Research Catalog

Title

From sight to light : the passage from ancient to modern optics / A. Mark Smith.

Author

Smith, A. Mark

Publication

• Chicago ; London : University of Chicago Press, [2015]
• ©2015

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xi, 457 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

From 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.--Publisher website.

Subject

• Optics > History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 417-440) and index.

Contents

Introduction -- The emergence of optics as a science : the Greek and early Greco-Roman background. Early intimations ; Physical and psychological theories of vision ; The anatomical and physiological grounds of vision ; Theories of color and color perception ; The Euclidean visual ray theory ; Euclidean catoptrics ; Burning mirrors and the analysis of focal properties ; Conclusion -- Ptolemy and the flowering of Greek optics. The Ptolemaic account of visual perception ; The Ptolemaic account of reflection ; The Ptolemaic account of refraction ; Atmospheric refraction and the moon illusion ; Conclusion -- Greco-Roman and early Arabic developments. Plotinus's theory of visual perception ; The later De anima commentators ; Saint Augustine's psychological model : the inward ascent ; The Arabic transition : the De anima tradition ; The Arabic transition : geometrical optics ; Conclusion -- Alhacen and the grand synthesis. The elements of Alhacen's analysis ; Visual discrimination, perception, and conception ; Reflection and its visual manifestations ; Refraction and its visual manifestations ; Conclusion -- Developments in the Medieval Latin west. Background to the translation movement ; The translation movement and the inroads of Aristotelianism ; The scholastic analysis of perception and cognition ; Geometrical optics and the evolving science of Perspectiva ; Conclusion -- The assimilation of perspectivist optics during the later Middle Ages and Renaissance. Optics as a quadrivial pursuit in the arts curriculum ; Theology and the emergence of optical literacy ; Optical motifs in literature ; Renaissance art, naturalism, and optics ; Conclusion -- The Keplerian turn and its technical background. Technological, social, and cultural changes : 1450-1600 ; Rethinking concave mirrors and convex lenses ; Rethinking the eye ; Kepler's analysis of retinal imaging ; The analytic turn ; The epistemological turn ; Conclusion -- The seventeenth-century response. The conceptual and cultural context for the Keplerian turn ; Extending vision in both directions ; New theories of light ; Recasting color ; The epistemological consequences ; Conclusion.

Call Number

JFE 17-2152

ISBN

• 9780226174761
• 022617476X

LCCN

2014015929

OCLC

871670500

Author

Smith, A. Mark, author.

Title

From sight to light : the passage from ancient to modern optics / A. Mark Smith.

Publisher

Chicago ; London : University of Chicago Press, [2015]

Copyright Date

©2015

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 417-440) and index.

Research Call Number

JFE 17-2152