From Sight to Light: The Passage from Ancient to Modern OpticsFrom its inception in Greek antiquity, the science of optics was aimed primarily at explaining sight and accounting for why things look as they do. By the end of the seventeenth century, however, the analytic focus of optics had shifted to light: its fundamental properties and such physical behaviors as reflection, refraction, and diffraction. This dramatic shift—which A. Mark Smith characterizes as the “Keplerian turn”—lies at the heart of this fascinating and pioneering study. Breaking from previous scholarship that sees Johannes Kepler as the culmination of a long-evolving optical tradition that traced back to Greek antiquity via the Muslim Middle Ages, Smith presents Kepler instead as marking a rupture with this tradition, arguing that his theory of retinal imaging, which was published in 1604, was instrumental in prompting the turn from sight to light. Kepler’s new theory of sight, Smith reveals, thus takes on true historical significance: by treating the eye as a mere light-focusing device rather than an image-producing instrument—as traditionally understood—Kepler’s account of retinal imaging helped spur the shift in analytic focus that eventually led to modern optics. A sweeping survey, From Sight to Light is poised to become the standard reference for historians of optics as well as those interested more broadly in the history of science, the history of art, and cultural and intellectual history. |
Contents
| 1 | |
The Emergence of Optics as a Science The Greek and Early GrecoRoman Background | 23 |
Ptolemy and the Flowering of Greek Optics | 76 |
GrecoRoman and Early Arabic Developments | 130 |
Alhacen and the Grand Synthesis | 181 |
Developments in the Medieval Latin West | 228 |
The Assimilation of Perspectivist Optics during the Later Middle Ages and Renaissance | 278 |
The Keplerian Turn and Its Technical Background | 322 |
The SeventeenthCentury Response | 373 |
| 417 | |
| 441 | |
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Common terms and phrases
according actually Alhacen Alhacen’s De aspectibus Almagest analysis angle of incidence anima appear Arabic Aristotle Aristotle’s Avicenna axis Bacon body brain burning mirrors cathetus Catoptrics center of curvature center of sight century chapter circle cognition common sensibles concave mirrors concave spherical mirrors conceptual convex crystalline lens Descartes Descartes’s distance Euclid faculty figure focal Galen geometrical glass Greek H.unayn ibid incident ray intellect interface intersect Kepler Kindī Latin Lejeune lens lenses Leonardo Lindberg luminous mathematical medieval Middle Ages moon illusion natural optic nerve passing Pecham perceived perpendicular Perspectiva perspectivist philosophical physical plane Plotinus proposition Ptolemy Ptolemy’s Ptolemy’s Optics Renaissance resulting retinal imaging seen sense seventeenth Smith soul sources species sphere spherical aberration telescope theoretical things thinkers tion trans translation transparent treatise University Press ventricle vertex vision visual angle visual cone visual flux visual perception visual radiation visual rays Witelo