The Almagestum parvum, a summary of Ptolemy’s Almagest written around the year 1200, provided a new stylistic framework for the content of the Almagest’s first six books. The author of the Almagestum parvum used a narrower range of types of mathematical writing and supplied his work with principles, which were listed at the beginning of each book and which were followed by propositions and demonstrations. Specific values were to a large extent replaced by general quantities, which would stand for a class of particulars. These and similar changes in the Almagestum parvum reveal the author’s concern with reshaping astronomy into a discipline in the mold of Euclid’s Elements, which emphasized the generality of propositions and proofs and connected Ptolemaic astronomy to the “mathematical toolbox” available in the Middle Ages. The Almagestum parvum was an influential part of a larger trend of understanding Ptolemaic astronomy in a non-Ptolemaic style.
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Reviel Netz, “Proclus’ Division of the Mathematical Proposition into Parts: How and Why Was It Formulated?,” The Classical Quarterly, 49 (1999), 282–303 has argued that ancient mathematicians did not think of most of these parts as stylistic units and that Proclus’ scheme cannot be precisely applied to problems and many theorems; however, at least some medieval scholars understood the Elements through Proclus’ parts of proofs or similar ones and thought of these as both stylistic and conceptual parts of propositions, e.g., H. L. L. Busard, ed., The Latin Translation of the Arabic Version of Euclid’s Elements Commonly Ascribed to Gerard of Cremona (Leiden, 1984), 2; Busard, Johannes, 32; and Anthony Lo Bello, ed./transl., Gerard of Cremona’s Translation of the Commentary of Al-Nayrizi on Book i of Euclid’s Elements of Geometry: With an Introductory Account of the Twenty-Two Early Extant Arabic Manuscripts of the Elements (Boston, 2003), 87–88, 102–103.
Aleksander Birkenmajer, “La Bibliothèque de Richard de Fournival,” Studia Copernicana, 1 (1970), 118–210, here 144. Charles Homer Haskins, Studies in the History of Medieval Science (Cambridge, MA, 1929), 104. Lorch, “Some Remarks.” John North, Richard of Wallingford: An Edition of His Writings, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1976), II: 140. The Almagestumparvum has also been attributed to al-Battānī, Jābir ibn Aflaḥ, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and Campanus of Novara, but of these only the reference to Campanus seems plausible (Lorch, “Some Remarks,” 416–419). Michela Pereira, “Campano da Novara autore dell’Almagestum parvum,” Studi Medievali, 19 (1978), 769–776, argues for Campanus as its author, while Lorch and Birkenmajer believed that the timeline does not allow for this identification. Further evidence against Campanus as the author is found in two manuscripts, Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Barb. lat. 336 and Paris, BnF, lat. 7256, which contain both a set of marginal notes that is taken from the Almagestumparvum and another set attributed to Campanus. While each note of the latter set is marked clearly with “Campanus,” the notes from the Almagestumparvum are not marked in this manner, suggesting that the scribe purposely did not attribute this set of notes to Campanus. Also, although there is some similarity of terminology between Campanus’ works and the Almagestumparvum, they have rather different terminology for the parts of theorems and problems.
Birkenmajer, “Bibliothèque,” 169; Toledo, Archivo y Biblioteca Capitulares, 98–22, fol. 68r. I have corrected declensions.
Lorch, “Some Remarks,” 409. For further examples, see Almagestum parvum i.1, i.2, and i.14 (Zepeda, Medieval, 447–448, 461–462).
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The Almagestum parvum, a summary of Ptolemy’s Almagest written around the year 1200, provided a new stylistic framework for the content of the Almagest’s first six books. The author of the Almagestum parvum used a narrower range of types of mathematical writing and supplied his work with principles, which were listed at the beginning of each book and which were followed by propositions and demonstrations. Specific values were to a large extent replaced by general quantities, which would stand for a class of particulars. These and similar changes in the Almagestum parvum reveal the author’s concern with reshaping astronomy into a discipline in the mold of Euclid’s Elements, which emphasized the generality of propositions and proofs and connected Ptolemaic astronomy to the “mathematical toolbox” available in the Middle Ages. The Almagestum parvum was an influential part of a larger trend of understanding Ptolemaic astronomy in a non-Ptolemaic style.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 457 | 33 | 0 |
Full Text Views | 267 | 1 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 64 | 2 | 0 |