The Collaborative International Dictionary
Ptolemaic \Ptol`e*ma"ic\, a. Of or pertaining to Ptolemy, the geographer and astronomer.
Ptolemaic system (Astron.), the system maintained by Ptolemy, who supposed the earth to be fixed in the center of the universe, with the sun and stars revolving around it. This theory was received for ages, until superseded by the Copernican system.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1670s, "of Ptolemy," Alexandrian astronomer (2c.) whose geocentric model of the universe was accepted until the time of Copernicus and Kepler. Also (1771) "of the Ptolemies," Macedonian Greek dynasty that ruled Egypt from the death of Alexander to Cleopatra. Earlier form was Ptolemaean (1640s).
Wikipedia
Ptolemaic is the adjective formed from the name Ptolemy. Common uses include:
Usage examples of "ptolemaic".
Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt until its last satrap, Ptolemy Apion, had bequeathed it to Rome in his will.
Cyrenaica had been a fief of the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt until its last satrap, Ptolemy Apion, had bequeathed it to Rome in his will.
The one prime postulate of these Oriental faiths the ground principle, never to be questioned any more than the central and stationary position of the earth in the Ptolemaic system is that all beings below the Infinite One are confined in the circle of existence, the whirl of births and deaths, by the consequences of their virtues and vices.
After the Himyarites there falls an interval -- with Ptolemaic Egypt and Roman power grown strong -and then control of the trade goes over to the southern side of the Red Sea straits and is held by Axum, until, in the eighth century A.
A magic papyrus of Ramesside times fixes the stature of the god at seven cubits, and a phrase in a Ptolemaic inscription places it at eight cubits, six palms, three fingers.
Ptolemaic and the Tychonic not being dropped until the eighteenth century.
Ptolemaic blood, and grandchild of a rascally old king who might have terrorized Anatolia for forty years, but still ended a broken man.
Denis used to quote Marsh as saying odd things about the veiled facts behind the legend of Medusa's snaky locks - and behind the later Ptolemaic myth of Berenice, who offered up her hair to save her husband-brother, and had it set in the sky as the constellation Coma Berenices.
Instead, Copernicus was motivated by the fundamentally ad hoc nature of the Ptolemaic system.
It contains a series of dialogues that pit a supporter of the Ptolemaic system, named Simplicius, against a more astute supporter of Copernicus.
The Ptolemaic system, Copernicanism, Galilean relativity, the electromagnetic theory, Einsteinean relativity, Haertelism, these are all obvious examples.
There are anachronisms in philosophy, quite as much as in other sciences, and the spirit in which certain philosophical problems have of late been treated, both in England and in Germany, is really no better than a revival of the Ptolemaic system would be in astronomy.
There were those scientists, for instance, who clung to the Ptolemaic System of the universe.
Incidentally, new facts were learned about the nature, size, and form of the earth, and the Ptolemaic system went glimmering.