[History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science by John William Draper]@TWC D-Link bookHistory of the Conflict Between Religion and Science CHAPTER I 61/70
For many centuries they were thrown into discredit by the authority of our existing absurd theological chronology. It is unnecessary to adduce the arguments relied upon by the Alexandrians to prove the globular form of the earth.
They had correct ideas respecting the doctrine of the sphere, its poles, axis, equator, arctic and antarctic circles, equinoctial points, solstices, the distribution of climates, etc.
I cannot do more than merely allude to the treatises on Conic Sections and on Maxima and Minima by Apollonius, who is said to have been the first to introduce the words ellipse and hyperbola.
In like manner I must pass the astronomical observations of Alistyllus and Timocharis.
It was to those of the latter on Spica Virginis that Hipparchus was indebted for his great discovery of the precession of the eqninoxes.
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