ASTR 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Flat Earth, Spherical Earth, Ptolemy
8 Feb 2017
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Week 3: seminar - shape of the earth. Most ancient cultures subscribed to a flat earth cosmology surmounted by a hemispherical sky (common sense experience remember local sky) Homeric worldview: (900bc) flat earth surrounded with an ocean. Known as the father of cosmology as her wrote the oldest known prose about the universe. Ancient hindu & buddhist (until 16th century), the universe is essentially flat, with four continents grouped around mount meru , the center of all things, like the petal of a flower. Around is a cast expanse of water, and surrounding, the water was a vast expanse of wind. Pythagoras (6th century bc) & his school defended a perfect spherical earth based purely on aesthetic reasons. It all started with an idea; greeks were intoxicated with geometry and math"s. After the 5th century bc, no greek writer though the world was anything but round. Had no evidence, just based on beauty.
