Pacing back and forth in the open space, Ptolemy thought,
“I don’t like the way things are done. So called experts ponder about the known world instead of being scientific about it. I’m sure the world is much bigger than we think. I will make a change. As accurately as I can, I will measure and record coastlines, cities and mountains. It’s time to legitimize things, and I think I will call this new field Geography.”
It’s doubtful that things unfolded that way, but who knows, the scene could have played out like the one described above.
Name: Claudius Ptolemaeus of Alexandria
Birth Date: AD 100 – 170
Job Functions: Mathematician, Astronomer, Astrologer & Geographer
Fields: Astronomy and Geography
Known As: Father of Geography
Problem: People would get together and philosophise about the extent of the discovered world, but no one had ever taken the time to document the information.
Solution: Ptolemy thought that he would talk to sailors and other ancient travellers and develop a systematic way to document their observations about their travels.
Journey
Not much is known about the man Ptolemy, but he was a Greek astronomer, astrologer & geographer from the second century. Many of his books were destroyed, so some of that knowledge is lost to us. We cannot map his life, but we can certainly map some of his accomplishments. And some historians recreated Ptolemy’s life based on his surviving works.
During the second century, it was an innovative concept for him to try to accurately measure and record coastlines, cities and mountains. He developed standards for practical geography to assess the evidence. As an experimental thinker, his role was to collect and preserve scientific thought and develop his own theories. He gathered, assessed and combined knowledge, which is a technique that is still relevant today.
Ptolemy mapped places using mathematical coordinates, an early form of longitude and latitude. Many of his figures were far off, which is not indicative of his mathematical calculations, but instead due to the source of the data. Since he relied on the observations and estimates provided by ancient travellers, it is understandable why his figures could be unreliable.
Another reason for unreliable figures could arise from scholars copying and improving on Ptolemy’s work over the years, so who knows what really happened, and who introduced errors. According to Jon Balchin in Quantum Leaps: 100 Scientists Who Changed the World, “[Ptolemy’s] genius lay in his ability to distil, and summarise the important findings of his predecessors, then add to or provide ‘scientific’ proof of their theories from an all-encompassing viewpoint.”
Claudius Ptolemaeus’ best known works are Geographia (8-Volume) and The Almagest (1-Volume) which dominated the fields of geography and astronomy for about fourteen centuries.
Key Lessons
- Set standards by which to judge things, and also to take things up a notch.
- You don’t have to be one who follows the status quo.
- You shouldn’t be ashamed if you fail, but you should be ashamed if you fail to try.
- Look at what’s been done before and don’t reinvent the wheel.
- There are always ways to improve a process, product or service
Sources Referenced
- Biographical Dictionary of Science
- Encyclopedia of World Biography
- American Council of Learned Societies: Dictionary of Scientific Biography
- Quantum Leaps: 100 Scientists Who Changed the World
- Books That Changed The World: The 50 Most Influential Books in History
