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Ptolemaic   Listen
adjective
Ptolemaic  adj.  Of or pertaining to Ptolemy, the geographer and astronomer.
Ptolemaic system (Astron.), the system maintained by Ptolemy, who supposed the earth to be fixed in the center of the universe, with the sun and stars revolving around it. This theory was received for ages, until superseded by the Copernican system.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ptolemaic" Quotes from Famous Books



... of astronomy, except of some meagre ideas derived through the Arabs from the Ptolemaic system, and Mr. Newbold, after most painstaking research, failed to discover any regular treatise on astronomy, though Arabic and Hindu tracts on interpretations of dreams, horoscopes, spells, propitious and unpropitious moments, auguries, talismans, love philters, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... Heredity includes savagery and culture, health and disease, empire and serfdom, hope and despair. Each man can say: "In me rise impulses that ran riot in the veins of Anak, that belonged to Libyan slaves and to the Ptolemaic line. I am Aryan and Semite, Roman and Teuton: alike I have known the galley and the palm-set court of kings. Under a thousand shifting generations, there was rising the combination that I to-day am. In me culminates, for my life's ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown

... of intelligent interest attaches to the first three lines if one has no knowledge beyond the literal meaning of the phrases! "The hollow round of Cynthia's seat" has beauty for that person only who knows something of the Ptolemaic system of astronomy and of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... wonderful progress was made in astronomy. Copernicus, a German or Polish priest (1473-1543), detected the error of the Ptolemaic system, which made not the sun, but the earth, the center of the solar system. Thus a revolution was made in that science. Tycho Brahe, a Danish astronomer (1546-1601), was a most accurate and indefatigable ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... is easy enough. But some may feel that there is more plausibility in the case that has been set up for the connection between Canticles and another type of love song, the Idylls of Theocritus, the Sicilian poet whose Greek compositions gave lyric distinction to the Ptolemaic court at Alexandria, about the middle of the third century B.C.E. It is remarkable how reluctant some writers are to admit originality in ideas. Such writers seem to recognize no possibility other than supposing Theocritus ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams

... prepare the way for another race, which is to succeed. They "blow the trumpet, and give out the play." And they must be contented to perish before the brighter knowledge, of which their efforts were but the harbingers. The Ptolemaic system gave way to Tycho Brahe, and his to that of Copernicus. The vortices of Descartes perished before the discoveries of Newton; and the philosophy of Newton already begins to grow old, and is found to have weak and decaying ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... and elsewhere in the 2nd Book, Tertull. adv. Valent. in several passages. Moreover, Irenaeus still treated the first 8 Ptolemaic aeons with more respect than the 22 following, because here at least there was some appearance of a Biblical foundation. In confuting the doctrine of aeons he incidentally raised several questions (II. 17. 2), which Church theologians discussed ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... centre"; and Hymn Nat. 162, "The aged Earth ... Shall from the surface to the centre shake." Sometimes the word 'centre' was used of the Earth itself, the fixed centre of the whole universe according to the Ptolemaic system. The idea here conveyed, however, is not that of immovability (as in Par. Reg. iv. 534, "as a centre firm") ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton

... his wife, who was also his sister, and a son who was yet a child. This son was properly the heir to the crown. Physcon himself, being a brother, had no claim, as against a son. The name of the queen was Cleopatra. This was, in fact, a very common name among the princesses of the Ptolemaic line. Cleopatra, besides her son, had a daughter, who was at this time a young and beautiful girl. Her name was also Cleopatra. She was, of course, the niece, as her mother ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott

... Joshua commanded the Sun to stand still, not the Earth. The scholarly Melanchthon, himself an astronomer, thought the book so godless that he recommended its suppression (Dannemann, Grundriss). The church was too much involved in the Ptolemaic system to accept any change and it was not until 1822 that the works of Copernicus were ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler

... as the Ptolemaic System, remained the standard authority in astronomy to the end of the Middle Ages, while his geography was accepted until the era of the great discoveries opened in the fifteenth century. Ptolemy is thought to have been born in Egypt, and it is impossible to say what ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill

... the Earth, Moon, Sun, and planets were manifest; and the hypothesis was that their motions might be due to their attracting one another with a force inversely proportional to the squares of the distances between them. In the Ptolemaic Astronomy, again, there was an hypothesis as to the collocation of the heavenly bodies (namely, that our Earth was the centre of the universe, and that Moon, Sun, planets and stars revolved around her): in the early form of the system there was also ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... this, adds: "During the whole classic period of Egyptian history with few exceptions (such, for example, as the reign of that great innovator, Amenophis IV) the ideal alike for the male and the female body was a slender and but slightly developed form. Under the Ethiopian rule and during the Ptolemaic period in Egypt itself we find, for the first time, that the goddesses are represented with plump and well-developed outlines. Examination of the mummies shows that the earlier ideal was based upon actual facts, and that in ancient ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... ritual observances which we here, most of us at least, do not think essential for our soul's safety. But mistakes like these are hurtful only when persisted in in the face of fuller truth, after truth has been discovered. Only a very foolish man would now uphold the Ptolemaic astronomy. But the Ptolemaic astronomy, when first invented, was based on real if incomplete observations, and formed a groundwork without which further progress in that science would have been probably impossible. ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... temple of the Ogress. These stones which now appear, whitish in the night, this secret-looking dwelling near the boundary wall of Thebes, proclaim the spot, and verily at such an hour as this it has an evil aspect. Ptolemaic columns, little vestibules, little courtyards where a dim blue light enables you to find your way. Nothing moves; not even the flight of a night bird: an absolute silence, magnified awfully by the presence of the desert which you feel encompasses you beyond these ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... each outer sphere moving more slowly than its inner neighbour, while the ninth, moving most slowly of all, moved all the rest; last of all, the empyrean, blessed with changeless, motionless perfection, the abode of God—such was the Ptolemaic astronomy as Dante knew it. This idealization of changelessness was the common property of all that by gone world. The Holy Roman Empire was the endeavour to perpetuate a changeless idea of political theory and organization; the Holy Catholic Church was the ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick

... himself. These difficulties are seen at their worst in the very earthly geography of heaven and its very unheavenly military operations: and, interesting as the passages are, it is difficult to forget the incongruity of Raphael and Adam discussing the Ptolemaic and Copernican theories of the universe, or Adam moralizing on the unhappiness of marriage as if he had studied the divorce reports or gone through a course of modern novels. Yet few and foolish are the readers who can dwell on dramatic improbabilities when ...
— Milton • John Bailey

... was known but the name, and making experiments in it had been forbidden by the Inquisition. Le Gentil also strongly suspected that the professor of Mathematics at the Jesuit College still held to the Ptolemaic system. [128] ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair

... justice to the genius and perseverance of Ptolemy, by demonstrating that although mistaken in adopting some of the fallacious statements of his predecessors, he has availed himself of better data by which to fix the position of Ceylon; so that the western coast in the Ptolemaic map coincides with the modern Ceylon in the vicinity of Colombo. Mr. COOLEY, in his learned work on Claudius Ptolemy and the Nile, Lond. 1854, has successfully shown that whilst forced to accept those popular statements which he had no authentic data to ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... and simplified in Lelewel's Atlas. The corners of the table are filled up with four small circles representing: (1) The Ptolemaic System in the Spheres. (2) The lunar influences over the tides. (3) The circles described in the terrestial globe. (4) A picture of the expulsion from Eden, ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... them, that is, that true poetic vitality which no depth of thought, no airiness of fancy, no sincerity of feeling, can singly communicate, but which leaps throbbing at touch of that shaping faculty the imagination. Take Aristotle's ethics, the scholastic philosophy, the theology of Aquinas, the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, the small politics of a provincial city of the Middle Ages, mix in at will Grecian, Roman, and Christian mythology, and tell me what chance there is to make an immortal poem of such an incongruous mixture. ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... to an attempt to bring his own reign into connection with the policies of his great-grandfather Mark Antony. He sought to introduce into Rome the ideas, the customs, the sumptuousness, and the institutions of the Pharaoh-Ptolemaic monarchy, to make of his palace a court similar to that of Alexandria, and of himself a divine king, adored in flesh and blood, as sovereigns were adored on the ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero

... surfeit. Our delight in reason degenerates into idolatry of the herald. Especially when a mind of powerful method has instructed men, we find the examples of oppression. The dominion of Aristotle, the Ptolemaic astronomy, the credit of Luther, of Bacon, of Locke,—in religion the history of hierarchies, of saints, and the sects which have taken the name of each founder, are in point. Alas! every man is such a victim. The imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of power. It is the ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... then; but they survived in Egypt from the Egyptian Mysteries of old; and as in India you might have found men who knew about them, but not how to use them for the uplifting of the world,—so doubtless you should have found such men in Egypt during the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. Hence the statement of Diogenes Laertius, that the Theosophy of Ammonius Saccas originated with one Pot Ammun, a priest of Ptolemaic times: who, perhaps, was one of those who transmitted the doctrine in secret. The seeds were ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... comic, and Satyric figures "in their natural garb;" and nymphs and golden tripods from Delphi. The tent was separated from the outer peristyle by scarlet hangings, covered with choice skins of wild beasts. Upon these were hung the celebrated Sikyonian pictures, the heritage of the Ptolemaic dynasty, alternating with portraits and rich hangings, on which were embroidered the likenesses of kings, and likewise mythological subjects. Between these and the frieze hung gold and silver shields. Opposite the entrance, vessels of the most costly materials and workmanship, valued ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... let me compare the advance of knowledge among mankind to the course taken by a planet. The false paths on which humanity usually enters after every important advance are like the epicycles in the Ptolemaic system, and after passing through one of them, the world is just where it was before it entered it. But the great minds, who really bring the race further on its course do not accompany it on the epicycles it makes from time to time. This explains ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer

... to which belong the remains at Beni-Hassan; (3) the period of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, when Thebes was in its glory, which is attested by the ruins of Luxor and Karnak; and (4) the Ptolemaic period, of which there are the remains at Denderah, Edfou, and Philae. The monuments that remain are almost exclusively tombs and temples. The tombs are, generally speaking, all met with on the east or right bank ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith

... the weft is single yarn. It is much to be regretted that the particulars of locality, of burial, and the period of time to which this interesting fabric belongs has been lost. I assume from the general characteristics that it is of a late period—probably not earlier than the Ptolemaic. ...
— Ancient Egyptian and Greek Looms • H. Ling Roth



Words linked to "Ptolemaic" :   geocentric, Ptolemaic system, Ptolemaic dynasty, Ptolemy



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