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    Janos, Damien 2011. MOVING THE ORBS: ASTRONOMY, PHYSICS, AND METAPHYSICS, AND THE PROBLEM OF CELESTIAL MOTION ACCORDING TO IBN SĪNĀ. Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, Vol. 21, Issue. 02, p. 165.

    Acerbi, Fabio 2010. Two Approaches to Foundations in Greek Mathematics: Apollonius and Geminus. Science in Context, Vol. 23, Issue. 02, p. 151.

    Eastwood, Bruce Stansfield 2001. Johannes Scottus Eriugena, Sun-Centred Planets, and Carolingian Astronomy. Journal for the History of Astronomy, Vol. 32, Issue. 4, p. 281.

    S. Hetherington, Norriss 1996. Plato and Eudoxus: Instrumentalists, realists, or prisoners of themata?. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, Vol. 27, Issue. 2, p. 271.

    Gross, Charles G. 1995. Aristotle on the Brain. The Neuroscientist, Vol. 1, Issue. 4, p. 245.

    Cleary, John J. 1994. Phainomenain Aristotle's methodology. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, Vol. 2, Issue. 1, p. 61.

    Ragep, F. Jamil 1990. Duhem, the Arabs, and the history of cosmology. Synthese, Vol. 83, Issue. 2, p. 201.

    Biagioli, Mario 1990. The anthropology of incommensurability. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, Vol. 21, Issue. 2, p. 183.

    Jardine, Nicholas 1982. The Significance of the Copernican ORBS. Journal for the History of Astronomy, Vol. 13, Issue. 3, p. 168.

    Mourelatos, Alexander P.D. 1981. Astronomy and kinematics in Plato's project of rationalist explanation. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, Vol. 12, Issue. 1, p. 1.

    Jardine, Nicholas 1979. The forging of modern realism: Clavius and Kepler against the sceptics. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, Vol. 10, Issue. 2, p. 141.

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Saving the Appearances

  • G. E. R. Lloyd (a1)
Abstract

‘Saving the appearances’, , is a slogan that, in its time, stood or was made to stand for many different methodological positions in many different branches of ancient natural science. It is not my aim, in this paper, to attempt to tackle the subject as a whole. I shall concentrate on just one inquiry, astronomy. Nor, with astronomy, can I do justice to all the complexities of what was certainly one of the central methodological issues, if not the central issue, in the history of ancient theoretical astronomy. I have a quite limited aim, to examine the foundations, and test the applicability, of a widespread and influential line of interpretation of ancient Greek astronomy according to which it was essentially, or at least predominantly, what we may call ‘instrumentalist’ in character—that is, broadly speaking, that Greek astronomical theories were devices or fictions put forward purely for the sake of calculations with no claims to correspond with physical reality.

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COPYRIGHT: © The Classical Association 1978
References
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