From Sight to Light: The Passage from Ancient to Modern Optics - Hardcover

Smith, A. Mark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 022617476X ISBN 13: 9780226174761

Verlag: University of Chicago Press, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

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.

Über diesen Titel

Críticas:

"From Sight to Light is an exciting and valuable addition to the history of science in an area of crucial importance not only to our understanding of medieval science but also to the formation of modern science itself. This is history of science at its best." (William R. Newman, Indiana University)"

Biografía del autor:

A. Mark Smith is a Curators' Professor of History at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Among his numerous publications is an eight-volume critical Latin edition and English translation of Alhacen's De aspectibus.

Über diese Auflage

• Verlag: University of Chicago Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• ISBN 10: 022617476X
• ISBN 13: 9780226174761
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Anzahl der Seiten: 480