Optics - Hardcover

Kepler, Johannes

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1888009128 ISBN 13: 9781888009125

Publisher: Green Lion Press, 2000

Synopsis

The Optics was a product of Kepler's most creative period. It began as an attempt to give astronomical optics a solid foundation, but soon transcended this narrow goal to become a complete reconstruction of the theory of light, the physiology of vision, and the mathematics of refraction. The result is a work of extraordinary breadth whose significance transcends most categories into which it might be placed. It gives us precious insight into Kepler's thought during this crucial period, an insight all the more valuable in that most of his working papers from that time have been lost. Second, it is the culmination of a long and rich tradition in the science of optics, in distinct contrast with the new optical thought represented by Descartes. And third, it presents discoveries in the physiology of vision, photometry, and the geometry of conic sections which have become part of our intellectual heritage. Especially notable are Kepler's discovery of the inverted retinal image, his theoretical grounding of the inverse-square photometric law, and his insights into the relations between the various conic sections.

About this title

About the Author

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was an astronomer, mathematician, and natural philosopher whose work contributed immeasurably to the development of modern science. Chiefly known for his laws of planetary motion, he also made substantial contributions to mathematics, optis, and physics.

From the Back Cover

"In this book Donahue has performed service of enormous value to Kepler scholars and historians of early optics. His lucid translation of the difficult Latin of Kepler's great optical achievement (for the first time since Latin ceased to be the universal language of scholarship), but also reveals the clarity, rigor, and persuasive power of Kepler's arguments."

---David C. Lindberg, Hilldale Professor and Chair, Department of History of Science, University of Wisconsin.

From the Inside Flap

Kepler's _Optics_ is one of the most important optical treatises ever written. It is both the culmination of the perspectivist tradition of the Middle Ages and the first modern optical work. It encompasses metaphysical and theological speculations about light, the mathematical treatment of refraction, a novel approach to the geometry of conic sections, a study of the physiology and anatomy of the eye, a historical study of solar eclipses, and many other fascinating topics. Despite its importance, this book has never before been translated into English or (except for selections) into any other modern language.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From Chapter 1:

First, it was fitting that the nature of all things imitate God the founder, to the extent possible in accord with the foundation of each thing's own essence. For when the most wise founder strove to make everything as good, as well adorned and as excellent as possible, he found nothing better and more well adorned, nothing more excellent, than himself. For that reason, when he took the corporeal world under consideration, he settled upon a form for it as like as possible to himself. Hence arose the entire category of quantities, and within it, the distinctions between the curved and the straight, and the most excellent figure of all, the spherical surface. For in forming it, the most wise founder played out the image of his reverend trinity. Hence the point of the center is in a way the origin of the spherical solid, the surface the image of the inmost point, and the road to discovering it. The surface is understood as coming to be through an infinite outward movement of the point out of its own self, until it arrives at a certain equality of all outward movements. The point communicates itself into this extension, in such a way that the point and the surface, in a commuted proportion of density with extension, are equals. Hence, between the point and the surface there is everywhere an utterly absolute equality, a most compact union, a most beautiful conspiring, connection, relation, proportion, and commensurateness. And since these are clearly three---the center, the surface, and the interval---they are nonetheless one, inasmuch as none of them, even in thought, can be absent without destroying the whole.

This, then, is the authentic, this is the most fitting, image of the corporeal world, which anything that aspires to the highest perfection among corporeal created things takes on, either simply or in some respect. The bodies themselves were confined separately within the limits of their surfaces and could not by themselves have multiplied themselves into an orb. For this reason, they were endowed with various powers, which, though they do have their nests in the bodies, nevertheless, being somewhat freer than the bodies themselves and lacking corporeal matter (though they do consist of their own kind of matter which is subject to geometrical dimensions), may proceed forth and might try to achieve an orb, as appears chiefly in the magnet, but appears plainly in many other instances. What wonder, then, if that principle of all adornment in the world, which the divine Moses introduced immediately on the first day into barely created matter, as a sort of instrument of the Creator, for giving form and growth to everything---if, I say, this principle, the most excellent thing in the whole corporeal world, the matrix of the animate faculties, and the chain linking the corporeal and spiritual world, has passed over into the same laws by which the world was to be furnished. The sun is accordingly a particular body, in it is this faculty of communicating itself to all things, which we call light; to which, on this account at least, is due the middle place in the whole world, and the center, so that it might perpetually pour itself forth equably into the whole orb. All other things that have a share in light imitate the sun. From this consideration there arise, in a way, certain propositions, which are among the principles in Euclid, Witelo, and others.

Edition details

• Publisher: Green Lion Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1888009128
• ISBN 13: 9781888009125
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 475