The Astronomy of Levi Ben Gerson (1288-1344) by Bernard R Goldstein

The Astronomy of Levi Ben Gerson (1288-1344) by Bernard R Goldstein

It would seem that S. Munk was the first modern scholar to draw attention to the significance of Levi ben Gerson's Astronomy, surely the most original work on astronomy written in Hebrew in the Middle Ages. Munk (1859, p. 500) called for a specialist to undertake a serious study of this work, but there was little response to his plea in the succeeding century. Indeed, this is the first edition of the Hebrew text of any part of Levi's Astronomy but for the table of contents (Renan, 1893, pp. 624-32), and the poems celebrating the invention of the Jacob Staff that appear in chapter 9 (Carlebach, 191Oa, pp. 152-53). The text of Levi's Astronomy is written in a ponderous Hebrew style but the content sparkles with originality. The Ptolemaic tradition is subjected to a profound critique based on the idea that the planetary models must conform both to Levi's own observations as well as those of the ancients, and the claim that astronomical theory must be philosophically sound. The enduring vigor of the Ptolemaic tradition has been characterized by O. Neugebauer as fol- lows: There is no better way to convince oneself of the inner coherence of ancient and medieval astronomy than to place side by side the Almagest, al- BaWini's Opus astronomicum and Copernicus's De Revolutionibus. Chapter by chapter, theorem by theorem, table by table, these works run parallel (1957, pp. 205-6).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781461385714
ISBN 10	1461385717
Title	The Astronomy of Levi Ben Gerson (1288-1344)
Author	Bernard R Goldstein
Series	Studies In The History Of Mathematics And Physical Sciences
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Springer-Verlag New York Inc.
Year published	2011-11-08
Number of pages	312
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.