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• Title:Ptolemy's philosophy : mathematics as a way of life / Jacqueline Feke.
  
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• Author/Creator:Feke, Jacqueline, author.
  
• Published/Created:Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2018]
  

• Holdings

  Holdings Record Display

  • Location:KOERNER LIBRARY stacks (Floor 1)Where is this?
    
  • Call Number: QA8.4 .F454 2018
    
  • Number of Items:1
    
  • Status:c.1 On loan - Due on 04-29-2024
    

   
• Library of Congress Subjects:Ptolemy, active 2nd century.
  Mathematics--Philosophy.
  
• Description:xi, 234 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
  
• Summary:The Greco-Roman mathematician Claudius Ptolemy is one of the most significant figures in the history of science. He is remembered today for his astronomy, but his philosophy is almost entirely lost to history. This groundbreaking book is the first to reconstruct Ptolemy's general philosophical system--including his metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics-- and to explore its relationship to astronomy, harmonics, element theory, astrology, cosmology, psychology, and theology. In this stimulating intellectual history, Jacqueline Feke uncovers references to a complex and sophisticated philosophical agenda scattered among Ptolemy's technical studies in the physical and mathematical science. She show how he developed a philosophy that was radical and even subversive, appropriating ideas and turning them against the very philosophers from whom he drew influence. Feke reveals how Ptolemy' unique system is at once a critique of prevailing philosophical trends and a conception of the world in which mathematics reigns supreme. A compelling work of scholarship, Ptolemy's Philosophy demonstrates how Ptolemy situated mathematics at the very foundation of all philosophy--theoretical and practical--and advanced the mathematical way of life as the true path to human perfection.
  
• Notes:Includes bibliographical references and index.
  
• ISBN:9780691179582 hardcover
  0691179581 hardcover
  
• Contents:Machine generated contents note: 1. Introduction
  2. Defining the Sciences
  Aristotle's Accounts
  Ptolemy's Definitions Are Not Aristotle's
  Ptolemy's Aristotelian Definitions
  Conclusion
  3. Knowledge or Conjecture
  Ptolemy's Epistemology: Neither Aristotle's nor Plato's
  Platonic Epistemology
  Ptolemy on Opinion and Knowledge
  Indisputability of Mathematical Demonstration
  Mathematics' Contribution to Physics and Theology
  Conclusion
  4. Mathematics and the Good Life
  Distinction between Theoretical and Practical Philosophy
  Virtues
  How to Order Actions
  Resembling the Divine
  Conclusion
  5. Harmonia
  Harmonia: What and Where It Is
  Beauty of Mathematical Objects
  Harmonics
  Harmonic Ratios in the Human Soul
  Harmonic Ratios in the Heavens
  Conclusion
  6. Harmonics and Astronomy
  Cousin Sciences
  Sure and Incontrovertible Knowledge?
  Different Methods, Different Claims to Truth
  Consequences
  7. Mathematizing the Human Soul
  Nature and Structure of the Soul in On the Kriterion and Hegemonikon
  Structure of the Soul in the Harmonics: The Aristotelian Account
  Development of Ptolemy's Scientific Method
  Structure of the Soul in the Harmonics: The Platonic and Synthetic Accounts
  Conclusion
  8. Astrology and Cosmology
  Astrological Conjecture
  Celestial Powers and Rays
  Celestial Souls and Bodies
  Conclusion
  9. Conclusion.