434. The Eye Sees Not Itself But By Reflection: Theories of Vision

Changing ideas about eyesight, light, mirror images, and refraction – and the skeptical worries they may have inspired.

• R. Chen-Morris, Measuring Shadows: Kepler’s Optics of Invisibility (University Park: 2016).

• S. Clark, Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture (Oxford: 2007).

• O. Gal and R. Chen-Morris, “Baroque Optics and the Disappearance of the Observer: from Kepler’s Optics to Descartes’ Doubt,” Journal of the History of Ideas 71 (2010), 191-217.

• R. Goulding, “Thomas Harriot’s Optics, between Experiment and Imagination: the Case of Mr Bulkeley’s Glass,” Archive for History of Exact Sciences 68 (2014), 137-78.

• R. Goulding, “Chymicorum in morem: Refraction, Matter Theory, and Secrecy in the Harriot-Kepler Correspondence,” in R. Fox (ed.), Thomas Harriot and His World: Mathematics, Exploration, and Natural Philosophy in Early Modern England (London: 2012), 27-51.

Thanks to Robert Goulding for comments and corrections on this episode!