Alhacen on Image-Formation and Distortion in Mirrors: A Critical Edition, with English Translation and Commentary, of Book 6 of Alhacen's de Aspectibu, Vol. 2: English Translation

by ibn al-Haytham, A. Mark Smith

238 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

perhaps 965 - perhaps 1040

Book of best known Arab mathematician and astronomer ibn al-Haytham, fully named Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham and also known as Alhazen, presented experimental studies of reflection and refraction and an influential theory of vision that revised that of the Greeks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-...

Reviews

[Tyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an eye-opening read. Whereas I believe Book V really cemented my ideas of what Book IV has expressed verbally, this one expressed the verbal ideas of book III very well: those detailing optical illusions. Within that book is a treasure trove of things like Metaphysics of sight and vision, and just in general a beautiful theory of images in general. After much thought, you tend to come to the conclusion that this is a work worth reading very much of. That Optical illusions have a very explicit science behind them. And in general, it’s very easy to see that the book can be used to expand ones idea of mathematics (if your copy doesn’t have horribly edited diagrams like A. Mark Smith’s). The Completion of the Conics was a much better read for mathematics and logic, involving immense amounts of mathematical relations and discussion, and fully applying the synthetically-analytical method. Yet, this is my favorite work by Alhazen, concise , and employing just enough Metaphysics for my liking. I enjoyed having read Metaphysics prior to beginning this one and I also enjoyed having read his work on Conics to de the influence it had, not to mention the immense amount of analysis required by him to make the proposition very similar to Greek propositional logic, which just isn’t easy to do, considering the amount of knowns and unknowns within any image.