Cleomedes and the Measurement of the Earth: A Question of Procedures

Bowen, Alan C.

doi:10.1111/j.1600-0498.2003.450106.x

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…3). This very simple process is challenged by some historians and philosophers (Goldstein 1984;Bowen 2008). However, if the scaphe has been used, it seems very unlikely that the surface of a scaphe would have been devided in fiftieths.…”

Section: Historical Elementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implementing Eratosthenes’ Discovery in the Classroom: Educational Difficulties Needing Attention

Décamp¹,

Hosson

2010

Sci & Educ

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International audienceThis paper presents a critical analysis of the accepted educational use of the method performed by Eratosthenes to measure the circumference of Earth which is often considered as a relevant means of dealing with issues related to the nature of science and its history. This method relies on a number of assumptions among which the parallelism of sun rays. The assumption of sun rays parallelism (if it is accurate) does not appear spontaneous for students who consider sun rays to be divergent. Here, we propose an educational reconstruction of Eratosthenes' discovery based on the exploitation of a narrative written by Cleomedes during the first century AD. This implies that the students are involved in an elaboration of parallelism by an approach where the notion of ''approxi-mation'' remains central

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Section: Historical Elementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implementing Eratosthenes’ Discovery in the Classroom: Educational Difficulties Needing Attention

Décamp¹,

Hosson

2010

Sci & Educ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Book 2 covered Eratosthenes' theories about the shape of the Earth and the inhabited world. The precise contents and arrangement of the book cannot be known, as it is difficult to extricate the mathematical material that may have appeared here from Eratosthenes' On Measurement of Earth [see also Bowen 2003], a mathematically simplified précis of which may have been included in Geog. 2.…”

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confidence: 99%