Ptolemaic system en · PROPN
Etymology
After Greek-Roman astronomer Claudius Ptolemy (c. 90 - c. 168 AD), who explained the theory in an influential work.
Meanings
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A geocentric model of the solar system, described by the eponymous astronomer.
The theories in your books are almost as obsolete as the Ptolemaic System.
1882, Thomas Hardy, chapter VII, in Two on a Tower. A Romance. [...] In Three Volumes, volume I, London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, […], →OCLC, page 128:[T]o Hipparchus we owe that theory of the heavens, commonly called the Ptolemaic system, which, starting from the assumption that the earth was the centre of the universe, attempted to explain the motions of the heavenly bodies by a complex system of supposed eccentrics and epicycles.
1902, Charles Kingsley, “Lecture I. The Ptolemaic Era.”, in Alexandria and Her Schools:Singh … criticizes the Ptolemaic system for its "inordinately complex" heaps of epicycles on epicycles, but declares that in some respects it was more accurate than the Copernican system.
2005 February 20, Owen Gingerich, "‘Big Bang’: The Real Creation Science" (review of Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe by Simon Singh), The New York Times (retrieved 7 Nov 2012)
Relateds
Translations (1)
fi Ptolemaioksen malli (geosentric model)