scientific Greek astronomers who succeeded him) the spheres were mere geometrical figures, useful as a means of resolving highly complicated motions into simpler elements. Eudoxus was also the first Greek recorded to have had an observatory, which was at Cnidus, but we have few details as to the instruments used or as to the observations made. We owe, however, to him the first systematic description of the constellations (see below, § 42), though it was probably based, to a large extent, on rough observations borrowed from his Greek predecessors or from the Egyptians. He was also an accomplished mathematician, and skilled in various other branches of learning.
Shortly afterwards Callippus (§ 20) further developed Eudoxus's scheme of revolving spheres by adding, for reasons not known to us, two spheres each for the sun and moon and one each for Venus, Mercury, and Mars, thus bringing the total number up to 34.
27. We have a tolerably full account of the astronomical views of Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), both by means of incidental references, and by two treatises—the Meteorologica and the De Coelo—though another book of his, dealing specially with the subject, has unfortunately been lost. He adopted the planetary scheme of Eudoxus and Callippus, but imagined on "metaphysical grounds" that the spheres would have certain disturbing effects on one another, and to counteract these found it necessary to add 22 fresh spheres, making 56 in all. At the same time he treated the spheres as material bodies, thus converting an ingenious and beautiful geometrical scheme into a confused mechanism.[1] Aristotle's spheres were, however, not adopted by the leading Greek astronomers who succeeded him, the systems of Hipparchus and Ptolemy being geometrical schemes based on ideas more like those of Eudoxus.
28. Aristotle, in common with other philosophers of his time, believed the heavens and the heavenly bodies to be spherical. In the case of the moon he supports this belief by the argument attributed to Pythagoras (§ 23), namely that the observed appearances of the moon in its several
- ↑ Confused, because the mechanical knowledge of the time was quite unequal to giving any explanation of the way in which these spheres acted on one another.
