Abstract
No doubt the greatest medieval scholar in the field of optics was the Arab Ibn al-Haytham (fl. ca. 1000 AD), known in the West, and immensely influential, under the name of Alhazen or Alhacen. Before his time three clearly distinguishable optical traditions existed in the Arab academic world whose theoretical foundations and ideas concerning even such fundamental questions as the very aim of optics were so vastly different that sometimes one gets the impression that they represented altogether different areas of research rather than competing research programs for one and the same domain of phenomena.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Cf. I. Lakatos, History of Science and its Rational Reconstruction’, in P.S.A. 1970, Studies in the Philosophy of Science 8, R.C. Buck and R.S. Cohen (eds.), (Dordrecht, 1971), pp. 91–135.
As A.I. Sabra points out, Alhazen’s basar, like the Greek δψιs (opsis) and the Latin visus means both eye and sight (or sense or faculty of sight). Cf. A.I. Sabra, ‘Sensation and Inference in Alhazen’s Theory of Visual Perception’, in Studies in Perception, P.K. Machamer and R.G. Turnbull (eds.), (Columbus, 1978), p. 180.
Cf. below, ch. IV, 3, p. 53.
De sensu 6, 446b 12 ff., The Student’s Oxford Aristotle, W.D. Ross (ed.), (New York, 1942), Vol. III. All subsequent references to works by Aristotle are taken from this edition unless otherwise indicated.
Cf. ibid. 2, 437a 18–438b 2. Also cf. De anima 2, 7, 419a 12–21.
De sensu 3, 439a 21–25; De anima 2, 7,418a 29–418b 9.
De anima 2, 7, 418b 9–19.
De sensu 6, 446b 22–447a 17.
Ibid., 3,439b 11f.
Ibid., 3,439a 27–34.
De anima 2, 7,419a 8–21.
Cf. De anima, 1, 3, 407a 7; 2, 5, 418a 3–6; 2, 12, 424a 16–24; 3, 1,425b 17; 3, 4, 429a 28; 3, 8, 432a 1.
The radical notion of the fundamental applicability of mathematics to the physical world is a novel idea gradually prepared in the development of medieval optics (as I will argue in ch. V; also cf. ch. III, sec. 4) to be consciously embraced only by the founders of modern science. Its radical content as well as its complicated history militate against its being simply classified among the ancient wisdoms of Plato. At any rate, in a strict sense this notion is not Platonic in origin at all. It is no surprise, therefore, to find intellectual historians recently making a compelling case against the myth of popular historiography according to which Galileo was a Platonist. Galileo certainly did not share Plato’s view of the relationship between the intelligible and the sensible. Cf. Dudley Shapere, Galileo: A Philosophical Study, (Chicago, 1974) and Hans Blumenberg, Tseudoplatonismen in der Naturwissenschaft der frühen Neuzeit’, Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Abh. der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse, (Mainz, 1971), nr. 1, pp. 3–34.
Cf. R. Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, II, 20 (HR 1264); II, 34 f. (HR 1267).
Claudius Galenus, De placitis Hippocratis et Piatonis, Libri novem, Vol. I, Prolegomena critica, textum graecum, adnotationem criticum versionemque latinam continens, Iwan Mueller (ed.), (Leipzig, 1874), 7, 615, 9–13 (K 5, 618). Subsequent references will be to this edition of Galen’s De placitis, to be followed, in parentheses, by the corresponding reference in the Kühn edition of Galen’s works.
Cf. S. Sambursky, Physics of the Stoics, (London, 1959), pp. 1–11. On the composition of pneuma, cf. e.g. Alex. Aphr., De anima, 26,16; De Mixt., 224,15.
On the discovery of the nerves and the persistent theory of the hollow nerves, cf. Friedrich Solmsen, ‘Greek Philosophy and the Discovery of the Nerves’, Museum Helveticum 18 (1961) 150–167
On the discovery of the nerves and the persistent theory of the hollow nerves, cf. Friedrich Solmsen, ‘Greek Philosophy and the Discovery of the Nerves’, Museum Helveticum 18 (1961) 169–97
Edwin Clarke, ‘The Doctrine of the Hollow Nerve in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, in Medicine, Science, and Culture-Historical Essays in Honor of Owsei Temkin, Lloyd G. Stevenson and Robert P. Multhauf (eds.), (Baltimore, 1968), pp. 123–41.
De placitis 7,615, 3–7 (K 5, 617); 7, 616,14—617,4 (K 5, 619).
Ibid., 7, 623, 2–7 (K 5,625).
Cf. E J. Dijksterhuis, De mechanisering van het wereldbeeld, (Amsterdam, 1950), p. 56.
Cf. T.S. Kuhn, The Essential Tension, (Chicago, 1977), pp. 37–8.
Cf. T.S. Kuhn, The Essential Tension, (Chicago, 1977), pp. 35 Ibid. p. 35 (emphasis added). Kuhn especially classifies astronomy, harmonics, mathematics, optics and statistics as belonging to this category.
Even Ptolemy whose merit it was to have realized that optics, notwithstanding its profoundly geometrical character, yet requires a method essentially different from that of pure geometry [cf. A. Lejeune, Euclide et Ptolémée. Deux stades de l’optique géométrique grecque. Université de Louvain, Recueil de Travaux d’Histoire et de Philologie, ser. 3, fasc. 31 (Louvain, 1948), p. 41], nevertheless chose to ignore, or to smooth over, whatever discrepancies he found between his careful and often ingenious measurements on the one hand and the exigencies of his a priori theoretical models on the other, always favoring the latter (e.g. in his determination of the angular dimension of the visual cone (cf. ibid. pp. 41–51) as well as in his drawing up of the tables of refraction [cf. id., ‘Les tables de réfraction de Ptolémée’, in Annales de la Société Scientifique de Bruxelles, ser. 1, vol. 60 (1946), pp. 95 ff.]. Having said this much, however, I should add that there are also unmistakable methodological tensions operative in Ptolemy’s work as he is caught between his loyalty to the archetypal Euclidean conception of science and his own experimental inclinations. These ambiguities are especially manifest in his work on diplopy and on the horopter [cf. id., ‘Les recherches de Ptolémée sur la vision binoculaire’, Janus 47 (1958), pp. 79–86)]
Damianoe, Schrift über Optik, R. Schoene (ed.), (Berlin, 1897), p. 4.
Damianoe, Schrift über Optik, R. Schoene (ed.), (Berlin, 1897), 7–20.
Cf. A. Lejeune (1948), p. 62.
De aspectibus, propositions 1–3, in ‘Alkindi, Tideus und Pseudo-Euklid. Drei optische Werke’, A.A. Björnbo and S. Vogel (eds.), Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Mathematischen Wissenschaften, vol. 26, 3 (Leipzig/Berlin, 1912) pp. 4 ff.
Euclid, Optics, Definitions 1–7, in A Source Book in Greek Science, M.R. Cohen and I.E. Drabkin (eds.), (Cambridge, 1966), pp. 257–8.
Hero, Catoptrics, 1, in Cohen and Drabkin (1966), pp. 261–2. In his Commentary on the First Book of Euclid’s Elements the Neoplatonist Proclus (A.D. 410–485) divides optics into optics proper (including the theory of perceptual illusions), general catoptrics (which is concerned with the various ways in which light is reflected) and scenography (or applied perspective); cf. Proclus, A Commentary on the First Book of Euclid’s Elements, I,40, Glenn R. Morrow (tr.), (Princeton, 1970), p. 33.
Ibid.
Ibid., pp. 263–4.
Quoted in A. Lejeune (1948), p. 65.
Cf. ibid. For Aristotle’s ‘ethereal’ theory of light, cf. De anima, 2, 7, 418b 14–19.
Cf. A. Lejeune (1948), pp. 54–5.
For a similar analysis cf. A.C. Crombie, ‘The Mechanistic Hypothesis and the Scientific Study of Vision: Some Optical Ideas as a Background to the Invention of the Microscope’, in Historical Aspects of Microscopy, Papers read at a one-day Conference held by The Royal Microscopical Society at Oxford, 18 March, 1966, S. Bradbury and G.L.E. Turner (eds.), (Cambridge, 1967), p. 12.
Cf. D. Davidson, ‘Mental Events’, in Experience and Theory, L. Foster and J.W. Swanson (eds.), (Mass. University Press, 1970), p. 94.
Cf. I. Lakatos (1971), pp. 91–135.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1989 Kluwer Academic Publishers
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Meyering, T.C. (1989). The Formation of Competing Optical Traditions in Early and Late Antiquity. In: Historical Roots of Cognitive Science. Synthese Library, vol 208. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2423-9_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2423-9_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-7592-3
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-2423-9
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive