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. Accordingly, the Arab author, Ibn al-Haytham, and his Latin incarnation, Alhacen, represent two distinct, sometimes even conflicting, interpretive voices. And the same holds for their respective texts. To complicate matters, "Alhacen" does not represent a single interpretive voice. There were at least two translators at work on the Latin text, one of them adhering faithfully to the Arabic original, the other content with distilling, even paraphrasing, the Arabic original. Consequently, the Latin text presents not one, but at least two faces to the reader. Volume This two-volume critical edition represents fourteen years of work on Dr. Smith's part. Awarded the 2001 J. F. Lewis Award. Volume Two--English Translation

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. Accordingly, the Arab author, Ibn al-Haytham, and his Latin incarnation, Alhacen, represent two distinct, sometimes even conflicting, interpretive voices. And the same holds for their respective texts. To complicate matters, "Alhacen" does not represent a single interpretive voice. There were at least two translators at work on the Latin text, one of them adhering faithfully to the Arabic original, the other content with distilling, even paraphrasing, the Arabic original. Consequently, the Latin text presents not one, but at least two faces to the reader. This two-volume critical edition represents fourteen years of work on Dr. Smith's part. Awarded the 2001 J. F. Lewis Award.

Virtually all survey-accounts of ancient science leave the mistaken impression that ancient ray-theory shared the same basic aims and methods as its modern counterpart and, therefore, that the two are genetically linked. The source of confusion lies in the fact that, for the sake of simplicity and brevity, textbook authors emphasize those aspects of Greek ray-analysis that seem most innovative and forward-thinking. Viewed in this way, Greek ray-theory looks very much like its modern countrpart. In reality, ancient and modern ray-theory are worlds apart in conceptual and methodological foundations, and the same holds true for their fundamental aims. The history of ancient optics has undergone a fundamental reappraisal in regard to both the basic sources and their interpretive context. Using actual sources as a foundation, Mark Smith shows how ancient mathematical optics developed in response not only to certain theoretical imperatives but also to empirical evidence, and opens a path for readers to reach their own understanding.

Smith (history, U. of Missouri) is working his way through Alhacen's (965-1039) study of reflection, which is a Medieval Latin version of ibn al-Haytham's Kitab al-Manazir. Book Six concludes the work by focusing on image distortion, applying the cathetus rule to an analysis of the various misperceptions that arise in the seven types of mirrors he studies in the two previous books. The first volume contains the introduction and Latin text; the second contains the English translation, a Latin-English and glossary, and the bibliography and general index. The volumes are numbered consecutively; the figures appear in both.

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 tradition that traced back to Greek antiquity via the Muslim Middle Ages, Smith presents Kepler instead as marking a rupture with this tradition, arguing that his theory of retinal imaging, which was published in 1604, was instrumental in prompting the turn from sight to light. Kepler's new theory of sight, Smith reveals, thus takes on true historical significance: by treating the eye as a mere light-focusing device rather than an image-producing instrument as traditionally understood Kepler's account of retinal imaging helped spur the shift in analytic focus that eventually led to modern optics. A sweeping survey, From Sight to Light is poised to become the standard reference for historians of optics as well as those interested more broadly in the history of science, the history of art, and cultural and intellectual history."