hckrnws

I have had the experience of serendipitous discovery when researching relatively recent history. To find Galileo’s handwriting 400 years later, effectively engaging in both agreement and debate with Ptolemy through the latter’s work… even though he specifically was looking for it, it still must have been surreal.

> even though he specifically was looking for it

The historian was looking for conceptual connections between Ptolemy and Galileo, but the discovery of Galileo’s handwriting in Ptolemy’s book seemed to be a surprise.

I interpreted the fact that he was reviewing multiple copies of the same text as him searching for Galileo’s notes, but I suppose it’s possible that the motivation was the possibility of discrepancies between printings.

Owen Gingerich was a historian of astronomy who did a census of printed early editions of Copernicus' book De revolutionibus. He found a tradition of students copying annotations from teachers readings into their own copies of the book. I recollect that he was able to trace various traditions of commentary each stemming from a well known astronomy teacher.

I suppose that checking early printings of key works looking for annotations is a pretty standard thing to do now.

The Almagest was hand written about 1400 years before Galileo lived, so it's not so much looking at different printings as at different editions that are based on different set of copies of the copies of the copies etc, further many editors would try to "fix" the ancient work, removing material they didn't like and adding their own stuff or material from other works... it can get very messy.

> I have had the experience of serendipitous discovery when researching relatively recent history.

I would really love to hear about this. (:

Nothing all that exciting, just pleasure from finding a photo in a local newspaper of my great-great-grandfather’s (approximately, I don’t remember the specifics at the moment) car being pulled by horses out of a local river, or researching a family name I found in a cemetery and finding interesting tidbits about their history.

Probably the most impressive effort I stumbled upon was a woman from rural Indiana who collected (and typed up) thousands of pages of local history & genealogy in the mid-20th century. Was interesting reading personal accounts of Morgan’s Raid, for example.

It’s unbelievable how that 16th century book looks like it is written in LaTeX. Or plain TeX, probably, given its age XD

Not that surprising if you consider that books before the Gutenberg printing press were artisans work of art that required years of work of specialists.

In other words: Today some of those will cost more than a Ferrari to make. They use Vellum paper that is much better that today's but require killing hundreds of animals each.

Only very rich people could afford that. I had access to European books collections of the 16th that are in Color, much much better than any normal book we have.

If you think about that it is normal. Color require more printing plates in a printer, but just changing your ink if you do it manually.

> They use Vellum paper that is much better that today's but require killing hundreds of animals each.

Yes, but also, it's more of byproduct. You raise sheep for wool, they're going to lamb every year, you eat most of the lambs, someone buys some of the skins to turn onto vellum.

The processing to produce vellum would be expensive, and not something every shepherd would be making at home, but the input sheepskin would be plentiful.

Not at all surprising. There were some "unshakable truths" in typesetting that basically held up from Gutenberg until the Internet came along. Knuth (partly through his friend Zapf) is well aware of them and respected them in TeX.

It's relatively recent that we've found out some of these "universal" rules might not have been so important all along and together with technology as another factor things changed.

It's not unlikely that Donald Knuth looked at examples of 16th Century typesetting when he came to design TeX. Or looked at examples of typesetting that had been influenced by 16th Century typsetting.

He studied them diligently. His book Digital Typography gives lengthy accounts of his research and includes photographs and examples of how he chose various aspects.

Really? Because what TeX did was make it possible to write "proper" books or formal texts via a computer - that was the whole point

A 16th-century formal book like this would be the gold standard to replicate if you want to make "serious" texts. And yes, in scientific literature, the "serious" text is a narrow target and far narrower than you might expect from the possible variation in a handmade artisanal work. Mostly because when everything is "custom", standardization and regular structure is exceptional

That's not "ancient". That word often means thousand(s) of years ago.

>The pages belonged to The Almagest, in which second century polymath Claudius Ptolemy described his vision of an Earth-centered cosmos.

Where's the article wrong?

Galileos notes where found in a 16th century print of The Almagest.

If you copy the pythagorean theorem onto a page and cross it out, would you be "defacing an ancient text"?

I clicked just to make this same pedantic comment, fellow traveller.

pedantry works best when correct.

"Ancient history is a time period from the beginning of writing and recorded human history through late antiquity."

Perhaps you are mixing up "ancient" and "prehistoric".

Galileo lived in the 16th century. Late antiquity ends around the end of the Western Roman Empire I think, which was before 500AD!?

But the text his notes were found in is ancient

No it isn’t, unless you date reprints to first edition publication.

Fun facts, the patron of Almagest Abassid Caliph Al-Ma'mun was also the founder of Baitul Hikmah in Baghdad that was aggressively translating important foreign manuscripts due to weight gold equivalence for Greek/Indian/etc manucsripts translation compensation [1],[2].

According to history, the Caliph once back off his plan of conquering Constantinople (that were later achieved by Ottoman Caliph Fatih) due the Roman (Byzantine) offered him an offer he cannot refused, the original copy of Ptolemy Almagest as important part of the truce arrangements. He certainly capable of overcoming and conquering the Constatinople since during his time, Afghanistan was conquered under Islamic rule for hundred of years that modern Russia and USA cannot achieved. The fact that his mother Marajil, was a princess originally from Afghanistan. This is where the popular saying that asserted only Afghanistan people can conquer Afghanistan. Point in case, the most recent Afghanistan conqurer was Mughal Empire, who was originated from Indian sub-continent Afghanistan. During his time, Al-Khwarizmi published his infamous Algebra book namely Kitāb al-Mukhtaṣar fī Ḥisāb al-Jabr wal-Muqābalah (The Concise Book of Calculation by Restoration and Balancing), where we got the word algebra, and from his name Al-Khwarizmi now we have the word "algorithm" [2].

In addition to having translation Baitul Hikmah in Baghdad, Iraq and in other Islamic knowledge center in Toledo Spain (before fall to Spanish Christian and started the European Renaissance), the Islamic civilization also engaged in contributing to science, math, astronomy, etc. Al-Haitham (Alhazen), the founder of optics, and he's also the founder of modern scientific methodology [3].

Having said that, there several Islamic astronomers (Arab/Persian/etc) already proposing against the geocentric idea that most probably that was inspired Galileo. I think he most probably did not come with the original idea of heliocentric model and the Islamic astromoners mosy probably have proposed it before Galileo, but he failed to credit them properly as normally practiced by European scientists at the time.

[1] al-Ma'mun:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ma%27mun

[2] Graeco-Arabic translation movement:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeco-Arabic_translation_move...

[3] Ibn al-Haytham:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Haytham

There are a number of factual mistakes, misleading/unclear statements and speculation in your "fun facts".

Al-Ma'mun failed to conquer Byzantium and died while preparing his next attempt to do so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ma'mun

He cannot possibly have been the patron of the Almagest as Ptolemy lived centuries before he did. Maybe you mean of a translation.

Everyone knows Galileo did not originate a heliocentric model, because he was promoting the Copernican model.

Heliocentric models had been proposed by ancient Greeks, but the Copernican model was a huge advance. There is big difference between just speculating that the sun was the centre of the the universe and an actual mathematical mode.

There is a lot more to the scientific method than al-Haytham's minor contribution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

Beyond the facts corrected by other user, graemep, the translator school was in fact established after the christian kingdom of Castile conquer the city of Toledo, and the king Alfonso X [1], actually is what is studied as main promoter of it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo_School_of_Translator

Then, first heliocentrism with some approximations of size and distance, as far as I know was Aristarchus of Samos, but there is not much that we know about it. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_of_Samos

> Al-Khwarizmi published his infamous algebra book

Math can be hard, but calling that book "infamous" is a bit too much... /s

Not particularly important, but the title adding "handwritten" implies that they had non-handwritten notes too...

Or it implies they were handwritten by Galileo himself vs his words written by someone rlse

Dictated? Transcribed?

He who is valiant and pure of spirit will find the holy grail in the castle of aaaeeerrrrr...

What a wild find. Good for the historian.

Galileo Galilei, and yet people still refer to him by his firstname alone. It's painful to read.

It is, as if we refer to Isaac and Albert when speaking about Gravity and Relativity.

In Italy it's extremely usual to refer to the greatests of the great people of those ages by their given name: Leonardo, Galileo, Dante, Michelangelo. It's testament to their greatness. There is only one Dante that matters, so there is no need to add Alighieri but if you do nobody notices anything strange. It's only a bit redundant. Using only the surname would be unusual.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei#Name

Surnames are optional in Italy at that time. Galileo is how he refers to himself and how people refer to him.

His name works like "Bostoner from Boston", so it was reasonable for him at the time to refer to himself as just Bostoner.

I have always been intrigued by the similarity of Italian naming conventions and that of the Arabs and Persians.

Resident of, son of, father of, family of. Leonardo of Pisa of the family of Bonacci being another well known one.

I suppose it is not specific to those cultures and was a more widespread convention.

There are many Isaacs and Alberts. How many notable Galileo(s, not to use Galilei) do we have?