Aristarchus of Samos, the ancient Copernicus : a history of Greek astronomy to Aristarchus, together with Aristarchus's Treatise on the sizes and distances of the sun and moon /
T.L. Heath.
- Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2013.
- 1 online resource (vi, 425 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).
- Cambridge library collection. Mathematics .
- Cambridge library collection. .
Originally published in Oxford at the Clarendon Press in 1913. Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).
pt. I. Greek astronomy to Aristarchus of Samos. Sources of the history -- Homer and Hesiod -- Thales -- Anaximander -- Anaximenes -- Pythagoras -- Xenophanes -- Heraclitus -- Parmenides -- Anaxagoras -- Empedocles -- The Pythagoreans -- The atomists, Leucippus and Democritus -- Oenopides -- Plato -- The theory of concentric spheres--Eudoxus, Callippus, and Aristotle -- Aristotle (continued) -- Heraclides of Pontus -- Greek months, years, and cycles -- pt. II. Aristarchus on the sizes and distances of the sun and moon. Aristarchus of Samos -- The treatise on sizes and distances--history of the text and editions -- Content of the treatise -- Later improvements on Aristarchus's calculations.
The Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos was active in the third century BCE, more than a thousand years before Copernicus presented his model of a heliocentric solar system. It was Aristarchus, however, who first suggested - in a work that is now lost - that the planets revolve around the sun. Edited by Sir Thomas Little Heath (1861-1940), this 1913 publication contains the ancient astronomer's only surviving treatise, which does not propound the heliocentric hypothesis. The Greek text is based principally on the tenth-century manuscript Vaticanus Graecus 204. Heath also provides a facing-page English translation and explanatory notes. The treatise is prefaced by a substantial history of ancient Greek astronomy, ranging from Homer's first mention of constellations to work by Heraclides of Pontus in the fourth century BCE relating to the Earth's rotation. Heath's collection of translated ancient texts, Greek Astronomy (1932), is also reissued in this series.