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Ptolemaic system
noun
- a system elaborated by Ptolemy and subsequently modified by others, according to which the earth was the fixed center of the universe, with the heavenly bodies moving about it.
Ptolemaic system
noun
- the theory of planetary motion developed by Ptolemy from the hypotheses of earlier philosophers, stating that the earth lay at the centre of the universe with the sun, the moon, and the known planets revolving around it in complicated orbits. Beyond the largest of these orbits lay a sphere of fixed stars See also epicycle Compare Copernican system
Ptolemaic system
/ ŏ′ə-′ĭ /
- The astronomical system of Ptolemy, in which Earth is at the center of the universe and all celestial bodies revolve around it. The Sun, Moon, and planets revolve at different levels in circular orbits, and the stars lie in fixed locations on a sphere that revolves beyond these orbits.
- See more at epicycle
51Թ History and Origins
Origin of Ptolemaic system1
Example Sentences
In the beginning of the seventeenth century, another astrologer-monk, Johannes Kepler, refined Copernicus’s theory, making it even more accurate than the Ptolemaic system.
The thing that most worried him about the Ptolemaic system, typified by the puzzle of the Moon, was the business of equants.
No competent astronomer defended the traditional Ptolemaic system once they had heard that Venus had a full set of phases; you had to be an ill-informed philosopher to do so.
For a thousand years the Ptolemaic system was believed all round the world.
The Ptolemaic system was too strongly intrenched, and the motions of all the bodies in the sky were too well represented by it.
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