In all of the surviving accounts what we are missing is any information on the actual development of the solar theory, with the result that there are numerous unanswered questions, e.g. how were the season lengths determined. This creates a noticeable shortcoming in what we would like to understand about the history of ancient mathematical astronomy. It seems therefore appropriate and useful to try and piece together what we can of the otherwise lost solar history of actual model development, basing our efforts on whatever attested material we can find, supplemented with informed and plausible speculation. At least for the four episodes discussed below there is enough attested source material to support the idea that each episode might have actually happened. Whether any of the episodes is ever confirmed depends largely on whether or not any new source material is discovered, an event that unfortunately does not happen often.
...MoreDescription On evidence for solar theories different from that of Hipparchus.
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