Talk:Ancient Greek astronomy

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 20 August 2018 and 7 December 2018. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): AlphaEta19, Bherv15. Peer reviewers: Historyscience.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 14:11, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Untitled
I have shamelessly cribbed a list from Greek mathematics since most astronomers at the time were mathematicians. I am not sure if some are actually astronomers but it gives a starting place for expanding, and they all have articles so are easy to check. Maestlin 04:11, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Alexandria-sagan.jpg
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BetacommandBot (talk) 18:46, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Greek names?
From the subsection The planets in early Greek Astronomy:


 * "Five planets can be seen with the naked eye: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn."

This is true; however, the names given are the Roman names, which came along considerably later. As this article concerns ancient Greek Astronomy, it would be helpful to know what names ancient Greek astronomers gave to these "wanderers". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.95.43.249 (talk) 18:45, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

Greek planetary names added
You had a point, i added the Greek planetary names — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chrysa D (talk • contribs) 17:53, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Relevant?
In view of the lack of specific references I wonder if this statement deserves to stand (misspelling and all): 'Hesiod's theogony and cosmogony are the Greek version of two Phoenician myths. The Odyssey of Homer is inspired by the Epopee of Gilgamesh. See for references the work of M.L. West et W. Burkret.'

What empire, sorry?
There's a line in the second paragraph as of today that reads, "Later, the scientific work by astronomers and mathematicians of the arbo-moslem empire, of diverse backgrounds and religions..."

I'm not sure what the 'arbo-moslem empire' is or was. My best guess would be that the writer meant 'Arab-Muslim'? I'm not confident enough to correct it myself since I'm not sure whether that would be a correct term anyway, or whether the empire being referred to would have had a more specific historical name. I would also note that although I understand the spelling 'Moslem' used to be common in English, nowadays it tends only to be used - certainly in Britain, where I am - as an anti-Islam dogwhistle. I don't want to assume such sentiments in this case as I don't know where the writer was from, or whether there are regions or communities where that spelling is still routine. But I thought it was maybe worth someone looking at it who might have a better knowledge. - Aehnne (talk) 07:36, 8 September 2022 (UTC)


 * I came here for the same purpose... gotta admit I got a belly laugh when I read it. arbo-moslem. It's almost too perfect to change (which is convenient since I too lack the knowledge to confidently replace it with anything) Theturbolemming (talk) 02:13, 3 June 2023 (UTC)
 * It's fixed now. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:44, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Unsourced sections
@Pogenplain thanks a lot for working on this article. I agree with you that it needs a lot of work. I reverted your change special:diff/1220084266 on the basis that it seemed a bit indiscriminate – just being old material without enough inline citations shouldn't be reason enough to dump entire relevant topics from Wikipedia articles in my opinion, since Wikipedia standards have changed quite a bit over time; I hope we can avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But there are almost certainly some parts in there that are questionable or misleading and should be rewritten, fact checked, copyedited, or excised. –jacobolus (t) 19:19, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Hello @jacobolus thank you for your comments here. Just to add some context, the work im adding here is following up on what ive been doing on related pages, like creating Ancient near eastern cosmology, Jewish cosmology, Early Greek cosmology, Zoroastrian cosmology and improving other pages like Babylonian astronomy, Firmament, Hexaemeron. I understand your revert so I will not dispute it. The reason as you might imagine I did it is because while yes, there are probably many truthes to the page as it is, there are probably a lot of issues as well so I personally speculated it would be easier to write it from scratch. But today I am going to put some effort into adding the inline citations and hopefully double-checking some of this content. Pogenplain (talk) 19:55, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
 * It's always hard to tell what people's plans are. A rewrite of each of these sections from scratch sounds fine to me. I'm sure they can be greatly expanded from what was there previously, and I am not trying to pressure you to keep the specific existing sentences. Often editors will dump big sections of articles and then just leave the hole behind, which I think does a disservice to readers even in cases where the previous material had issues. –jacobolus (t) 20:01, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Page redone
I have effectively rewritten the page: I checked every reference, largely redid the references/bibliography, added several new sections, and significantly restructured the page. While that will be it for now from me on this page I still want to say that much remains to be done, insofar as many important topics under the banner of ancient Greek astronomy have not been treated in the current version of the page. There should be specific sections on the influence of earlier forms of astronomy, especially Babylonian astronomy. Greek astronomy is more than just Plato, Eudoxus, Apollonius, Hipparchus, and Ptolemy. Much is to be desired from the Influence section, which only lists influence on Indian astronomy and reception of the Almagest up to late antiquity. Good luck future editors! Pogenplain (talk) 05:36, 23 April 2024 (UTC)