Abstract
Optics, the mathematical science of vision, went through revolutionary changes in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. These were driven by multiple factors, such as: the discovery of texts and new mathematical techniques; the development and investigation of new optical technologies; advances in the anatomy of the eye; and participation in the incipient culture of experimentation. This period also saw the resolution of a problem that had been a puzzle since antiquity: the mathematical law governing the refraction of light. The end result was transformation of optics from the geometrical study of the subjective phenomena of vision, to a mathematical science of the objective behavior of light, which could be assimilated into the new mathematical physics of the seventeenth century. Philosophically, the human observer was no longer an active participant in vision but the passive recipient of physical stimuli from the outside world.
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Goulding, R. (2020). Optics, Renaissance. In: Sgarbi, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_265-1
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