A History of Science, vol 1, Henry Smith Williams [read out loud books TXT] 📗

its distance from the sun is less than a quarter of the circumference [of its orbit] by a thirtieth part of that quarter.”

That is to say, in modern terminology, the moon at this time lacks three degrees (one thirtieth of ninety degrees) of being at right angles with the line of the sun as viewed from the earth; or, stated otherwise, the angular distance of the moon from the sun as viewed from the earth is at this time eighty-seven degrees—this being, as we have already observed, the fundamental measurement upon which so much depends. We may fairly suppose that some previous paper of Aristarchus’s has detailed the measurement which here is taken for granted, yet which of course could depend solely on observation.

“Fifth. The diameter of the shadow [cast by the earth at the point where the moon’s orbit cuts that shadow when the moon is eclipsed] is double the diameter of the moon.”

Here again a knowledge of previously established measurements is taken for granted; but, indeed, this is the case throughout the treatise.

“Sixth. The arc subtended in the sky by the moon is a fifteenth part of a sign” of the zodiac; that is to say, since there are twenty-four, signs in the zodiac, one-fifteenth of one twenty-fourth, or in modern terminology, one degree of arc. This is Aristarchus’s measurement of the moon to which we have already referred when speaking of the measurements of Archimedes.

“If we admit these six hypotheses,” Aristarchus continues, “it follows that the sun is more than eighteen times more distant from the earth than is the moon, and that it is less than twenty times more distant, and that the diameter of the sun bears a corresponding relation to the diameter of the moon; which is proved by the position of the moon when dichotomized. But the ratio of the diameter of the sun to that of the earth is greater than nineteen to three and less than forty-three to six. This is demonstrated by the relation of the distances, by the position [of the moon] in relation to the earth’s shadow, and by the fact that the arc subtended by the moon is a fifteenth part of a sign.”

Aristarchus follows with nineteen propositions intended to elucidate his hypotheses and to demonstrate his various contentions. These show a singularly clear grasp of geometrical problems and an altogether correct conception of the general relations as to size and position of the earth, the moon, and the sun. His reasoning has to do largely with the shadow cast by the earth and by the moon, and it presupposes a considerable knowledge of the phenomena of eclipses. His first proposition is that “two equal spheres may always be circumscribed in a cylinder; two unequal spheres in a cone of which the apex is found on the side of the smaller sphere; and a straight line joining the centres of these spheres is perpendicular to each of the two circles made by the contact of the surface of the cylinder or of the cone with the spheres.”

It will be observed that Aristarchus has in mind here the moon, the earth, and the sun as spheres to be circumscribed within a cone, which cone is made tangible and measurable by the shadows cast by the non-luminous bodies; since, continuing, he clearly states in proposition nine, that “when the sun is totally eclipsed, an observer on the earth’s surface is at an apex of a cone comprising the moon and the sun.” Various propositions deal with other relations of the shadows which need not detain us since they are not fundamentally important, and we may pass to the final conclusions of Aristarchus, as reached in his propositions ten to nineteen.

Now, since (proposition ten) “the diameter of the sun is more than eighteen times and less than twenty times greater than that of the moon,” it follows (proposition eleven) “that the bulk of the sun is to that of the moon in ratio, greater than 5832 to 1, and less than 8000 to 1.”

“Proposition sixteen. The diameter of the sun is to the diameter of the earth in greater proportion than nineteen to three, and less than forty-three to six.

“Proposition seventeen. The bulk of the sun is to that of the earth in greater proportion than 6859 to 27, and less than 79,507

to 216.

“Proposition eighteen. The diameter of the earth is to the diameter of the moon in greater proportion than 108 to 43 and less than 60 to 19.

“Proposition nineteen. The bulk of the earth is to that of the moon in greater proportion than 1,259,712 to 79,507 and less than 20,000 to 6859.”

Such then are the more important conclusions of this very remarkable paper—a paper which seems to have interest to the successors of Aristarchus generation after generation, since this alone of all the writings of the great astronomer has been preserved. How widely the exact results of the measurements of Aristarchus, differ from the truth, we have pointed out as we progressed. But let it be repeated that this detracts little from the credit of the astronomer who had such clear and correct conceptions of the relations of the heavenly bodies and who invented such correct methods of measurement. Let it be particularly observed, however, that all the conclusions of Aristarchus are stated in relative terms. He nowhere attempts to estimate the precise size of the earth, of the moon, or of the sun, or the actual distance of one of these bodies from another.

The obvious reason for this is that no data were at hand from which to make such precise measurements. Had Aristarchus known the size of any one of the bodies in question, he might readily, of course, have determined the size of the others by the mere application of his relative scale; but he had no means of determining the size of the earth, and to this extent his system of measurements remained imperfect. Where Aristarchus halted, however, another worker of the same period took the task in hand and by an altogether wonderful measurement determined the size of the earth, and thus brought the scientific theories of cosmology to their climax. This worthy supplementor of the work of Aristarchus was Eratosthenes of Alexandria.

ERATOSTHENES, “THE SURVEYOR OF THE WORLD”

An altogether remarkable man was this native of Cyrene, who came to Alexandria from Athens to be the chief librarian of Ptolemy Euergetes. He was not merely an astronomer and a geographer, but a poet and grammarian as well. His contemporaries jestingly called him Beta the Second, because he was said through the universality of his attainments to be “a second Plato” in philosophy, “a second Thales” in astronomy, and so on throughout the list. He was also called the “surveyor of the world,” in recognition of his services to geography. Hipparchus said of him, perhaps half jestingly, that he had studied astronomy as a geographer and geography as an astronomer. It is not quite clear whether the epigram was meant as compliment or as criticism.

Similar phrases have been turned against men of versatile talent in every age. Be that as it may, Eratosthenes passed into history as the father of scientific geography and of scientific chronology; as the astronomer who first measured the obliquity of the ecliptic; and as the inventive genius who performed the astounding feat of measuring the size of the globe on which we live at a time when only a relatively small portion of that globe’s surface was known to civilized man. It is no discredit to approach astronomy as a geographer and geography as an astronomer if the results are such as these. What Eratosthenes really did was to approach both astronomy and geography from two seemingly divergent points of attack—namely, from the standpoint of the geometer and also from that of the poet. Perhaps no man in any age has brought a better combination of observing and imaginative faculties to the aid of science.

Nearly all the discoveries of Eratosthenes are associated with observations of the shadows cast by the sun. We have seen that, in the study of the heavenly bodies, much depends on the measurement of angles. Now the easiest way in which angles can be measured, when solar angles are in question, is to pay attention, not to the sun itself, but to the shadow that it casts. We saw that Thales made some remarkable measurements with the aid of shadows, and we have more than once referred to the gnomon, which is the most primitive, but which long remained the most important, of astronomical instruments. It is believed that Eratosthenes invented an important modification of the gnomon which was elaborated afterwards by Hipparchus and called an armillary sphere. This consists essentially of a small gnomon, or perpendicular post, attached to a plane representing the earth’s equator and a hemisphere in imitation of the earth’s surface.

With the aid of this, the shadow cast by the sun could be very accurately measured. It involves no new principle. Every perpendicular post or object of any kind placed in the sunlight casts a shadow from which the angles now in question could be roughly measured. The province of the armillary sphere was to make these measurements extremely accurate.

With the aid of this implement, Eratosthenes carefully noted the longest and the shortest shadows cast by the gnomon—that is to say, the shadows cast on the days of the solstices. He found that the distance between the tropics thus measured represented 47

degrees 42′ 39″ of arc. One-half of this, or 23 degrees 5,’

19.5”, represented the obliquity of the ecliptic—that is to say, the angle by which the earth’s axis dipped from the perpendicular with reference to its orbit. This was a most important observation, and because of its accuracy it has served modern astronomers well for comparison in measuring the trifling change due to our earth’s slow, swinging wobble. For the earth, be it understood, like a great top spinning through space, holds its position with relative but not quite absolute fixity. It must not be supposed, however, that the experiment in question was quite new with Eratosthenes. His merit consists rather in the accuracy with which he made his observation than in the novelty of the conception; for it is recorded that Eudoxus, a full century earlier, had remarked the obliquity of the ecliptic. That observer had said that the obliquity corresponded to the side of a pentadecagon, or fifteen-sided figure, which is equivalent in modern phraseology to twenty-four degrees of arc. But so little is known regarding the way in which Eudoxus reached his estimate that the measurement of Eratosthenes is usually spoken of as if it were the first effort of the kind.

Much more striking, at least in its appeal to the popular imagination, was that other great feat which Eratosthenes performed with the aid of his perfected gnomon—the measurement of the earth itself. When we reflect that at this period the portion of the earth open to observation extended only from the Straits of Gibraltar on the west to India on the east, and from the North Sea to Upper Egypt, it certainly seems enigmatical—at first thought almost miraculous—that an observer should have been able to measure the entire globe. That he should have accomplished this through observation of nothing more than a tiny bit of Egyptian territory and a glimpse of the sun’s shadow makes it seem but the more wonderful. Yet the method of Eratosthenes, like many another enigma, seems simple enough once it is explained. It required but the application of a very elementary knowledge of the geometry of circles, combined with the use of a fact or two from local geography—which detracts nothing from the genius of the man who could reason from such simple premises to so wonderful a conclusion.

Stated in a few words, the experiment of