After Socrates’ death, his most devoted follower, Plato, founded his famous institution of higher learning, the Academy, inspired in part by the Pythagoreans. Upon challenging his colleagues to explain the motions of the planets in terms of perfect uniform circular motion, his former student Eudoxus invented the first geometric model of planetary motion. Soon after, another member of the Academy, Heracleides, proposed that the earth rotates on an axis once a day.
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S2E1: Alexandria, the Library, the Museum and Strato
After the death of Alexander the Great, the intellectual center of the Greek world shifted from Athens to Alexandria. His general and childhood friend Ptolemy built the city, along with its famous museum and library, Read more…