Sometime between 1028 and 1038, Ibn al-Haytham completed his monumental optical synthesis, Kitab al-Manazir ("Book of Optics"). By no later than 1200, and perhaps somewhat earlier, this treatise appeared in Latin under the title De aspectibus. In that form it was attributed to a certain "Alhacen." These differences in title and authorial designation are indicative of the profound differences between the two versions, Arabic and Latin, of the treatise. In many ways, in fact, they can be regarded not simply as different versions of the same work, but as different works in their own right....
Sometime between 1028 and 1038, Ibn al-Haytham completed his monumental optical synthesis, Kitab al-Manazir ("Book of Optics"). By no later than 1200,...
Between 1028-1038, Ibn al-Haytham completed his monumental optical synthesis, Kitab al-Manazir. By no later than 1200, this treatise appeared in Latin attributed to Alhacen. These differences in title and authorial designation are indicative of the profound differences between the two versions.
Between 1028-1038, Ibn al-Haytham completed his monumental optical synthesis, Kitab al-Manazir. By no later than 1200, this treatise appeared in Latin...
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...
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...
