Overview

During the second century A.D., Greek-Egyptian astronomer and mathematician Ptolemy (100-170) summarized eight centuries of Greek geocentric (earth-centered) thought about the nature of the cosmos. Despite the heliocentric (sun-centered) theories of Aristarchus of Samos (320?-250? B.C.) and a few others, Ptolemaic geocentrism dominated Western astronomy until Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) proposed his heliocentric theory in the sixteenth century.

Background

In the sixth century B.C. the philosopher Pythagoras (580?-500 B.C.) founded a school of thought that concentrated on order, harmony, permanence, rationality, and regularity. His ideals were music and mathematics. Music was viewed as the origin and expression of harmony, and mathematics the rational explanation of music. Pythagoras believed that everything could be understood in terms of number, and therefore that everything is accessible to the mind, since the concept of number is intelligible. He posited a...