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History of Astronomy

by George FORBES (1849 - 1936)

Chapter 3: Ancient Greek Astronomy

An attempt has been made in these pages to trace the evolution of intellectual thought in the progress of astronomical discovery, and, by recognising the different points of view of the different ages, to give due credit even to the ancients. No one can expect, in a history of astronomy of limited size, to find a treatise on “practical” or on “theoretical astronomy,” nor a complete “descriptive astronomy,” and still less a book on “speculative astronomy.” Something of each of these is essential, however, for tracing the progress of thought and knowledge which it is the object of this History to describe. - Summary from the Preface

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Listen next episodes of History of Astronomy:
Chapter 10: Instruments of Precision - Size of the Solar System , Chapter 11: History of the Telescope - Spectroscope , Chapter 12: The Sun , Chapter 13: The Moon and Planets , Chapter 14: Comets and Meteors , Chapter 15: The Stars and Nebulae , Chapter 4: The Reign of Epicycles - From Ptolemy to Copernicus , Chapter 5: The Discovery of the True Solar System - Tycho Brahe - Kepler , Chapter 6: Galileo and the Telescope - Notions of Gravity by Horrocks, etc , Chapter 7: Sir Issac Newton - Law of Universal Gravitation , Chapter 8: Newton's Successors - Haley, Euler, LaGrange, LaPlance, etc , Chapter 9: Discovery of New Planets - Herschel, Piazzi, Adams, and Le Verrier