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present paper is a defence of Ptolemy's Almagest which is, according to the author, a brilliant treatise on theoretical astronomy combined with a practical handbook for computation. ``No doubts'', says the author, ``that the Almagest incorporated work by Ptolemy's predecessors. Even today few astronomers would start from scratch, without benefitting from a prior tradition'' which reminds on Isaac Newton's `standing on the shoulder of giants'. This is, no doubt, scientific tradition and basis: Neglecting the ideas and results of the predecessors yields a lack of understanding contemporarian standards and, worse, prevents from progress. This tradition does never give right to see Ptolemy as a plagiarist, just in contrary. The author points out that Ptolemy's opus undoubtedly incorporates a substantial core of Hipparchan material , but recent investigations strongly suggest that three quarters of the famous star catalogue could not have come directly from Hipparchus, although it is a widely spread opinion that Ptolemy mainly collected but Hipparchus' results. As the first applied mathematician with encyclopedic vision, Ptolemy stands as one of the major figures of early science. As he wrestled with errors of measurement without any error theory, he was repeatedly forced into compromises to reconcile disordant observations. Hence the Almagest is not everything we might wish it to be. This fact has been the reason for a namesake of the great Newton, Robert Newton, to state that ``astronomy would be better off if it [Ptolemy's Syntaxis] had never existed'', in a contribution with the incredible title ``The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy''. Gingerich defends Ptolemy against such a kind of modern trendsetting with one example, showing within limited space how subtle and difficult the interpretation of some aspects of the Almagest is: the ``greatest elongation'' of Venus. Ptolemy gives two differing dates in 137 a.d., 37 days apart, for it, which has been advanced to prove that Ptolemy was a fraud. However, when Ptolemy describes Venus as being at greatest elongation, he simply means that Venus is rounding the curve in such a way that the line of sight to the planet is tangent to its orbit. For just over a month Venus hovers within a degree of the greatest elongation, so that for a month the tangency requirement is met within that accuracy, which is what Ptolemy typically worked with. He clearly understood the geometry and understood that by stretching the period of greatest elongation he could get the relative placements of Venus and the earth (for him, in his geocentric model, the sun) much closer to the ideal positions he needed. Ptolemy thus demonstrated his great ingenuity in solving otherwise insoluble problems. Gingerich's contribution is brilliant in Ptolemy's defence against silly arguments.","type":"string"},"datatype":"string"},"type":"statement","id":"Q3147188$B8F27654-B3B2-42F3-A015-41247D9EAA45","rank":"normal"}]},"sitelinks":{"mardi":{"site":"mardi","title":"The Trouble with Ptolemy","badges":[],"url":"https://portal.mardi4nfdi.de/wiki/The_Trouble_with_Ptolemy"}}}}}