Chasing Shadows: Mathematics, Astronomy, and the Early History of Eclipse Reckoning (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Mathematics)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.96 (853 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0801896916 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 424 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-05-16 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
"Eclipse History" according to Freedom Cole. Wow, what a history: well researched and well written. The author has made some difficult math accessible. He has made some inaccessible ancient astronomy available and he has covered a huge amount of material. An incredible source for understanding mankind's road to understanding eclipses.
(John McCleary MAA Reviews) . (Dennis Duke Journal for the History of Astronomy)The book is splendid. It will be the standard reference for the history of eclipses. (John Steele, Brown University)This very well written book is densely packed with information. (Glen Van Brummelen Aestimatio: Critical Reviews in the History of Science)The book sets a high standard for scholarship, and is written in compelling prose. It is a sophisticated scholarly work with important broader theses Chasing Shadows will be a first contact for scholars on the history of eclipse theory for many years to come. (John Silvester Spaceflight)I am not aware of any other book that covers the treatment of eclipses in early astronomy in anything like the breadth of culture and geography, the depth of mathematical astronomy, the s
Clemency Montelle is a lecturer in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Canterbury.
Chasing Shadows is an invitingly written and highly informative exploration of the early history of astronomy.. Lunar and solar eclipses have always fascinated human beings. 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. Digging deep into history, Clemency Montelle examines the ways in which theoretical understanding of eclipses originated and how ancient and medieval cultures shared, developed, and preserved their knowledge of these awe-inspiring events.Eclipses were the celestial phenomena most challenging to understand in the ancient world. She identifies the profound scientific discoveries of these four cultures and discusses how the societies exchanged information about eclipses. Montelle draws on original researchmuch of it derived from reading primary source material written in Akkadian and Sanskrit, as well as ancient Greek, Latin, and Arabicto explore 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