some earlier philosophers had suggested, then
certain phenomena should in consequence be observed. In particular, Ptolemy argued that
since all bodies fall to the center of the universe, the Earth must be fixed there at the center,
otherwise falling objects would not be seen to drop toward the center of the Earth. Again, if
the Earth rotated once every 24 hours, a body thrown vertically upward should not fall back
to the same place, as it was seen to do. Ptolemy was able to demonstrate, however, that no

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contrary observations had ever been obtained. As a result of such arguments, the geocentric
system became dogmatically asserted in Western Christendom until the 15th century, when it
was supplanted by the heliocentric (Sun-centered) system of Nicolaus Copernicus (q.v.), a
Polish astronomer.

The Almagest’s Cosmology

The Almagest begins with Ptolemy describing the principles of the cosmos. He says:

 Religion and Aristotle’s physics are guesswork: only mathematical proof provides

certainty.
 The heavens move like a sphere.
 The earth and the heavenly bodies are spheres.
 The earth is at the center of the universe.
 The earth does not move from its position at the center.
 The earth’s size is insignificant compared with the universe and, mathematically, the
earth can be treated as a point having no volume.
 There is some merit in the idea that the earth rotates through a complete circle once a
day. However, our planet would have to spin so quickly that the effects would be
noticeable. Therefore, the earth is stationary and the heavens move.
 There are two types of motion in the heavens: the stars moving steadily; and the sun,
moon, and planets moving in a more complex way.
 There is no up or down in the universe. What is above us in the heavens depends on
where we stand on the earth’s spherical surface.

The Almagest’s Trigonometry

In Ptolemy’s time electronic calculators lay almost two millennia in the future. To help
budding astronomers with their calculations, Ptolemy offered them a large table of
chords.Chords are used for trigonometry calculations: they are closely related to sines.
Ptolemy probably got his table of chords from an earlier Greek genius: Hipparchus.Ptolemy
accepted the following order for celestial objects in the solar system: Earth (center), Moon,
Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. He realized, as had Hipparchus, that the
inequalities in the motions of these heavenly bodies necessitated either a system of deferents
and epicycles or one of movable eccentrics (both systems devised by Apollonius of Perga, the

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Greek geometer of the 3rd century BC) in order to account for their movements in terms of
uniform circular motion.

In the Ptolemaic system, deferents were large circles centered on the Earth, and epicycles
were small circles whose centers moved around the circumferences of the deferents. The Sun,
Moon, and planets moved around the circumference of their own epicycles. In the movable
eccentric, there was one circle; this was centered on a point displaced from the Earth, with the
planet moving around the circumference. These were mathematically equivalent schemes.
Even with these, all observed planetary phenomena still could not be fully taken into account.
Ptolemy therefore exhibited brilliant ingenuity by introducing still another concept. He
supposed that the Earth was located a short distance from the center of the deferent for each
planet and that the center of the planet's deferent and the epicycle described uniform circular
motion around what he called the equant, which was an imaginary point that he placed on the
diameter of the deferent but at a position opposite to that of the Earth from the center of the
deferent--i.e., the center of the deferent was between the Earth and the equant. He further
supposed that the distance from the Earth to the center of the deferent was equal to the
distance from the center of the deferent to the equant. With this hypothesis, Ptolemy could
better account for many observed planetary phenomena.

In the Ptolemaic system, the plane of the ecliptic is that of the Sun's apparent annual path
among the stars. The planes of the deferents of the planets were believed to be inclined at
small angles to the plane of the ecliptic, while the planes of their epicycles were inclined by
equal amounts to those of the deferents, so that the planes of the epicycles would always
parallel that of the ecliptic. The planes of the deferents of Mercury and Venus were assumed
to oscillate above and below the plane of the ecliptic, and likewise the planes of their
epicycles were thought to oscillate with respect to the planes of the deferents.

Although Ptolemy realized that the planets were much closer to the Earth than the "fixed"
stars, he seems to have believed in the physical existence of crystalline spheres, to which the
heavenly bodies were said to be attached. Outside the sphere of the fixed stars, Ptolemy
proposed other spheres, ending with the primum mobile ("prime mover"), which provided the
motive power for the remaining spheres that constituted his conception of the universe.

The Almagest’s Universe

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 PTOLEMY UNIVERSE

Ptolemy proposed a universe consisting of nested spheres containing the heavenly bodies.

He incorrectly placed the earth at the center of the universe. He correctly showed the stars as
the bodies farthest from Earth. He incorrectly showed Mercury as the planet closest to Earth.

In the Almagest’s star catalog, Ptolemy provided the coordinates and brightnesses of over

1,000 stars and placed them in 48 constellations. Modern scholars believe Ptolemy assembled
much of his star catalog from an earlier one compiled by Hipparchus.

The Almagest was a classic work of astronomy.

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Ptolemy also wrote a classic work of astrology. In four parts, it’s known simply as The Four
Books. Often it’s referred to by its Greek name Tetrabiblos or Latin name Quadripartitum.

It’s not surprising that Ptolemy was interested in astrology. For millennia astronomy and
astrology went hand in hand – the great Kepler made ends meet by casting horoscopes:
Ptolemy possibly did too.

MATHEMATICIAN
Ptolemy has a prominent place in the history of mathematics primarily because of the
mathematical methods he applied to astronomical problems. His contributions to
trigonometry are especially important. For instance, Ptolemy’s table of the lengths of chords
in a circle is the earliest surviving table of a trigonometric function. He also applied
fundamental theorems in spherical trigonometry (apparently discovered half a century earlier
by Menelaus of Alexandria) to the solution of many basic astronomical problems.As a
geometrician of the first order, Ptolemy performed important work in mathematics. Ptolemy's
main scientific interest was the mathematical description of the phenomena of nature. In pure
mathematics he did but little work, and what he wrote had but little value. In mathematics he
devised many new new geometrical proofs and theorems, many of which are in another book
entitled "Analemma"(Greek Peri analemmatos; Latin De analemmate), he discussed the
details of the projection of points on the celestial sphere (an imaginary sphere extending
outward from the Earth for an infinite distance and on whose surface the objects in space
appear to be located) onto three planes at right angles (90) to each other--the horizon, the
meridian, and the prime vertical. This book introduces much new thinking on three-
dimensional mathematics, including the the projection from spherical coordinates on to three
planes. He also addressed stereographic projections so as to represent three dimensions
shapes on a single plane.

In another book, the Planisphaerium, Ptolemy is concerned with stereographic projection--the

delineation of the forms of solid bodies on a plane--and here he used the south celestial pole
as his center of projection.

He created a sophisticated mathematical model to fit observational data which before

Ptolemy's time was scarce, and the model he produced, although complicated, represents the
motions of the planets fairly well.
Toomer sums up the Almagest in  as follows:-

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As a didactic work the "Almagest" is a masterpiece of clarity and method, superior to any
ancient scientific textbook and with few peers from any period. But it is much more than that.
Far from being a mere 'systemisation' of earlier Greek astronomy, as it is sometimes
described, it is in many respects an original work.

Some accusations made against Ptolemy after commenting briefly on his other works. He
published the tables which are scattered throughout the Almagest separately under the
title Handy Tables. These were not merely lifted from the Almagest however but Ptolemy
made numerous improvements in their presentation, ease of use and he even made
improvements in the basic parameters to give greater accuracy. We only know details of
the Handy Tables through the commentary by Theon of Alexandria but in the author shows
that care is required since Theon was not fully aware of Ptolemy's procedures.
Ptolemy also did what many writers of deep scientific works have done, and still do, in
writing a popular account of his results under the title Planetary Hypothesis. This work, in
two books, again follows the familiar route of reducing the mathematical skills needed by a
reader. Ptolemy does this rather cleverly by replacing the abstract geometrical theories by
mechanical ones. Ptolemy also wrote a work on astrology. It may seem strange to the modern
reader that someone who wrote such excellent scientific books should write on astrology.
However, Ptolemy sees it rather differently for he claims that the Almagest allows one to find
the positions of the heavenly bodies, while his astrology book he sees as a companion work
describing the effects of the heavenly bodies on people's lives.
In a book entitled Analemma he discussed methods of finding the angles need to construct a
sundial which involves the projection of points on the celestial sphere. In Planisphaerium he
is concerned with stereographic projection of the celestial sphere onto a plane. This is
discussed in where it is stated:-

In the stereographic projection treated by Ptolemy in the "Planisphaerium" the celestial

sphere is mapped onto the plane of the equator by projection from the south pole. Ptolemy
does not prove the important property that circles on the sphere become circles on the plane.

By the time Claudius Ptolemy (early to mid-2nd CE) composed his works, the production and
use of tables was an accepted part of Greek mathematical practice. Although Ptolemy makes
certain programmatic statements about how he thinks tables ought to be presented and used,
it is difficult to know if his articulation of best practices with regard to tabular methods was
original or had its origin in the work of his predecessors, such as Hipparchus or Menelaus. It

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does, however, seem clear that tabular methods entered Greek mathematical practice from
Babylonian sources, particularly Babylonian mathematical astronomy, sometime during the
mid to late Hellenistic period.
When we look at just those sorts of works from the early Hellenistic period where we might
expect to find tables — such as the proto-trigonometric, astronomical Sizes and Distances of
the Sun and Moon or Sand Calculator by Aristarchus and Archimedes , respectively — we
find no evidence for tabular mathematics . Although there is some evidence for tabular
displays and formats being used in harmonics and Pythagorean number theory — as found in
the work of Nicomachus and Theon of Smyrna — these traditions do not seem to have
involved the use of tabular elements to encode mathematical relationships. Again, there was a
long tradition of monumental tables, such as parapegmata and other inscriptions, which may
have contributed to Greek interest in Babylonian astronomical tables, but these were either
public resources or votive inscriptions and were not meant to be used in mathematical
practice. By the Roman Imperial period, however, there was a wealth of numerical tables for
astronomical and astrological purposes in circulation in Greco-Roman Egypt, including direct
translations of substantial parts of Babylonian mathematical astronomy.
This is the context in which Ptolemy produced his amalgam of the deductive
approach of classical geometry and the algorithmic procedures of tabular astronomy. The
extent to which Ptolemy was original in this is uncertain, but it is clear is that his particular
articulation of this strategy had a lasting effect on mathematical practice. Ptolemy's approach
to tables as a part of Greek mathematical practice.
Ptolemy also prepared a calendar that gave, in addition to weather indications, the risings and
settings of the stars in the morning and evening twilight. Other mathematical publications
include a work, in two books, entitled Hypotheseis ton planomenon ("Planetary Hypothesis")
and two separate geometrical works, one of which is concerned with proving that there
cannot be more than three dimensions of space; the other contains an attempted proof for a
postulate on parallel lines that had been devised by Euclid. According to one authority,
Ptolemy wrote three books on mechanics; another authority, however, credits him with only
one mechanical work, Peri ropon ("On Balancing").

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 Geographer

As a geographer, Ptolemy's reputation rests mainly on his Geographike hyphegesis (Guide to

Geography), which was divided into eight books; it included information on how to construct
maps of the portion of the world known by Ptolemy’s contemporaries. By his own admission,
Ptolemy did not attempt to collect and sift all the geographical data on which his maps were
based. Instead, he based them on the maps and writings of Marinus of Tyre (c. 100 CE), only
selectively introducing more current information, chiefly concerning the Asian and African
coasts of the Indian Ocean. Nothing would be known about Marinus if Ptolemy had not
preserved the substance of his cartographical work.

Ptolemy’s most important geographical innovation was to record longitudes and latitudes in

degrees for roughly 8,000 locations on his world map, making it possible to make an exact
duplicate of his map .There were, however, many errors in the Guide--e.g., the Equator was
placed too far north, and the value used for the circumference of the Earth was nearly 30
percent less than a more accurate value that had already been determined--as well as some
contradictions between the text and maps. Moreover, as a whole, the Guide cannot be
considered "good geography"; it does not mention anything about the climate, natural
products, inhabitants, or peculiar features of the countries with which it deals, and Ptolemy's
treatment of the geographical importance of such factors as rivers and mountain ranges is
careless and of little use.

Ptolemy’s fame as a geographer is hardly less than his fame as an astronomer.  of the portion
of the world known by Ptolemy’s contemporaries. By his own admission, Ptolemy did not
attempt to collect and sift all the geographical data on which his maps were based. Instead, he
based them on the maps and writings of Marinus of Tyre (c. 100 CE), only selectively
introducing more current information, chiefly concerning the Asian and African coasts of
the Indian Ocean. Nothing would be known about Marinus if Ptolemy had not preserved the
substance of his cartographical work.

ASTROLOGY

Ptolemy has been referred to as "a pro-astrological authority of the highest magnitude". [36] His
astrological treatise, a work in four parts, is known by the Greek term Tetrabiblos, or the
Latin equivalent Quadripartitum: "Four Books". Ptolemy's own title is unknown, but may

[22]
have been the term found in some Greek manuscripts: Apotelesmatika, roughly meaning
"Astrological Outcomes", "Effects" or "Prognostics".[37][38]

As a source of reference, the Tetrabiblos is said to have "enjoyed almost the authority of a

Bible among the astrological writers of a thousand years or more". [39] It was first translated
from Arabic into Latin by Plato of Tivoli (Tiburtinus) in 1138, while he was in Spain.
[40]
 The Tetrabiblos is an extensive and continually reprinted treatise on the ancient principles
of horoscopic astrology. That it did not quite attain the unrivaled status of the Almagest was,
perhaps, because it did not cover some popular areas of the subject, particularly electional
astrology (interpreting astrological charts for a particular moment to determine the outcome
of a course of action to be initiated at that time), and medical astrology, which were later
adoptions.

The great popularity that the Tetrabiblos did possess might be attributed to its nature as an
exposition of the art of astrology, and as a compendium of astrological lore, rather than as a
manual. It speaks in general terms, avoiding illustrations and details of practice. Ptolemy was
concerned to defend astrology by defining its limits, compiling astronomical data that he
believed was reliable and dismissing practices (such as considering
the numerological significance of names) that he believed to be without sound basis.

Much of the content of the Tetrabiblos was collected from earlier sources; Ptolemy's

achievement was to order his material in a systematic way, showing how the subject could, in
his view, be rationalized. It is, indeed, presented as the second part of the study of astronomy
of which the Almagest was the first, concerned with the influences of the celestial bodies in
the sublunary sphere. Thus explanations of a sort are provided for the astrological effects of
the planets, based upon their combined effects of heating, cooling, moistening, and drying.

Ptolemy's astrological outlook was quite practical: he thought that astrology was
like medicine, that is conjectural, because of the many variable factors to be taken into
account: the race, country, and upbringing of a person affects an individual's personality as
much as, if not more than, the positions of the Sun, Moon, and planets at the precise moment
of their birth, so Ptolemy saw astrology as something to be used in life but in no way relied
on entirely.

A collection of one hundred aphorisms about astrology called the Centiloquium, ascribed to

Ptolemy, was widely reproduced and commented on by Arabic, Latin and Hebrew scholars,
and often bound together in medieval manuscripts after the Tetrabiblos as a kind of

[23]
summation. It is now believed to be a much later pseudepigraphical composition. The identity
and date of the actual author of the work, referred to now as Pseudo-Ptolemy, remains the
subject of conjecture.[dubious  –  discuss]

Despite Ptolemy's prominence as a philosopher, the Dutch historian of science Eduard Jan

Dijksterhuis criticizes the Tetrabiblos, stating that "it only remain puzzling that the very
writer of the Almagest, who had taught how to develop astronomy from accurate
observations and mathematical constructions, could put together such a system of superficial
analogies and unfounded assertions.

Criticism
Claudius Ptolemy was the author of the famous Almagest, a compendium of astronomical
observations and calculations that remained the main reference work on the subject for the
best part of 1,500 years. Unfortunately this great work has serious flaws that have been
picked over by historians of astronomy, who argue about whether they represent mere errors
in Ptolemy’s observations or, much worse, in the methods he used. A red flag was raised in
the 16th century by that great observational astronomer Tycho Brahe, who had no quibble
with the earth-based system in the Almagest, but found it unreliable and pursued his own
methods.
The Babylonian achievements were the greatest in the pre-Hellenistic world, and the Greeks
naturally became avid students of their astronomy. They themselves made further advances,
the greatest being a discovery about the length of a year. Hipparchos of Rhodes, who lived in
the second century BC, showed that the period measured by the sun’s progress around the
zodiac, which is the same as the earth’s orbit around the sun, is different from the length of
the seasonal year. The small but significant difference, about 20 minutes a year, is called the
“precession of the equinoxes”, and is due to the fact that as the earth rotates, its axis precesses
like a top. It is vital for accurate astronomical predictions, and a full precession, which takes
about 26,000 years, is an important ingredient in the Milankovitch cycles that influence
climate change.

Hipparchos was clearly a first-rate observational astronomer and seems to have been a
geometer of the first rank. A result on quadrilaterals whose corners lie on a circle, known as
Ptolemy’s Theorem, is almost certainly due to him, and he led the development of what we
now call trigonometry. Unfortunately we know of his work almost exclusively through
the Almagest, and although Ptolemy refers to him with the respect due to a very distinguished
contemporary, their work was separated by nearly three centuries.
[24]
During the intervening period the precession of the equinoxes meant that some of
Hipparchos’s observations needed updating, and a major complaint against Ptolemy was that
he may have used and miscorrected them for precession, rather than make new observations
of his own. Certainly he made an error in the length of the seasonal year, and Tycho Brahe
pointed out a consistent error in the longitude of stars given in Ptolemy’s catalogue. More
than a century later, the renowned French astronomer Delambre made pointed criticisms of
Ptolemy’s work, saying that although the errors might have come in a complicated way from
original data by Hipparchos, “One could explain everything in a less favourable but all the
simpler manner by denying Ptolemy the observation of the stars and equinoxes, and by
claiming that he assimilated everything from Hipparchos, using the minimal value of the
latter for the precession motion.”

The most pungent criticism came in the 20th century from Robert Russell Newton, who in
1977 published The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy, in which he states: “[Ptolemy] developed
certain astronomical theories and discovered that they were not consistent with observation.
Instead of abandoning the theories, he deliberately fabricated observations from [them].”
Certainly the work of Tycho Brahe and Delambre shows that the errors were not random,
though Newton’s claim of a crime may be unfairly using modern notions of scientific fidelity
to judge the ancient world. Newton’s trenchant criticisms, implying that Ptolemy’s errors had
a terrible effect on scientific progress, have caused some scholars to row back in his defence,
but the main point must be that in true scientific inquiry the observations come first, the
theory late

Death

Very little is known about Claudius Ptolemy’s life other than his works. Whether he married,
whether he had children, and where and when he died are unknown.He died in about the year
170 AD at the age of 78, probably in Alexandria.We know few details of Ptolemy’s life. But
he left one personal poem, inserted right after the table of contents in The Almagest:

Well do I know that I am mortal, a creature of one day.

But if my mind follows the wandering path of stars
Then my feet no longer rest on earth, but standing by
Zeus himself, I take my fill of ambrosia, the food of the gods.

[25]
[26]