Like all classical Greek texts on science, Euclid's works on optics initially came to the West mainly through medieval Arabic texts and commentaries. While several Greek versions of the Optika were discovered and translated as early as the sixteenth century, sorting out what may have been Euclid's original has not been easy. This book presents a critical translation of an Arabic texts and of Arabic commentaries on the text, and places the whole in a historical context. The Optics is particularly interesting in that Euclid's text was considerably transformed in the process of translation into...

Like all classical Greek texts on science, Euclid's works on optics initially came to the West mainly through medieval Arabic texts and commentaries. While several Greek versions of the Optika were discovered and translated as early as the sixteenth century, sorting out what may have been Euclid's original has not been easy. This book presents a critical translation of an Arabic texts and of Arabic commentaries on the text, and places the whole in a historical context. The Optics is particularly interesting in that Euclid's text was considerably transformed in the process of translation into...