Optics in the Middle Ages: Alhacen Edition, 4-5

University Of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia MO

Investigators

Abstract

SES 00-80445 - A. Mark Smith (University of Missouri - Columbia) - "Alhacen Edition, 4-5" The goal of this project is to complete a critical edition, with English translation and scholarly annotation, of books 4-5 of the medieval Latin version of Alhacen's Kitab al-Manazir ("Treatise on Optics"), a comprehensive treatment of light and sight in seven books. Composed in Arabic in the very early eleventh century, this treatise was rendered into Latin some two centuries later under the title De aspectibus. In that form it quickly became a canonical source for optical thought in the Latin West, inspiring a series of important derivative works (above all those of the "Perspectivist" authors Roger Bacon, John Pecham, and Witelo) and also serving as a primary text in the teaching of optics until the early seventeenth century. Both directly and indirectly, then, Alhacen's De aspectibus played a critical role in the formation of medieval and Renaissance ideas about light, color and visual representation. Unlike the first three books of the De aspectibus, which deal with visual perception in general, books 4 and 5 are devoted specifically to reflection and the formation of point-images in plane, convex and concave mirrors. Remarkable for both its originality and its mathematical sophistication, Alhacen's analysis of image-location in book 5 served as the benchmark for the study not only of reflection but also for mathematics in the later Middle Ages. The proposed critical edition will make this portion of Alhacen's work accessible in definitive form not only to specialists in the history of science but also to those with more general interests in medieval and Renaissance intellectual and cultural history.