Chasing shadows : mathematics, astronomy, and the early history of eclipse reckoning /
Eclipses were the celestial phenomena most challenging to understand in the ancient world. Montelle draws on original research, much of it derived from reading primary source material written in Akkadian and Sanskrit, as well as ancient Greek, Latin and Arabic. It also explores how observers in Baby...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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Baltimore :
Johns Hopkins University Press,
2011.
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| Series: | Johns Hopkins studies in the history of mathematics.
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| Subjects: |
| Summary: | Eclipses were the celestial phenomena most challenging to understand in the ancient world. Montelle draws on original research, much of it derived from reading primary source material written in Akkadian and Sanskrit, as well as ancient Greek, Latin and Arabic. It also explores how observers in Babylon, the Islamic Near East, Greece and India developed new astronomical and mathematical techniques to predict and describe the features of eclipses. She identifies the profound scientific discoveries of these four cultures and discusses how the societies exchanged information about eclipses. In constructing this history, Montelle establishes a clear pattern of the transmission of scientific ideas from one culture to another in the ancient and medieval world. |
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| Physical Description: | xii, 408 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 383-391) and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780801896910 0801896916 |