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A stimulating intellectual history of Ptolemy's philosophy and his conception of a world in which mathematics reigns supreme The Greco-Roman mathematician Claudius Ptolemy is one of the most significant figures in the history of science. He is remembered today for his astronomy, but his philosophy is almost entirely lost to history. This groundbreaking book is the first to reconstruct Ptolemy’s general philosophical system—including his metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics—and to explore its relationship to astronomy, harmonics, element theory, astrology, cosmology, psychology, and theology. In this stimulating intellectual history, Jacqueline Feke uncovers references to a complex and sophisticated philosophical agenda scattered among Ptolemy’s technical studies in the physical and mathematical sciences. She shows how he developed a philosophy that was radical and even subversive, appropriating ideas and turning them against the very philosophers from whom he drew influence. Feke reveals how Ptolemy’s unique system is at once a critique of prevailing philosophical trends and a conception of the world in which mathematics reigns supreme. A compelling work of scholarship, Ptolemy’s Philosophy demonstrates how Ptolemy situated mathematics at the very foundation of all philosophy—theoretical and practical—and advanced the mathematical way of life as the true path to human perfection.
The Greco-Roman mathematician Claudius Ptolemy is one of the most significant figures in the history of science. He is remembered today for his astronomy, but his philosophy is almost entirely lost to history. This groundbreaking book is the first to reconstruct Ptolemy’s general philosophical system—including his metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics—and to explore its relationship to astronomy, harmonics, element theory, astrology, cosmology, psychology, and theology. In this stimulating intellectual history, Jacqueline Feke uncovers references to a complex and sophisticated philosophical agenda scattered among Ptolemy’s technical studies in the physical and mathematical sciences. She shows how he developed a philosophy that was radical and even subversive, appropriating ideas and turning them against the very philosophers from whom he drew influence. Feke reveals how Ptolemy’s unique system is at once a critique of prevailing philosophical trends and a conception of the world in which mathematics reigns supreme. A compelling work of scholarship, Ptolemy’s Philosophy demonstrates how Ptolemy situated mathematics at the very foundation of all philosophy—theoretical and practical—and advanced the mathematical way of life as the true path to human perfection.
Claudius Ptolemy, one of the greatest scientists of all time, probably lived in Alexandria in the second century A.D. His writings dominated astronomy and cosmology in medieval times. The replacement of his Earth-centered cosmology by the Sun-centered cosmology of Copernicus is the most celebrated event in the history of science. Yet, although there has been much scholarly discussion of the mathematical aspects of Ptolemy's astronomy, little attention has been paid to the philosophical, and particularly the ethical, ideas which animate the astronomy. Ptolemy's Universe is the first modern examination of Ptolemy's thought as a whole, and its place in Greek intellectual culture.
Ptolemy's Almagest is one of the most influential scientific works in history. A masterpiece of technical exposition, it was the basic textbook of astronomy for more than a thousand years, and still is the main source for our knowledge of ancient astronomy. This translation, based on the standard Greek text of Heiberg, makes the work accessible to English readers in an intelligible and reliable form. It contains numerous corrections derived from medieval Arabic translations and extensive footnotes that take account of the great progress in understanding the work made in this century, due to the discovery of Babylonian records and other researches. It is designed to stand by itself as an interpretation of the original, but it will also be useful as an aid to reading the Greek text.
In Newton's view, Ptolemy was "the most successful fraud in the history of science". Newton shows that Ptolemy predominantly obtained the astronomical results described in his work The Almagest by computation, and not by the direct observations that Ptolemy described.
This study situates Ptolemy's philosophy within the second-century milieu of Middle Platonism and the nascent Aristotelian commentary tradition. It focuses on Ptolemy's adaptation and application of Aristotle's tripartite division of theoretical philosophy into the physical, mathematical, and theological. In Almagest 1.1, Ptolemy defines these three sciences, describes their relations and objects of study, and addresses their epistemic success. According to Ptolemy, physics and theology are conjectural, and mathematics alone yields knowledge. This claim is unprecedented in the history of ancient Greek philosophy.Ptolemy substantiates this claim by constructing and employing a scientific method consistent with it. In Almagest 1.1, after defining the theoretical sciences, Ptolemy adds that, while theology and physics are conjectural, mathematics can make a good guess at the nature of theological objects and contribute significantly to the study of physics. He puts this claim into practice in the remainder of his corpus by applying mathematics to theology and physics in order to produce results in these fields.After the introductory chapter, I present Ptolemy's philosophy and practice of the three theoretical sciences. In Chapter 2, I examine how and why Ptolemy defines the sciences in Almagest 1.1. In Chapter 3, I further analyze how Ptolemy defines mathematical objects, how he describes the relationships between the tools and branches of mathematics, and whether he demonstrates in the Harmonics and Almagest that he believed mathematics yields sure and incontrovertible knowledge, as he claims in Almagest 1.1. In Chapter 4, I present Ptolemy's natural philosophy. While in Chapter 2 I discuss his element theory, in Chapter 4 I focus on his physics of composite bodies: astrology, psychology, and cosmology as conveyed in the Tetrabiblos, On the Kriterion, Harmonics, and Planetary Hypotheses. I do not devote a chapter to theology, as Ptolemy refers to this science only once in his corpus. Therefore, I limit my analysis of his definition and practice of theology to Chapter 2. In the concluding chapter, I discuss Ptolemy's ethical motivation for studying mathematics. What emerges from this dissertation is a portrait of Ptolemy's philosophy of science and the scientific method he employs consistently in his texts.