Quotes about Ptolemy
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Our intention in this Disme is to work all by whole numbers: for sewing that in any affairs, men reckon not of the thousandth part of a mite, grain, &c. as the like is also used of the principal Geometricians, and Astronomers, in computations of great consequence, as Ptolemy & Johannes Monta-regio have not described their Tables of Arches, Chords, or Sines, in extreme perfection (as possibly they might have done by Multinomial numbers,) because that imperfection (considering the scope and end of those Tables) is more convenient then such perfection. All the men who are now called discoverers, in every matter ruled by thought, have been men versed in the minds of their predecessors, and learned in what had been before them. There is not one exception. I do not say that every man has made direct acquaintance with the whole of his mental ancestry... But... it is remarkable how many of the greatest names in all departments of knowledge have been real antiquaries in their several subjects.
I may cite among those... in science, Aristotle, Plato, Ptolemy, Euclid, Archimedes, Roger Bacon, Copernicus, Francis Bacon, Ramus, Tycho Brahe, Galileo, Napier, Descartes, Leibnitz, Newton, Locke.