Geography
Geographike Hyphegesis
The entire known world can be mapped onto a single mathematical grid of latitude and longitude, projected systematically from a sphere onto a flat surface, turning geography from a descriptive art into a coordinate-based mathematical science.
- coordinate-based mathematical cartography
- map projection from sphere to flat surface
- an underestimated earth influencing Columbus's voyage
- recovery through Byzantine and Latin translation
- dominant cartographic framework through the sixteenth century
Ptolemy's Geography, composed shortly after the Almagest, catalogues the coordinates of roughly eight thousand locations across the known world from Britain to China, and explains the mathematical projections needed to represent a sphere on a flat map. Ptolemy's underlying map contained serious errors, notably a significant underestimate of the earth's circumference and an overestimate of Asia's eastward extent, distortions historians credit with encouraging Columbus's confidence that a westward Atlantic crossing to Asia was shorter than it proved to be. Recovered through Byzantine and Latin translation in the fifteenth century, it became the dominant cartographic framework in Europe through the sixteenth century.
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