Notes on the Transmission of Ptolemy's Almagest and Some Geometrical Mechanisms to the Era of Copernicus

Abstract

We trace the transmission of Ptolemy´s Almagest from the time of its composition to Arabic translations, Latin translations, and the Epitome of the Almagest by Peurbach and Regiomontanus. Along the way, Ptolemaic astronomy and Aristotelian science acquired some new features in thirteenth-century Maragha and fourteenth-century Damascus which may or may not have been transmitted to Copernicus himself. While present evidence still indicates that Copernicus derived his geodynamic, heliocentric system on his own, we now have evidence for the transmission of some geometrical mechanisms from Asia Minor to Italy and beyond after the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453. It stands to reason that if documents by medieval scholars appeared in Western Europe, and Renaissance scholars who understood these documents traveled to Italy at the time Copernicus was there, some of these geometrical mechanisms could have found their way into Copernicus´s work.