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Download Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler by David C. Lindberg PDF

By David C. Lindberg

Kepler's profitable strategy to the matter of imaginative and prescient early within the 17th century was once a theoretical triumph as major as a number of the extra celebrated advancements of the clinical revolution. but the whole import of Kepler's arguments may be grasped merely once they are seen opposed to the history of historic, medieval, and Renaissance visible conception. David C. Lindberg offers this heritage, and in doing so he fills the distance in ancient scholarship and constructs a version for tracing the advance of medical ideas.

David C. Lindberg is professor and chairman of the dep. of the historical past of technological know-how on the collage of Wisconsin, Madison.

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Extra resources for Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler

Sample text

20 Nevertheless, it had great persuasive force, as its reception in the West was to reveal,2! and it merits our close attention. The Latin version of Alhazen’s Kitab al-Manazir, the De aspectibus or Perspectiva, begins with an account of the pain and injury experienced by a person who observes bright lights: 22 We find that when the eye looks into exceedingly bright lights, it suffers greatly because of them and is injured; for when an observer looks at the 62 Alhazen and the New Intromission Theory o f Vision body of the sun, he cannot behold it well, since his eye experiences pain because of its light.

138 Similarly in the Colliget, Averroes argues that in the middle of these tunics is the glacial coat [the crystalline humor], which is like a mirror, a mean between the natures of air and water, and therefore it receives the form of the air, because it is like a mirror, and it conveys the forms to the water [the vitreous humor] because its nature participates in those two natures. . , the retina] must necessarily receive the light from the humors of the eye, just as the humors receive the light from the air.

The anterior part, the crystalline humor, is not excessively transparent but somewhat dense, having a transparency resembling that of ice. Its anterior surface is flattened, its surface as a whole is lenticular, and it is situated directly opposite the extremity of the optic nerve. 60 The third humor of the eye is the albugineous (our aqueous), resembling the white of an egg, which fills the hollow of the uvea in front of the glacial humor and the space between the uvea and the cornea. 68 Alhazen and the New Intromission Theory o f Vision 69 Alhazen on the Anatomy and Physiology o f the Eye and terminates at the center of the extremity of the optic nerve.

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