Simplicius on the Planets and Their Motions
Auteur: Alan C. Bowen
Nombre de pages: 329 pages
ISBN: 9004227083, 9789004227088
Edition: Brill
Date de publication: Brill
Description: Though the digression closing Simplicius commentary on Aristotle s "De caelo" 2.12 has long been misread as a history of early Greek planetary theory, it is in fact a creative reading of Aristotle to maintain the authority of the "De caelo" as a sacred text in Late Platonism and to refute the polemic mounted by the Christian, John Philoponus. This book shows that the critical question forced on Simplicius was whether his school s acceptance of Ptolemy s planetary hypotheses entailed a rejection of Aristotle s argument that the heavens are made of a special matter that moves by nature in a circle about the center of the cosmos and, thus, a repudiation of the thesis that the cosmos is uncreated and everlasting.