A Case Study of How Natural Phenomena Were Justified in Medieval Science

The Situation of Annular Eclipses in Medieval Astronomy

Bibliographic Data

ID4829940
AuthorsMohammad Mozaffari (0000-0002-7748-5814), S Mohammad Mozaffari (0000-0001-8677-8718, Research Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics of Maragh, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume27
Issue1
Pages33-47
Publication date2014-03-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueScience in Context (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0269-8897 • E-ISSN: 1474-0664
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0269889713000379
OpenAlexW2099547299
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited19

ArgumentThe present paper is an attempt to understand how medieval astronomers working within the Ptolemaic astronomical context in which the annular eclipse is an unjustified and impossible phenomenon, could know, define, justify, and later make attempts that led to success in predicting annular solar eclipses. As a context-based study, it reviews the situation of annular eclipses with regard to the medieval hypotheses applied to the calculation of the angular diameters of the sun and the moon, which was basic for contemplating the possibility of annular eclipses. This gives the premises and the preliminary insights that were necessary to clarify the complex situation of the annular eclipse in the late medieval Islamic period and to explain the historical mechanisms leading to justifying the phenomenon during that period. This was, first due to a convincing and efficient observational evidence which, of course, was available only to a number of medieval astronomers and significantly for only a limited time period, and, second, the result of an amazing interaction amongst various astronomical traditions available to them. At a more general level, the research aims to inspect or, at least, to give some impressions of the essential conditions, i.e., identification of phenomenon, empirical evidence, and the justifying underlying tradition, under which it became possible in the tradition-based science of the `medieval period to permit a not-already-defined and tradition-opposed phenomenon to be posed and justified

Aesthetics · Ancient history · Archaeology · Astronomy · Eclipse · Epistemology · Experimental science · Islam · Middle Ages · Natural phenomenon · Natural Philosophy · Phenomenon · Physics · Solar eclipse · Classics · Diverse Historical and Scientific Studies · Historical Astronomy and Related Studies · Historical Philosophy and Science · History · Philosophy

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