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87-501: Castlecary ( / ˌ k ɑː s ə l ˈ k ɛər i / ) is a small historic village in North Lanarkshire , Scotland , directly adjacent to the border with Falkirk . It has long been associated with infrastructure , being adjacent to a bridged river , a Roman fort and roads, a nationwide canal , a Victorian railway viaduct, and a modern motorway . Castlecary is close to the town of Cumbernauld but like Dullatur and Luggiebank

174-417: A perfect fourth ) and octaves . Ptolemy reviewed standard (and ancient, disused ) musical tuning practice of his day, which he then compared to his own subdivisions of the tetrachord and the octave , which he derived experimentally using a monochord / harmonic canon. The volume ends with a more speculative exposition of the relationships between harmony, the soul ( psyche ), and the planets ( harmony of

261-601: A Roman citizen, but was ethnically either a Greek or at least a Hellenized Egyptian. Astronomy was the subject to which Ptolemy devoted the most time and effort; about half of all the works that survived deal with astronomical matters, and even others such as the Geography and the Tetrabiblos have significant references to astronomy. Ptolemy's Mathēmatikē Syntaxis ( Greek : Μαθηματικὴ Σύνταξις , lit.   ' Mathematical Systematic Treatise ' ), better known as

348-471: A Tuath ) is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland . It borders the north-east of the Glasgow City council area and contains many of Glasgow's suburbs, commuter towns , and villages. It also borders East Dunbartonshire , Falkirk , Stirling , South Lanarkshire , and West Lothian . The council area covers parts of the historic counties of Dunbartonshire , Lanarkshire , and Stirlingshire . The council

435-470: A coherent mathematical description, which persists to the present as just intonation – the standard for comparison of consonance in the many other, less-than exact but more facile compromise tuning systems. During the Renaissance , Ptolemy's ideas inspired Kepler in his own musings on the harmony of the world ( Harmonice Mundi , Appendix to Book V). The Optica ( Koine Greek : Ὀπτικά ), known as

522-463: A further 179 injured. A memorial was installed in the memorial garden in the village on 30 August 2008. The Castlecary Rail Crash of 9 September 1968 is also commemorated there. There is little beyond housing in the village today. The Castlecary House Hotel is a well-known business in the village and was up for sale in 2016. The hotel is in a central location, sited to the west of the M80 motorway and south of

609-402: A handful of places. Ptolemy's real innovation, however, occurs in the second part of the book, where he provides a catalogue of 8,000 localities he collected from Marinus and others, the biggest such database from antiquity. About 6 300 of these places and geographic features have assigned coordinates so that they can be placed in a grid that spanned the globe. Latitude was measured from

696-492: A long exposition on the relationship between reason and sense perception in corroborating theoretical assumptions. After criticizing the approaches of his predecessors, Ptolemy argues for basing musical intervals on mathematical ratios (as opposed to the ideas advocated by followers of Aristoxenus ), backed up by empirical observation (in contrast to the excessively theoretical approach of the Pythagoreans ). Ptolemy introduces

783-587: A merger of the districts of Cumbernauld and Kilsyth , Monklands , Motherwell and the Chryston area from Strathkelvin district (the rest of which went to East Dunbartonshire ). For lieutenancy purposes, North Lanarkshire straddles the Lanarkshire and Dunbartonshire lieutenancies, with the area generally north of Luggie Water (including Cumbernauld and Kilsyth) coming under the Dunbartonshire lieutenancy and

870-587: A method for specifying the location of the Sun in three pairs of locally oriented coordinate arcs as a function of the declination of the Sun, the terrestrial latitude, and the hour. The key to the approach is to represent the solid configuration in a plane diagram that Ptolemy calls the analemma . In another work, the Phaseis ( Risings of the Fixed Stars ), Ptolemy gave a parapegma , a star calendar or almanac , based on

957-461: A much later pseudepigraphical composition. The identity and date of the actual author of the work, referred to now as Pseudo-Ptolemy , remains the subject of conjecture. Ptolemy wrote a work entitled Harmonikon ( Greek : Ἁρμονικόν ), known as the Harmonics , on music theory and the mathematics behind musical scales in three books. Harmonics begins with a definition of harmonic theory, with

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1044-454: A pair of small shoes suggesting there were children onsite. The National Scottish Museums also list a cornu mouthpiece , a glass cup fragment, an iron claw hammer, a wooden spatula and two sculpted stones. One stone identifies the 'sixth cohort, the century of Antonius Aratus'. In the 21st century a treasure trove of a lion's head was discovered at Castlecary. The site in relation to the Red Burn ,

1131-543: A temple at Canopus , around 146–147 AD, known as the Canobic Inscription . Although the inscription has not survived, someone in the sixth century transcribed it, and manuscript copies preserved it through the Middle Ages. It begins: "To the saviour god, Claudius Ptolemy (dedicates) the first principles and models of astronomy", following by a catalogue of numbers that define a system of celestial mechanics governing

1218-478: A thousand years or more". It was first translated from Arabic into Latin by Plato of Tivoli (Tiburtinus) in 1138, while he was in Spain. Much of the content of the Tetrabiblos was collected from earlier sources; Ptolemy's achievement was to order his material in a systematic way, showing how the subject could, in his view, be rationalized. It is, indeed, presented as the second part of the study of astronomy of which

1305-553: A view supported by the Stoics. Although mainly known for his contributions to astronomy and other scientific subjects, Ptolemy also engaged in epistemological and psychological discussions across his corpus. He wrote a short essay entitled On the Criterion and Hegemonikon ( Greek : Περὶ Κριτηρίου καὶ Ἡγεμονικοῡ ), which may have been one of his earliest works. Ptolemy deals specifically with how humans obtain scientific knowledge (i.e.,

1392-572: Is ancestral to the modern system of constellations but, unlike the modern system, they did not cover the whole sky (only what could be seen with the naked eye in the northern hemisphere). For over a thousand years, the Almagest was the authoritative text on astronomy across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. The Almagest was preserved, like many extant Greek scientific works, in Arabic manuscripts;

1479-507: Is based in Motherwell . The area was formed in 1996, covering the districts of Cumbernauld and Kilsyth , Motherwell , and Monklands , plus the Chryston and Auchinloch areas from Strathkelvin district, all of which had been in the Strathclyde region between 1975 and 1996. As a new single-tier authority, North Lanarkshire became responsible for all functions previously performed by both

1566-672: Is his Geographike Hyphegesis ( Greek : Γεωγραφικὴ Ὑφήγησις ; lit.   ' Guide to Drawing the Earth ' ), known as the Geography , a handbook on how to draw maps using geographical coordinates for parts of the Roman world known at the time. He relied on previous work by an earlier geographer, Marinus of Tyre , as well as on gazetteers of the Roman and ancient Persian Empire . He also acknowledged ancient astronomer Hipparchus for having provided

1653-448: Is not officially part of the town. Around 1725, the barony of Castlecary, with a population of just seventeen families, was disjoined from the parish of Falkirk , and annexed to Cumbernauld quoad sacra . Castlecary is also near Allandale which, though in the Falkirk council area , was built for Castlecary fireclay workers. Castlecary, like many other settlements in the area, is steeped in

1740-578: Is of Homeric form . It was common among the Macedonian upper class at the time of Alexander the Great and there were several of this name among Alexander's army, one of whom made himself pharaoh in 323 BC: Ptolemy I Soter , the first pharaoh of the Ptolemaic Kingdom . Almost all subsequent pharaohs of Egypt, with a few exceptions, were named Ptolemy until Egypt became a Roman province in 30 BC, ending

1827-622: Is the Geography , which is a thorough discussion on maps and the geographic knowledge of the Greco-Roman world . The third is the astrological treatise in which he attempted to adapt horoscopic astrology to the Aristotelian natural philosophy of his day. This is sometimes known as the Apotelesmatika ( Greek : Αποτελεσματικά , lit.   ' On the Effects ' ) but more commonly known as

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1914-462: The Almagest , is the only surviving comprehensive ancient treatise on astronomy. Although Babylonian astronomers had developed arithmetical techniques for calculating and predicting astronomical phenomena, these were not based on any underlying model of the heavens; early Greek astronomers, on the other hand, provided qualitative geometrical models to "save the appearances" of celestial phenomena without

2001-562: The Tetrábiblos , from the Koine Greek meaning "Four Books", or by its Latin equivalent Quadripartite . The Catholic Church promoted his work, which included the only mathematically sound geocentric model of the Solar System , and unlike most Greek mathematicians , Ptolemy's writings (foremost the Almagest ) never ceased to be copied or commented upon, both in late antiquity and in

2088-662: The Almagest was the first, concerned with the influences of the celestial bodies in the sublunary sphere . Thus explanations of a sort are provided for the astrological effects of the planets , based upon their combined effects of heating, cooling, moistening, and drying. Ptolemy dismisses other astrological practices, such as considering the numerological significance of names, that he believed to be without sound basis, and leaves out popular topics, such as electional astrology (interpreting astrological charts to determine courses of action) and medical astrology , for similar reasons. The great respect in which later astrologers held

2175-552: The Forth and Clyde Canal , the road, and the former railway station can be seen on older maps. The canal crosses the Red Burn on an aqueduct, close to the Bonny Water just outside Castlecary. Just west of Castlecary, at Garnhall, two Roman temporary camps were discovered. A round enclosure and a possible watchtower were also found although these are not visible today. At Tollpark, remains one of

2262-410: The Geography is likely to be of different dates, in addition to containing many scribal errors. However, although the regional and world maps in surviving manuscripts date from c.  1300 AD (after the text was rediscovered by Maximus Planudes ), there are some scholars who think that such maps go back to Ptolemy himself. Ptolemy wrote an astrological treatise, in four parts, known by

2349-1059: The Kilsyth Hills . The highest population density of North Lanarkshire is in the urbanised south-west, which is part of the Greater Glasgow metropolitan area. Northern and eastern areas are more rural in character, with agricultural activity such as dairy and meat farming. The largest towns in North Lanarkshire are Cumbernauld , which in 2022 had a population of approximately 58,000, followed by Coatbridge (43,970), Airdrie (37,130) and Motherwell (32,120). Largest settlements by population: 50,530 43,950 36,390 32,840 30,050 19,700 15,830 10,380 8,630 7,700 7,140 6,830 6,720 6,070 5,430 5,100 3,870 3,210 3,150 3,100 Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy ( / ˈ t ɒ l ə m i / ; Ancient Greek : Πτολεμαῖος , Ptolemaios ; Latin : Claudius Ptolemaeus ; c.  100  – c.  170 AD)

2436-645: The Middle Ages . However, it is likely that only a few truly mastered the mathematics necessary to understand his works, as evidenced particularly by the many abridged and watered-down introductions to Ptolemy's astronomy that were popular among the Arabs and Byzantines. His work on epicycles has come to symbolize a very complex theoretical model built in order to explain a false assumption. Ptolemy's date of birth and birthplace are both unknown. The 14th-century astronomer Theodore Meliteniotes wrote that Ptolemy's birthplace

2523-784: The Optics, is a work that survives only in a somewhat poor Latin version, which, in turn, was translated from a lost Arabic version by Eugenius of Palermo ( c.  1154 ). In it, Ptolemy writes about properties of sight (not light), including reflection , refraction , and colour . The work is a significant part of the early history of optics and influenced the more famous and superior 11th-century Book of Optics by Ibn al-Haytham . Ptolemy offered explanations for many phenomena concerning illumination and colour, size, shape, movement, and binocular vision. He also divided illusions into those caused by physical or optical factors and those caused by judgmental factors. He offered an obscure explanation of

2610-471: The Roman history of Scotland. The route of the Antonine Wall passes through the village. Around 80 AD, a Roman camp was built at Castlecary. It may have been during governor Agricola 's fourth campaign season. Most Roman forts along the wall held garrisons of around 500 men. Larger forts like Castlecary and Birrens had a nominal cohort of 1000 men but probably sheltered women and children as well although

2697-457: The Tetrabiblos derived from its nature as an exposition of theory, rather than as a manual. A collection of one hundred aphorisms about astrology called the Centiloquium , ascribed to Ptolemy, was widely reproduced and commented on by Arabic, Latin, and Hebrew scholars, and often bound together in medieval manuscripts after the Tetrabiblos as a kind of summation. It is now believed to be

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2784-461: The equator , as it is today, but Ptolemy preferred to express it as climata , the length of the longest day rather than degrees of arc : The length of the midsummer day increases from 12h to 24h as one goes from the equator to the polar circle . One of the places Ptolemy noted specific coordinates for was the now-lost stone tower which marked the midpoint on the ancient Silk Road , and which scholars have been trying to locate ever since. In

2871-519: The harmonic canon (Greek name) or monochord (Latin name), which is an experimental musical apparatus that he used to measure relative pitches, and used to describe to his readers how to demonstrate the relations discussed in the following chapters for themselves. After the early exposition on to build and use monochord to test proposed tuning systems, Ptolemy proceeds to discuss Pythagorean tuning (and how to demonstrate that their idealized musical scale fails in practice). The Pythagoreans believed that

2958-649: The "Castlecary Arches", was built for the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, which opened in 1842. Before the A80 opened, the road went under a single arch. Along with the adjacent Forth and Clyde Canal and the Bonny Water , the viaduct acts as a physical representation of Castlecary's status as an isogloss , as it is around here that there is a distinct change from the West Central Scots accent spoken around Cumbernauld (many of

3045-430: The "criterion" of truth), as well as with the nature and structure of the human psyche or soul, particularly its ruling faculty (i.e., the hegemonikon ). Ptolemy argues that, to arrive at the truth, one should use both reason and sense perception in ways that complement each other. On the Criterion is also noteworthy for being the only one of Ptolemy's works that is devoid of mathematics . Elsewhere, Ptolemy affirms

3132-468: The 19th century, as well as the building of the Glasgow to Edinburgh railway, transformed the region. The towns of Motherwell, Coatbridge and Wishaw became centres of the iron and steel industry. These industries began to decline in the second half of the 20th century, while a growth occurred in the financial and technology sectors, as well as a growth in logistics services related to the heavy goods traffic in

3219-471: The 2nd edition of his book The Roman Wall in Scotland . It's a small altar; Macdonald says it's only about 20 by 10 inches. He regarded it as notable for showing that Italians and Britons were comrades in the Roman army. An altar to an unknown goddess was found while digging the canal. It is hard to read anything more than four letters. A few coins and the remains of a Roman tuba were also recovered and well as

3306-506: The 2nd largest fireclay brick manufacturer in the world. Some early footage of the 1932 Castlecary gala day survives shot by the Stein family. Other 19th century employers include a quarry and a sawmill. One suggested use of the former brickworks has been the construction of a new "park and ride" railway station, which was to be called Allandale . It had been previously suggested that the station be called Castlecary, but representations were made to

3393-485: The French astronomer Delambre in the early 1800s which were repeated by R.R. Newton. Specifically, it proved Hipparchus was not the sole source of Ptolemy's catalog, as they both had claimed, and proved that Ptolemy did not simply copy Hipparchus' measurements and adjust them to account for precession of the equinoxes, as they had claimed. Scientists analyzing the charts concluded: It also confirms that Ptolemy’s Star Catalogue

3480-473: The Greek term Tetrabiblos (lit. "Four Books") or by its Latin equivalent Quadripartitum . Its original title is unknown, but may have been a term found in some Greek manuscripts, Apotelesmatiká ( biblía ), roughly meaning "(books) on the Effects" or "Outcomes", or "Prognostics". As a source of reference, the Tetrabiblos is said to have "enjoyed almost the authority of a Bible among the astrological writers of

3567-497: The Macedonian family's rule. The name Claudius is a Roman name, belonging to the gens Claudia ; the peculiar multipart form of the whole name Claudius Ptolemaeus is a Roman custom, characteristic of Roman citizens. This indicates that Ptolemy would have been a Roman citizen . Gerald Toomer, the translator of Ptolemy's Almagest into English, suggests that citizenship was probably granted to one of Ptolemy's ancestors by either

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3654-455: The Sun or Moon illusion (the enlarged apparent size on the horizon) based on the difficulty of looking upwards. The work is divided into three major sections. The first section (Book II) deals with direct vision from first principles and ends with a discussion of binocular vision. The second section (Books III-IV) treats reflection in plane, convex, concave, and compound mirrors. The last section (Book V) deals with refraction and includes

3741-554: The United Kingdom. This was the latest in a series of reforms, notably including the creation of Lanarkshire County Council in 1890 under the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889 , and the abolition of the county councils and creation of Strathclyde Regional Council and lower-tier district councils in 1975 under the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973 . The 1996 reform abolished Strathclyde, and established North Lanarkshire as

3828-422: The ability to make any predictions. The earliest person who attempted to merge these two approaches was Hipparchus , who produced geometric models that not only reflected the arrangement of the planets and stars but could be used to calculate celestial motions. Ptolemy, following Hipparchus, derived each of his geometrical models for the Sun, Moon, and the planets from selected astronomical observations done in

3915-472: The appearances and disappearances of stars over the course of the solar year. The Planisphaerium ( Greek : Ἅπλωσις ἐπιφανείας σφαίρας , lit.   ' Flattening of the sphere ' ) contains 16 propositions dealing with the projection of the celestial circles onto a plane. The text is lost in Greek (except for a fragment) and survives in Arabic and Latin only. Ptolemy also erected an inscription in

4002-576: The area north of the Kelvin being in Stirlingshire. Prior to the 1975 reforms there were five burghs in the area now covered by North Lanarkshire: The population of the area which would become North Lanarkshire grew quickly during the Industrial Revolution . In the 18th century the area's towns, including Motherwell, were active in textile production. The discovery of coal and iron ore deposits in

4089-415: The area. The new town of Cumbernauld expanded rapidly after World War II , and is now the largest town in North Lanarkshire. The growth of the Greater Glasgow metropolitan area into the south-western part of North Lanarkshire has also led to a large number of residential areas for commuters. The North Lanarkshire council area was established in 1996 as part of a reorganisation of local government in

4176-403: The book on astrology and attributed it to Ptolemy". Historical confusion on this point can be inferred from Abu Ma'shar's subsequent remark: "It is sometimes said that the very learned man who wrote the book of astrology also wrote the book of the Almagest . The correct answer is not known." Not much positive evidence is known on the subject of Ptolemy's ancestry, apart from what can be drawn from

4263-520: The canal. The fort and the castle are east of the M80 which bisects the village from much of its history. A major employer in the area is CMS Windows which is based in Castlecary and employs over 250 people nationally. Castlecary commonly lends its name to a viaduct which crosses the M80, although its official name is the "Castlecary, Red Burn, Railway Viaduct" or Red Burn Viaduct. The landmark, known by many as

4350-506: The data needed to compute the positions of the Sun, Moon and planets, the rising and setting of the stars, and eclipses of the Sun and Moon, making it a useful tool for astronomers and astrologers. The tables themselves are known through Theon of Alexandria 's version. Although Ptolemy's Handy Tables do not survive as such in Arabic or in Latin, they represent the prototype of most Arabic and Latin astronomical tables or zījes . Additionally,

4437-734: The details of his name, although modern scholars have concluded that Abu Ma'shar's account is erroneous. It is no longer doubted that the astronomer who wrote the Almagest also wrote the Tetrabiblos as its astrological counterpart. In later Arabic sources, he was often known as "the Upper Egyptian ", suggesting he may have had origins in southern Egypt . Arabic astronomers , geographers , and physicists referred to his name in Arabic as Baṭlumyus ( Arabic : بَطْلُمْيوس ). Ptolemy wrote in Koine Greek , and can be shown to have used Babylonian astronomical data . He might have been

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4524-402: The earliest surviving table of refraction from air to water, for which the values (with the exception of the 60° angle of incidence) show signs of being obtained from an arithmetic progression. However, according to Mark Smith, Ptolemy's table was based in part on real experiments. Ptolemy's theory of vision consisted of rays (or flux) coming from the eye forming a cone, the vertex being within

4611-469: The elevation of the north celestial pole for a few cities. Although maps based on scientific principles had been made since the time of Eratosthenes ( c.  276  – c.  195 BC ), Ptolemy improved on map projections . The first part of the Geography is a discussion of the data and of the methods he used. Ptolemy notes the supremacy of astronomical data over land measurements or travelers' reports, though he possessed these data for only

4698-543: The emperor Claudius or the emperor Nero . The 9th century Persian astronomer Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi mistakenly presents Ptolemy as a member of Ptolemaic Egypt's royal lineage , stating that the descendants of the Alexandrine general and Pharaoh Ptolemy I Soter were wise "and included Ptolemy the Wise, who composed the book of the Almagest ". Abu Ma'shar recorded a belief that a different member of this royal line "composed

4785-425: The empirical musical relations he identified by testing pitches against each other: He was able to accurately measure relative pitches based on the ratios of vibrating lengths two separate sides of the same single string , hence which were assured to be under equal tension, eliminating one source of error. He analyzed the empirically determined ratios of "pleasant" pairs of pitches, and then synthesised all of them into

4872-419: The eye, and the base defining the visual field. The rays were sensitive, and conveyed information back to the observer's intellect about the distance and orientation of surfaces. Size and shape were determined by the visual angle subtended at the eye combined with perceived distance and orientation. This was one of the early statements of size-distance invariance as a cause of perceptual size and shape constancy,

4959-553: The history of science". One striking error noted by Newton was an autumn equinox said to have been observed by Ptolemy and "measured with the greatest care" at 2pm on 25 September 132, when the equinox should have been observed around 9:55am the day prior. In attempting to disprove Newton, Herbert Lewis also found himself agreeing that "Ptolemy was an outrageous fraud," and that "all those result capable of statistical analysis point beyond question towards fraud and against accidental error". The charges laid by Newton and others have been

5046-599: The introduction to the Handy Tables survived separately from the tables themselves (apparently part of a gathering of some of Ptolemy's shorter writings) under the title Arrangement and Calculation of the Handy Tables . The Planetary Hypotheses ( Greek : Ὑποθέσεις τῶν πλανωμένων , lit.   ' Hypotheses of the Planets ' ) is a cosmological work, probably one of the last written by Ptolemy, in two books dealing with

5133-502: The late 19th century by Alexander Weir, which closed in 1968; and Stein's Castlecary Works established by John G Stein which continued until the 1980s. The two companies were over the road from each other. Stein's brickworks in Allandale opened in 1899 and provided local employment for many years. The site is now derelict and awaiting redevelopment. Allandale village was built for the Castlecary brickworkers and John Stein's business grew to be

5220-642: The longest continuous stretches of the Wall. It is found between the forts at Castlecary and Westerwood . A kissing gate behind the hotel provides access to this section of the wall. Some antiquarians posited that Castlecary was Ptolemy's Coria Damniorum although such assertions lack evidence. The Damnonii or Damnii themselves are only mentioned by Ptolemy. There were two fireclay brickworks in Castlecary: Castlecary Fireclay Company Limited, known as Weir's Castlecary, established during

5307-500: The mathematics of music should be based on only the one specific ratio of 3:2, the perfect fifth , and believed that tunings mathematically exact to their system would prove to be melodious, if only the extremely large numbers involved could be calculated (by hand). To the contrary, Ptolemy believed that musical scales and tunings should in general involve multiple different ratios arranged to fit together evenly into smaller tetrachords (combinations of four pitch ratios which together make

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5394-555: The modern title is thought to be an Arabic corruption of the Greek name Hē Megistē Syntaxis (lit. "The greatest treatise"), as the work was presumably known in Late Antiquity . Because of its reputation, it was widely sought and translated twice into Latin in the 12th century , once in Sicily and again in Spain. Ptolemy's planetary models, like those of the majority of his predecessors, were geocentric and almost universally accepted until

5481-477: The motions of the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars. In 2023, archaeologists were able to read a manuscript which gives instructions for the construction of an astronomical tool called a meteoroscope ( μετεωροσκόπιον or μετεωροσκοπεῖον ). The text, which comes from an eighth-century manuscript which also contains Ptolemy's Analemma , was identified on the basis of both its content and linguistic analysis as being by Ptolemy. Ptolemy's second most well-known work

5568-550: The names of Roman military units. A sandstone statuette of Fortuna, the Roman god of luck, fate, fortune (and even, in Fortuna Redux , safe-return) was found at Castlecary in 1771. Fortuna is depicted on around 1000 different Roman coins and looking at them leaves little doubt that it's Fortuna and not Mercury that is depicted. A Roman altar to Mercury by the Sixth Legion was found at Castlecary. George MacDonald calls it no. 36 in

5655-461: The observations were taken at 12:30pm. The overall quality of Ptolemy's observations has been challenged by several modern scientists, but prominently by Robert R. Newton in his 1977 book The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy , which asserted that Ptolemy fabricated many of his observations to fit his theories. Newton accused Ptolemy of systematically inventing data or doctoring the data of earlier astronomers, and labelled him "the most successful fraud in

5742-592: The original county town at Lanark , now in South Lanarkshire , which had been the site of the first Parliament of Scotland under Kenneth II in 978. The northern parts of what is now North Lanarkshire were in the counties of Dunbartonshire and Stirlingshire prior to 1975, with Cumbernauld and the area generally north of Luggie Water and south of the River Kelvin being in Dunbartonshire, and Kilsyth and

5829-401: The radius of the sphere of the fixed stars was 20 000 times the radius of the Earth. The work is also notable for having descriptions on how to build instruments to depict the planets and their movements from a geocentric perspective, much as an orrery would have done for a heliocentric one, presumably for didactic purposes. The Analemma is a short treatise where Ptolemy provides

5916-486: The reappearance of heliocentric models during the scientific revolution . Under the scrutiny of modern scholarship, and the cross-checking of observations contained in the Almagest against figures produced through backwards extrapolation, various patterns of errors have emerged within the work. A prominent miscalculation is Ptolemy's use of measurements that he claimed were taken at noon, but which systematically produce readings now shown to be off by half an hour, as if

6003-455: The regional council and the district councils, which were abolished. The largest part of North Lanarkshire, being the approximately two-thirds of the council area lying generally south of the Luggie Water , was in the historic county of Lanarkshire . Lanarkshire had existed as a shire from around the time of King David I , who ruled Scotland from 1124 to 1153. The county took its name from

6090-761: The remainder coming under the Lanarkshire lieutenancy . North Lanarkshire lies in the Central Valley of Scotland, to the east of Glasgow . It lies on the Scotland's north–south watershed with the River Clyde flowing through the west of the county on its way to the Irish Sea , and the River Almond in the east emptying into the Firth of Forth near Edinburgh. The northern areas consist of forests as well as higher areas such as

6177-521: The scheme's sponsors not to call it this given the existence of a Castle Cary station in Somerset and the potential for confusion between the two. Previously a Castlecary railway station existed but it closed in 1967. It was the site of a major accident, the Castlecary Rail Disaster on 10 December 1937, when two trains collided with one another. The accident cost the lives of 35 people, with

6264-624: The school survive and are available. A new play park for children opened in June 2018. Castle Cary Castle , on the opposite side of the M80, is where Lizzie Baillie, in her love, is supposed to have jumped from a window. [REDACTED] Media related to Castlecary at Wikimedia Commons Castlecary Banter - The Castlecary Community Councils Facebook Page - get the latest updates. https://www.facebook.com/Castlecary-banter--506689536533752 . North Lanarkshire North Lanarkshire ( Scots : North Lanrikshire ; Scottish Gaelic : Siorrachd Lannraig

6351-405: The secondary literature, while noting that issues with the accuracy of Ptolemy's observations had long been known. Other authors have pointed out that instrument warping or atmospheric refraction may also explain some of Ptolemy's observations at a wrong time. In 2022 the first Greek fragments of Hipparchus' lost star catalog were discovered in a palimpsest and they debunked accusations made by

6438-484: The site was not handled with much respect to archaeology as even gunpowder was used at the fort to improve land for agriculture. It was, however, excavated sympathetically in 1902. Artefacts, found at Castlecary, such as the altar to the Roman god Fortuna can now be viewed at the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow. Eleven inscribed stoneworks have been recovered from the Castlecary fort. Nine of these were altars; six bear

6525-474: The spanning of more than 800 years; however, many astronomers have for centuries suspected that some of his models' parameters were adopted independently of observations. Ptolemy presented his astronomical models alongside convenient tables, which could be used to compute the future or past position of the planets. The Almagest also contains a star catalogue , which is a version of a catalogue created by Hipparchus . Its list of forty-eight constellations

6612-451: The spheres ). Although Ptolemy's Harmonics never had the influence of his Almagest or Geography , it is nonetheless a well-structured treatise and contains more methodological reflections than any other of his writings. In particular, it is a nascent form of what in the following millennium developed into the scientific method, with specific descriptions of the experimental apparatus that he built and used to test musical conjectures, and

6699-440: The structure of the universe and the laws that govern celestial motion . Ptolemy goes beyond the mathematical models of the Almagest to present a physical realization of the universe as a set of nested spheres, in which he used the epicycles of his planetary model to compute the dimensions of the universe. He estimated the Sun was at an average distance of 1 210 Earth radii (now known to actually be ~23 450 radii), while

6786-517: The subject of wide discussions and received significant push back from other scholars against the findings. Owen Gingerich , while agreeing that the Almagest contains "some remarkably fishy numbers", including in the matter of the 30-hour displaced equinox, which he noted aligned perfectly with predictions made by Hipparchus 278 years earlier, rejected the qualification of fraud. Objections were also raised by Bernard Goldstein , who questioned Newton's findings and suggested that he had misunderstood

6873-496: The supremacy of mathematical knowledge over other forms of knowledge. Like Aristotle before him, Ptolemy classifies mathematics as a type of theoretical philosophy; however, Ptolemy believes mathematics to be superior to theology or metaphysics because the latter are conjectural while only the former can secure certain knowledge. This view is contrary to the Platonic and Aristotelian traditions, where theology or metaphysics occupied

6960-573: The third part of the Geography , Ptolemy gives instructions on how to create maps both of the whole inhabited world ( oikoumenē ) and of the Roman provinces, including the necessary topographic lists, and captions for the maps. His oikoumenē spanned 180 degrees of longitude from the Blessed Islands in the Atlantic Ocean to the middle of China , and about 80 degrees of latitude from Shetland to anti-Meroe (east coast of Africa ); Ptolemy

7047-473: The town's residents having strong links to Glasgow ) to the East Central Scots spoken in nearby Bonnybridge and Denny . Around 15 miles (24 km) to the south-east, Harthill is another location alongside a motorway perceived to denote a shift between dialects as well as local authorities . Castlecary Primary School shut sometime between 1973 and 1976. Extracts from a 2nd world war log book from

7134-469: The troops were not allowed to marry. There is likely too to have been large communities of civilians around the site. In 1769, workmen seeking materials for the Forth and Clyde Canal, found 8 apartments along with the remains of an L-shaped, hypocausted , bathhouse in the south-east section of the fort. Inside the walls other objects such as human bones, pottery shards and boars' tusks were discovered. Historically,

7221-461: Was Ptolemais Hermiou , a Greek city in the Thebaid region of Egypt (now El Mansha, Sohag Governorate ). This attestation is quite late, however, and there is no evidence to support it. It is known that Ptolemy lived in or around the city of Alexandria , in the Roman province of Egypt under Roman rule . He had a Latin name, Claudius, which is generally taken to imply he was a Roman citizen . He

7308-431: Was an Alexandrian mathematician , astronomer , astrologer , geographer , and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises , three of which were important to later Byzantine , Islamic , and Western European science. The first was his astronomical treatise now known as the Almagest , originally entitled Mathematical Treatise ( Greek : Μαθηματικὴ Σύνταξις , Mathēmatikḗ Syntaxis ). The second

7395-614: Was familiar with Greek philosophers and used Babylonian observations and Babylonian lunar theory. In half of his extant works, Ptolemy addresses a certain Syrus, a figure of whom almost nothing is known but who likely shared some of Ptolemy's astronomical interests. Ptolemy died in Alexandria c.  168 . Ptolemy's Greek name , Ptolemaeus ( Πτολεμαῖος , Ptolemaîos ), is an ancient Greek personal name . It occurs once in Greek mythology and

7482-464: Was not based solely on data from Hipparchus’ Catalogue. ... These observations are consistent with the view that Ptolemy composed his star catalogue by combining various sources, including Hipparchus’ catalogue, his own observations and, possibly, those of other authors. The Handy Tables ( Greek : Πρόχειροι κανόνες ) are a set of astronomical tables, together with canons for their use. To facilitate astronomical calculations, Ptolemy tabulated all

7569-499: Was well aware that he knew about only a quarter of the globe, and an erroneous extension of China southward suggests his sources did not reach all the way to the Pacific Ocean. It seems likely that the topographical tables in the second part of the work (Books 2–7) are cumulative texts, which were altered as new knowledge became available in the centuries after Ptolemy. This means that information contained in different parts of

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