Ptolemy: model or calculator ?

McCarrick, Allan (MCCARRIC@mailgate.navsses.navy.mil)
Tue, 20 Oct 1998 11:31 EST

Ross makes the point that the complex geocentric model used by Ptolemy et
al. was understood by them to be primarily a convention for calculation,
not a model of "reality". The church when importing ancient learning
swallowed it whole and blessed it as a picture of the real world.

Any idea which way Ptolemy was thinking ? (I know the Greeks more
ancient than him had formed a heliocentric model, even with estimates of
the diameter of the earth, the earth-moon and earth sun distances.)

Al