Ptolémée

Claude Ptolémée · 2nd-century Roman mathematician, astronomer, geographer · 100–170

Appears in 7 videos · 7 passages.

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani mentions Ptolemy mainly for his cosmology, which he presents as the image of the ancient universe. He describes a world made of nested domes or orbs, which correspond to the planets and revolve around a motionless spectator1 2. He stresses how closed and reassuring this universe is, placing man at the centre3. He returns to it when discussing amnesia, recalling the "domed universe" of Antiquity4. Ptolemy also serves him as an example of the rise of the sciences in the Alexandrian age5. In more recent sessions, he dwells on how this system came to be abandoned. He recalls that astronomers tried to "save the appearances" in order to keep geocentrism6. He regards this geocentric cosmology as overtaken by modernity and takes it up in a reflection on secularism and religion7. From one session to the next, Ptolemy thus returns as the marker of a centred, closed world that modern science has undone.

Summary produced automatically from 7 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.

Who is this?

Claudius Ptolemy (; Ancient Greek: Πτολεμαῖος, Ptolemaios; Latin: Claudius Ptolemaeus; c. 100 – 160s/170s AD), better known mononymously as Ptolemy, was a Greco-Roman who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine, Islamic, and Western European science. The first was his astronomical treatise now known as the Almagest, originally entitled Mathēmatikḗ Syntaxis (Μαθηματικὴ Σύνταξις, 'Mathematical Treatise'). The second is the Geography, which is a thorough discussion on maps and the geographic knowledge of the Greco-Roman world. […]

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