Announcements• First exam is one week from Wednesday. Will

cover chapters 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5. Probably won’t get through all of Chapter 5 but we will get to some of it. I’ll let you know how much next Monday. Sample questions have been posted. Format will be 15 MC’s (3 points each) and 3 essays (18 points each) from a list of 5. Open Book!

• For Wednesday: finish Chapter 4

The fall of Rome opened a “Dark Age” for astronomy in Europe

Anicius Boethius (Saint Severinus) attempted to translate many of the works of the Greeks into Latin in the 4th & 5th centuries but was executed by a tyrant after completing only a few works on logic

Calcidius translated many of the works of Plato

Plato’s Timaeus outlines the cosmological myth of ancient Greece

The best “text” on astronomy was by Martianus Capella

Astronomy was one of the seven liberal arts

The Marriage of Philology and Mercury

Martianus Capella actually

proposed Mercury and Venus went

around the Sun

Eventually, Greek is no longer taught and the original works

are lost

Most of Europe becomes more concerned with the Crusades than with learning

The need for an accurate calendar kept astronomers employed

The Venerable Bede, an English monk and “timekeeper” worked out the date for Easter for 532 years (28 Metonic Cycles of 19 years)

The “Problem” of the date of Easter wouldn’t be solved until 1582

Gerbert of Aurillac

Brought the astrolabe to Europe through his visits to Spain

Later established center of learning at Reims

By the 12th Century translators were starting to translate many of

the ancient works into Latin

Gerard of Cremona is credited with translating over seventy works including the Toledan Tables of al-Zarqali

The Europeans even began to invent their own astronomical

instruments

Invented by Levi ben Gerson around 1300, the cross-staff allows measurement of the angle between two objects

With more instruments came more sophistication

As measurements improved, there was a need to recalculate the astronomical

tables using the Almagest

Alphonsine Tables commissioned by King Alphonse of Spain in the 14th Century

The invention of the printing press brings a revolution to astronomy

Reliable texts on astronomy could be produced

Frontispiece to Regiomontanus’ Epitome of the Almagest first published in 1496

As more texts became available to more people, questions arose

Aristotle’s explanation for the flight of an arrow was patently absurd

As they began to question Aristotle’s explanations for terrestrial motion, so too they questioned his (and other Greeks) explanation for celestial motions