那是阿基米德自己的想法.
阿基米德認(rèn)為地球是圓球狀的,并圍繞著太陽旋轉(zhuǎn),這一觀點(diǎn)比哥白尼的“日心地動(dòng)說”要早一千八百年.限于當(dāng)時(shí)的條件,他并沒有就這個(gè)問題做深入系統(tǒng)的研究.
在古代希臘,思想是非常開放和自由的,阿基米德增經(jīng)用球體模擬出過月食和日食.所以他認(rèn)為地球是圓的!
The Sandreckoner is a remarkable work in which Archimedes proposes a number system capable of expressing numbers up to 8 1063in modern notation.He argues in this work that this number is large enough to count the number of grains of sand which could be fitted into the universe.There are also important historical remarks in this work,for Archimedes has to give the dimensions of the universe to be able to count the number of grains of sand which it could contain.He states that Aristarchus has proposed a system with the sun at the centre and the planets,including the Earth,revolving round it.In quoting results on the dimensions he states results due to Eudoxus,Phidias (his father),and to Aristarchus.There are other sources which mention Archimedes' work on distances to the heavenly bodies.For example in [59] Osborne reconstructs and discusses:-
...a theory of the distances of the heavenly bodies ascribed to Archimedes,but the corrupt state of the numerals in the sole surviving manuscript [due to Hippolytus of Rome,about 220 AD] means that the material is difficult to handle.
從這段外國(guó)文獻(xiàn)資料來看,阿基米德應(yīng)該已經(jīng)初步察覺到宇宙是一個(gè)system,并且有heavenly bodies的意識(shí),雖然他并沒有遺留下手稿,而他所指出的Earth并不指地球,但大概是陸地的意思.我認(rèn)為阿基米德是想表達(dá)的Earth是指人類生存的大陸而不一定是地球這個(gè)球體.