A Dictionary of General Knowledge; Or, an Explanation of Words and Things Connected with All the Arts and Sciences; Illustrated with Numerous Wood C (English, French, Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1830 edition. Excerpt: ...attempted to measure the circumference of the earth; Ctesibius invented water pumps; Hero of Alexandria, clepsydrae; Theodosius, who lived in the first century of the Christian aera, wrote a treatise on the sphere, which was one of the first on spherical trigonometry. After an interval of three or fonr centuries from the time of Theodosius, we meet with the names of Pappus the commentator of Apollonius, Theon, the commentator of Ptolemy, and of Proolus another commentator on the ancient mathematicians. The destruction of the library of Alexandria by the Saracens was very fatal to the cultivation of geometry, which had flourished there more than any where else: all the geometricians from every part had assembled there, and when driven away they were deprived both of their book s and instruments. It is not surprising, therefore, that the study of geometry was for many centuries almost entirely forgotten amidst the troubles which desolated all Europe on the irruption of the northern tribes. The Arabs, who by the ravages they committed at Alexandria had done the most injury to the science of geometry, were, after the lapse of two centuries, the cultivators of that which they had nearly annihilated. They studied the works of the Greeks, and showed their proficiency in the correctuess of their comments on these wri tings. Whilst the Arabs were thus promoting the cause of science generally, Europe remained in a state of comparative barbarism, nor was the study of geometry revived among the Europeans before the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when by the translations of the ancient writings, the taste for geometry became very general among the thinking part of the community. In the following century there arose mathematicians who added very...