Update on the Antikythera Machine (BC Steampunk)

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Yep!

Dictionary people, BTW, don't have to be experts at anything except word definitions.

[Template]

Yes.  It calculates the positions of planets in future dates among many other things.  It's absolutely stunning the kind of craftsmanship and mathematics that had to go into making it.

Especially considering that they were using a geocentric model of the Solar System. I still can't believe that it took them that long to figure out that the sun goes in the middle.

Just because beliefs, opinions, and theories aren't the same doesn't mean they're safe from conflation.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Yes.  It calculates the positions of planets in future dates among many other things.  It's absolutely stunning the kind of craftsmanship and mathematics that had to go into making it.

Especially considering that they were using a geocentric model of the Solar System. I still can't believe that it took them that long to figure out that the sun goes in the middle.

Just because beliefs, opinions, and theories aren't the same doesn't mean they're safe from conflation.

If you're starting from scratch, it can take a lot of observation and recording to figure out what's really going on with the world. We're still figuring it out; consider how much we know we don't know, and then extrapolate from that how much we don't know we don't know. It's vasty deep.

[Jenne]

"vasty"--oooh!  *files that to put to usage soonish*

[Template]

Yes.  It calculates the positions of planets in future dates among many other things.  It's absolutely stunning the kind of craftsmanship and mathematics that had to go into making it.

Especially considering that they were using a geocentric model of the Solar System. I still can't believe that it took them that long to figure out that the sun goes in the middle.

Just because beliefs, opinions, and theories aren't the same doesn't mean they're safe from conflation.

If you're starting from scratch, it can take a lot of observation and recording to figure out what's really going on with the world. We're still figuring it out; consider how much we know we don't know, and then extrapolate from that how much we don't know we don't know. It's vasty deep.

I guess I was unclear.  Sorry about that.

This guy at least entertained the hypothesis of "The Sun is bigger than the Earth and is orbited by it."--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_of_Samos

A matter of speculation became a matter of settled fact without going through any measure of proof.  I've been taking a freshman astronomy course of late.

[Shai Hulud]

If you're starting from scratch, it can take a lot of observation and recording to figure out what's really going on with the world. We're still figuring it out; consider how much we know we don't know, and then extrapolate from that how much we don't know we don't know. It's vasty deep.

I guess I was unclear.  Sorry about that.

This guy at least entertained the hypothesis of "The Sun is bigger than the Earth and is orbited by it."--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_of_Samos

A matter of speculation became a matter of settled fact without going through any measure of proof.  I've been taking a freshman astronomy course of late.

They really didn't have any good reason to believe in a heliocentric universe back then.  For the ancients it wasn't really about data, it was about what seemed like an elegant solution to the problem.  A few suggested

For most, though, it made more sense to think of the earth as the "sump" of the universe, since everything falls down anyway.  And the Ptolemaic model is extremely elegant, especially considering that when you watch the movements of planets from earth it really does look like they are orbiting in little circles around points that move around us in a big circle.  You'd have had to be crazy or very deep in the philosophy of the Stoics to believe that the sun is the "central fire" of the universe, rather than believe what your own eyes tell you, that the sun is situated in the heavens and goes around the earth.

At any rate, isn't it all relative?  I was reading Hound of the Baskervilles recently and there's an interesting conversation there where Dr. Watson is surprised that Sherlock Holmes is "supremely indifferent" to the question of whether the "earth goes round the sun" or vice versa.  As long as the math works out right and the model is predicting things accurately, it's only a question of semantics.  So as long as there was a working model in Ptolemy (and the antethykira device shows that is sure as hell worked), there was probably not much interest to the practically-minded of the ancients.

[Template]

If you're starting from scratch, it can take a lot of observation and recording to figure out what's really going on with the world. We're still figuring it out; consider how much we know we don't know, and then extrapolate from that how much we don't know we don't know. It's vasty deep.

I guess I was unclear.  Sorry about that.

This guy at least entertained the hypothesis of "The Sun is bigger than the Earth and is orbited by it."--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_of_Samos

A matter of speculation became a matter of settled fact without going through any measure of proof.  I've been taking a freshman astronomy course of late.

They really didn't have any good reason to believe in a heliocentric universe back then.  For the ancients it wasn't really about data, it was about what seemed like an elegant solution to the problem.  A few suggested

For most, though, it made more sense to think of the earth as the "sump" of the universe, since everything falls down anyway.  And the Ptolemaic model is extremely elegant, especially considering that when you watch the movements of planets from earth it really does look like they are orbiting in little circles around points that move around us in a big circle.  You'd have had to be crazy or very deep in the philosophy of the Stoics to believe that the sun is the "central fire" of the universe, rather than believe what your own eyes tell you, that the sun is situated in the heavens and goes around the earth.

At any rate, isn't it all relative?  I was reading Hound of the Baskervilles recently and there's an interesting conversation there where Dr. Watson is surprised that Sherlock Holmes is "supremely indifferent" to the question of whether the "earth goes round the sun" or vice versa.  As long as the math works out right and the model is predicting things accurately, it's only a question of semantics.  So as long as there was a working model in Ptolemy (and the antethykira device shows that is sure as hell worked), there was probably not much interest to the practically-minded of the ancients.

I have my doubts about the phrase "practically-minded ancient".  Calculating a pair of elliptical orbits is a simpler problem than approximating the direction straight there using something I consider analogous or identical to a Fourier series but less systematic.  The Ptolemaic "epicycles and more epicycles" technique was intricate, but ultimately brutal.  I'm not sure I could convince an ancient of that fact, though.