Abstract
One of the first Hellenistic scientific theories was optics (ðлτιℵή), that is, the “science of sight”, and the first known treatise on the subject is Euclid’s Optics. In this work, Euclid deals with optics stricto sensu; according to the nomenclature of the time (which we follow in this section), the term included all that has to do with direct sight, but did not include reflection (which was the object of the science called catoptrics1) or refraction.
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References
Plato, Parmenides, 137e:3–4, implicitly uses sight to define straightness.
Plato, Republic, X, 602c–603a.
Aristotle had already made remarks relevant to this: Analytica posteriora, I, xiii,78b:37; Physica, II, ii,194a:7–12.
Archimedes, Arenarius, 137–140 (ed. Mugler, vol. II).
Aristotle, Poetica, iv,1449a:18–19.
Vitruvius, De architectura, VII, preface §11.
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Pliny, Naturalis historia, XXXV §80.
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Ptolemy, Optics, V §§7–21 = 227:1-237:7 (ed. Lejeune).
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See, for example, Aristotle, Metaphysica, III, ii,997b:26–28, where geodesy is distinguished from geometry by its concrete nature.
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Cited in Strabo, Geography, X,iii §5. It may be significant that at the beginning of his work Strabo compares geographers to architects who plan buildings or cities (Geography, I,i §13). There is no direct evidence for topographical maps.
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This was described by Eratosthenes in his On the measurement of the earth, which is lost; we know about his method chiefly through Cleomedes, Caelestia, I §7, 35:48–37:110 (ed. Todd). We will come back to Cleomedes’ account in Section 10.2.
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Strabo, Geography, I,i §12. Strabo mentions also solar eclipses, obviously by an oversight,which nonetheless has propagated down the centuries (see, for example, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition, Micropaedia, sub “Hipparchus”).
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Russo, L. (2004). Other Hellenistic Scientific Theories. In: The Forgotten Revolution. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-18904-3_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-18904-3_4
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