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Contents
Scientic revolution
1.1
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.1.1
Signicance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.2
Ancient and medieval background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.3
Scientic method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.3.1
Empiricism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.3.2
Baconian science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.3.3
Scientic experimentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.3.4
Mathematization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.3.5
The mechanical philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.3.6
Institutionalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
New ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
12
1.4.1
Heliocentrism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
12
1.4.2
Gravitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
12
1.4.3
Medical discoveries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
14
1.4.4
Chemistry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15
1.4.5
Optics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
16
1.4.6
Electricity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
16
New mechanical devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
17
1.5.1
Calculating devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
17
1.5.2
Industrial machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
18
1.6
Scientic developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
18
1.7
Contrary views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
19
1.8
See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
19
1.8.1
Revolutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
20
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
20
1.10 Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
25
Optics
35
2.1
History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
35
2.2
Classical optics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
41
2.2.1
Geometrical optics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
41
2.2.2
Physical optics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
46
1.4
1.5
1.9
ii
CONTENTS
2.3
Modern optics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
53
2.3.1
Lasers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
53
2.3.2
KapitsaDirac eect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
54
Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
54
2.4.1
Human eye . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
54
2.4.2
Photography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
56
2.4.3
Atmospheric optics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
57
2.5
See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
57
2.6
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
57
2.7
External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
61
2.4
Byzantine science
72
3.1
Classical and ecclesiastical studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
72
3.2
Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
72
3.3
Medicine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
72
3.4
Greek re . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
73
3.5
Byzantine and Islamic science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
74
3.6
Humanism and Renaissance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
74
3.7
See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
74
3.8
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
75
Science in the medieval Islamic world
76
4.1
Science in the context of Islamic civilization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
76
4.1.1
The crystallization of Islamic thought and civilization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
76
4.1.2
Domains of thought and culture in the High Caliphate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
77
Medieval Islamic science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
78
4.2.1
Notable elds of inquiry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
78
4.2.2
Notable scientists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
78
4.2.3
Arabs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
78
4.2.4
Moors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
79
4.2.5
Persians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
79
4.2.6
Assyrians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
80
The views of historians and scholars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
80
4.3.1
On the impact of medieval Islamic science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
80
4.3.2
On the historiography of medieval Islamic science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
81
4.4
Role of Christians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
82
4.5
Role of Persians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
82
4.6
See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
82
4.7
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
83
4.8
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
86
4.9
Further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
86
4.10 External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
87
4.2
4.3
CONTENTS
iii
4.11 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
92
4.11.1 Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
92
4.11.2 Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
93
4.11.3 Content license . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
96
Chapter 1
Scientic revolution
This article is about a period in the history of science. For the process of scientic progress via revolutions, proposed
by Thomas Kuhn, see Paradigm shift.
The scientic revolution was the emergence of modern science during the early modern period, when developments
in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology (including human anatomy) and chemistry transformed views of society
and nature.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] The scientic revolution began in Europe towards the end of the Renaissance period and
continued through the late 18th century, inuencing the intellectual social movement known as the Enlightenment.
While its dates are disputed, the publication in 1543 of Nicolaus Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium
(On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) is often cited as marking the beginning of the scientic revolution, and
its completion is attributed to the grand synthesis of Newtons 1687 Principia. By the end of the 18th century, the
scientic revolution had given way to the "Age of Reection".
The concept of a scientic revolution taking place over an extended period emerged in the eighteenth century in the
work of Bailly, who saw a two-stage process of sweeping away the old and establishing the new.[8]
1.1 Introduction
Advances in science have been termed revolutions since the 18th century. In 1747, Clairaut wrote that "Newton
was said in his own lifetime to have created a revolution.[9] The word was also used in the preface to Lavoisier's 1789
work announcing the discovery of oxygen. Few revolutions in science have immediately excited so much general
notice as the introduction of the theory of oxygen ... Lavoisier saw his theory accepted by all the most eminent men
of his time, and established over a great part of Europe within a few years from its rst promulgation.[10]
In the 19th century, William Whewell established the notion of a revolution in science itself (or the scientic method)
that had taken place in the 15th16th century. Among the most conspicuous of the revolutions which opinions on this
subject have undergone, is the transition from an implicit trust in the internal powers of mans mind to a professed
dependence upon external observation; and from an unbounded reverence for the wisdom of the past, to a fervid
expectation of change and improvement.[11] This gave rise to the common view of the scientic revolution today:
A new view of nature emerged, replacing the Greek view that had dominated science for almost 2,000
years. Science became an autonomous discipline, distinct from both philosophy and technology and
came to be regarded as having utilitarian goals.[12]
It is traditionally assumed to start with the Copernican Revolution (initiated in 1543) and to be complete in the
grand synthesis of Isaac Newton's 1687 Principia. Much of the change of attitude came from Francis Bacon whose
condent and emphatic announcement in the modern progress of science inspired the creation of scientic societies
such as the Royal Society, and Galileo who championed Copernicus and developed the science of motion.
In the 20th century, Alexandre Koyr introduced the term Scientic Revolution, centering his analysis on Galileo,
and the term was popularized by Buttereld in his Origins of Modern Science. Thomas Kuhn's 1962 work The Structure
of Scientic Revolutions emphasized that dierent theoretical frameworkssuch as Einstein's relativity theory and
Newtons theory of gravity, which it replacedcannot be directly compared.
1
CHAPTER 1. SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
1.1.1
Signicance
The period saw a fundamental transformation in scientic ideas across mathematics, physics, astronomy, and biology
in institutions supporting scientic investigation and in the more widely held picture of the universe. The scientic
revolution led to the establishment of several modern sciences. In 1984, Joseph Ben-David wrote:
Rapid accumulation of knowledge, which has characterized the development of science since the
17th century, had never occurred before that time. The new kind of scientic activity emerged only in
a few countries of Western Europe, and it was restricted to that small area for about two hundred years.
(Since the 19th century, scientic knowledge has been assimilated by the rest of the world).[13]
Many contemporary writers and modern historians claim that there was a revolutionary change in world view. In
1611 the English poet, John Donne, wrote:
[The] new Philosophy calls all in doubt,
The Element of re is quite put out;
The Sun is lost, and th'earth, and no mans wit
Can well direct him where to look for it.[14]
Mid-20th century historian Herbert Buttereld was less disconcerted, but nevertheless saw the change as fundamental:
Since that revolution turned the authority in English not only of the Middle Ages but of the ancient
worldsince it started not only in the eclipse of scholastic philosophy but in the destruction of Aristotelian physicsit outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and
Reformation to the rank of mere episodes, mere internal displacements within the system of medieval
Christendom.... [It] looms so large as the real origin both of the modern world and of the modern
mentality that our customary periodization of European history has become an anachronism and an
encumbrance.[15]
The history professor Peter Harrison attributes Christianity to having contributed to the rise of the scientic revolution:
historians of science have long known that religious factors played a signicantly positive role in the
emergence and persistence of modern science in the West. Not only were many of the key gures in
the rise of science individuals with sincere religious commitments, but the new approaches to nature
that they pioneered were underpinned in various ways by religious assumptions. ... Yet, many of the
leading gures in the scientic revolution imagined themselves to be champions of a science that was
more compatible with Christianity than the medieval ideas about the natural world that they replaced.[16]
Although historians of science continue to debate the exact meaning of the term, and even its validity, the scientic
revolution still remains a useful concept to interpret the many changes in science itself.
1.2 Ancient and medieval background

Further information: Aristotelian Physics and Science in the Middle Ages
The scientic revolution was built upon the foundation of ancient Greek learning and science in the Middle Ages,
as it had been elaborated and further developed by Roman/Byzantine science and medieval Islamic science.[6] Some
scholars have noted a direct tie between particular aspects of traditional Christianity and the rise of science.[17][18]
The "Aristotelian tradition" was still an important intellectual framework in by the 17th century, although by that
time natural philosophers had moved away from much of it.[5] Key scientic ideas dating back to classical antiquity
had changed drastically over the years, and in many cases been discredited.[5] The ideas that remained, which were
transformed fundamentally during the scientic revolution, include:
Aristotle's cosmology that placed the Earth at the center of a spherical hierarchic cosmos. The terrestrial and
celestial regions were made up of dierent elements which had dierent kinds of natural movement.
1.2. ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL BACKGROUND
Ptolemaic model of the spheres for Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Georg von Peuerbach, Theoricae novae planetarum, 1474.
The terrestrial region, according to Aristotle, consisted of concentric spheres of the four elementsearth,
water, air, and re. All bodies naturally moved in straight lines until they reached the sphere appropriate
to their elemental compositiontheir natural place. All other terrestrial motions were non-natural, or
violent.[19][20]
The celestial region was made up of the fth element, aether, which was unchanging and moved naturally
with uniform circular motion.[21] In the Aristotelian tradition, astronomical theories sought to explain the

observed irregular motion of celestial objects through the combined eects of multiple uniform circular
motions.[22]
The Ptolemaic model of planetary motion: based on the geometrical model of Eudoxus of Cnidus, Ptolemy's
Almagest, demonstrated that calculations could compute the exact positions of the Sun, Moon, stars, and planets
in the future and in the past, and showed how these computational models were derived from astronomical
observations. As such they formed the model for later astronomical developments. The physical basis for
Ptolemaic models invoked layers of spherical shells, though the most complex models were inconsistent with
this physical explanation.[23]
It is important to note that ancient precedent existed for alternative theories and developments which pregured later
discoveries in the area of physics and mechanics; but in light of the limited number of works to survive translation in a
period when many books were lost to warfare, such developments remained obscure for centuries and are traditionally
held to have had little eect on the re-discovery of such phenomena; whereas the invention of the printing press made
the wide dissemination of such incremental advances of knowledge commonplace. Meanwhile, however, signicant
progress in geometry, mathematics, and astronomy was made in medieval times, particularly in the Islamic world as
well as Europe.
It is also true that many of the important gures of the scientic revolution shared in the general Renaissance respect
for ancient learning and cited ancient pedigrees for their innovations. Nicolaus Copernicus (14731543),[24] Kepler
(15711630),[25] Newton (16421727),[26] and Galileo Galilei (15641642)[1][2][3][27] all traced dierent ancient and
medieval ancestries for the heliocentric system. In the Axioms Scholium of his Principia, Newton said its axiomatic
three laws of motion were already accepted by mathematicians such as Huygens (16291695), Wallace, Wren and
others. While preparing a revised edition of his Principia, Newton attributed his law of gravity and his rst law of
motion to a range of historical gures.[26][28]
Despite these qualications, the standard theory of the history of the scientic revolution claims that the 17th century
was a period of revolutionary scientic changes. Not only were there revolutionary theoretical and experimental
developments, but that even more importantly, the way in which scientists worked was radically changed. For instance,
although intimations of the concept of inertia are suggested sporadically in ancient discussion of motion,[29][30] the
salient point is that Newtons theory diered from ancient understandings in key ways, such as an external force being
a requirement for violent motion in Aristotles theory.[31]
1.3 Scientic method

Under the scientic method that was dened and applied in the 17th century, natural and articial circumstances
were abandoned, and a research tradition of systematic experimentation was slowly accepted throughout the scientic community. The philosophy of using an inductive approach to nature to abandon assumption and to attempt
to simply observe with an open mind was in strict contrast with the earlier, Aristotelian approach of deduction, by
which analysis of known facts produced further understanding. In practice, of course, many scientists (and philosophers) believed that a healthy mix of both was needed the willingness to question assumptions, yet also to interpret
observations assumed to have some degree of validity.
By the end of the scientic revolution the qualitative world of book-reading philosophers had been changed into a
mechanical, mathematical world to be known through experimental research. Though it is certainly not true that
Newtonian science was like modern science in all respects, it conceptually resembled ours in many ways. Many of
the hallmarks of modern science, especially with regard to its institution and profession, did not become standard
until the mid-19th century.
1.3.1
Empiricism
The Aristotelian scientic traditions primary mode of interacting with the world was through observation and searching for natural circumstances through reasoning. Coupled with this approach was the belief that rare events which
seemed to contradict theoretical models were aberrations, telling nothing about nature as it naturally was. During
the scientic revolution, changing perceptions about the role of the scientist in respect to nature, the value of evidence, experimental or observed, led towards a scientic methodology in which empiricism played a large, but not
absolute, role.
1.3. SCIENTIFIC METHOD
By the start of the scientic revolution, empiricism had already become an important component of science and
natural philosophy. Prior thinkers, including the early 14th century nominalist philosopher William of Ockham, had
begun the intellectual movement toward empiricism.[32]
The term British empiricism came into use to describe philosophical dierences perceived between two of its founders
Francis Bacon, described as empiricist, and Ren Descartes, who was described as a rationalist. Thomas Hobbes,
George Berkeley, and David Hume were the philosophys primary exponents, who developed a sophisticated empirical
tradition as the basis of human knowledge.
The recognized founder of empiricism was John Locke who proposed in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
(1689) that the only true knowledge that could be accessible to the human mind was that which was based on experience. He argued that the human mind was created as a tabula rasa, a blank tablet, upon which sensory impressions
were recorded and built up knowledge through a process of reection.
1.3.2
Baconian science
The philosophical underpinnings of the scientic revolution were laid out by Francis Bacon, who has been called the
father of empiricism.[33] His works established and popularised inductive methodologies for scientic inquiry, often
called the Baconian method, or simply the scientic method. His demand for a planned procedure of investigating
all things natural marked a new turn in the rhetorical and theoretical framework for science, much of which still
surrounds conceptions of proper methodology today.
Bacon proposed a great reformation of all process of knowledge for the advancement of learning divine and human,
which he called Instauratio Magna (The Great Instauration). For Bacon, this reformation would lead to a great
advancement in science and a progeny of new inventions that would relieve mankinds miseries and needs. His Novum
Organum was published in 1620. He argued that man is the minister and interpreter of nature, that knowledge and
human power are synonymous, that eects are produced by the means of instruments and helps, and that man
while operating can only apply or withdraw natural bodies; nature internally performs the rest, and later that nature
can only be commanded by obeying her.[34] Here is an abstract of the philosophy of this work, that by the knowledge
of nature and the using of instruments, man can govern or direct the natural work of nature to produce denite results.
Therefore, that man, by seeking knowledge of nature, can reach power over it and thus reestablish the Empire of
Man over creation, which had been lost by the Fall together with mans original purity. In this way, he believed,
would mankind be raised above conditions of helplessness, poverty and misery, while coming into a condition of
peace, prosperity and security.[35]
For this purpose of obtaining knowledge of and power over nature, Bacon outlined in this work a new system of logic
he believed to be superior to the old ways of syllogism, developing his scientic method, consisting of procedures
for isolating the formal cause of a phenomenon (heat, for example) through eliminative induction. For him, the
philosopher should proceed through inductive reasoning from fact to axiom to physical law. Before beginning this
induction, though, the enquirer must free his or her mind from certain false notions or tendencies which distort the
truth. In particular, he found that philosophy was too preoccupied with words, particularly discourse and debate,
rather than actually observing the material world: For while men believe their reason governs words, in fact, words
turn back and reect their power upon the understanding, and so render philosophy and science sophistical and
inactive.[36]
Bacon considered that it is of greatest importance to science not to keep doing intellectual discussions or seeking
merely contemplative aims, but that it should work for the bettering of mankinds life by bringing forth new inventions,
having even stated that inventions are also, as it were, new creations and imitations of divine works.[34] He explored
the far-reaching and world-changing character of inventions, such as the printing press, gunpowder and the compass.
1.3.3
Scientic experimentation
Bacon rst described the experimental method.

There remains simple experience; which, if taken as it comes, is called accident, if sought for, experiment. The true method of experience rst lights the candle [hypothesis], and then by means of the
candle shows the way [arranges and delimits the experiment]; commencing as it does with experience
duly ordered and digested, not bungling or erratic, and from it deducing axioms [theories], and from
established axioms again new experiments.
Francis Bacon. Novum Organum. 1620.[37]
Francis Bacon was a pivotal gure in establishing the scientic method of investigation. Portrait by Frans Pourbus (1617).
William Gilbert was an early advocate of this methodology. He passionately rejected both the prevailing Aristotelian
philosophy and the Scholastic method of university teaching. His book De Magnete was written in 1600, and he is
regarded by some as the father of electricity and magnetism.[38] In this work, he describes many of his experiments
with his model Earth called the terrella. From these experiments, he concluded that the Earth was itself magnetic
and that this was the reason compasses point north.
De Magnete was inuential not only because of the inherent interest of its subject matter, but also for the rigorous
way in which Gilbert described his experiments and his rejection of ancient theories of magnetism.[39] According to
Thomas Thomson, Gilbert['s]... book on magnetism published in 1600, is one of the nest examples of inductive
philosophy that has ever been presented to the world. It is the more remarkable, because it preceded the Novum
Organum of Bacon, in which the inductive method of philosophizing was rst explained.[40]
Diagram from William Gilbert's De Magnete, a pioneering work of experimental science.
Galileo Galilei has been called the father of modern observational astronomy",[41] the father of modern physics",[42][43]
the father of science,[43][44] and the Father of Modern Science.[45] His original contributions to the science of
motion were made through an innovative combination of experiment and mathematics.[46]
Galileo was one of the rst modern thinkers to clearly state that the laws of nature are mathematical. In The Assayer
he wrote Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe ... It is written in the language of mathematics,
and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric gures;....[47] His mathematical analyses are a further
development of a tradition employed by late scholastic natural philosophers, which Galileo learned when he studied philosophy.[48] He displayed a peculiar ability to ignore established authorities, most notably Aristotelianism. In
broader terms, his work marked another step towards the eventual separation of science from both philosophy and
religion; a major development in human thought. He was often willing to change his views in accordance with observation. In order to perform his experiments, Galileo had to set up standards of length and time, so that measurements
made on dierent days and in dierent laboratories could be compared in a reproducible fashion. This provided a
reliable foundation on which to conrm mathematical laws using inductive reasoning.
Galileo showed a remarkably modern appreciation for the proper relationship between mathematics, theoretical
physics, and experimental physics. He understood the parabola, both in terms of conic sections and in terms of
the ordinate (y) varying as the square of the abscissa (x). Galilei further asserted that the parabola was the theoretically ideal trajectory of a uniformly accelerated projectile in the absence of friction and other disturbances. He
conceded that there are limits to the validity of this theory, noting on theoretical grounds that a projectile trajectory
On this page Galileo Galilei rst noted the moons of Jupiter. Galileo revolutionized the study of the natural world with his rigorous
experimental method.
of a size comparable to that of the Earth could not possibly be a parabola,[49] but he nevertheless maintained that for
distances up to the range of the artillery of his day, the deviation of a projectiles trajectory from a parabola would
be only very slight.[50][51]
1.3.4
Mathematization
Scientic knowledge, according to the Aristotelians, was concerned with establishing true and necessary causes of
things.[52] To the extent that medieval natural philosophers used mathematical problems, they limited social studies to
theoretical analyses of local speed and other aspects of life.[53] The actual measurement of a physical quantity, and the
comparison of that measurement to a value computed on the basis of theory, was largely limited to the mathematical
disciplines of astronomy and optics in Europe.[54][55]
In the 16th and 17th centuries, European scientists began increasingly applying quantitative measurements to the
measurement of physical phenomena on the Earth. Galileo maintained strongly that mathematics provided a kind of
necessary certainty that could be compared to Gods: "...with regard to those few [mathematical propositions] which
the human intellect does understand, I believe its knowledge equals the Divine in objective certainty...[56]
Galileo anticipates the concept of a systematic mathematical interpretation of the world in his book Il Saggiatore:
Philosophy [i.e., physics] is written in this grand bookI mean the universewhich stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one rst learns to comprehend the language
and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its
characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical gures, without which it is humanly impossible
to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering around in a dark labyrinth.[57]
1.3.5
The mechanical philosophy
Main article: Mechanical philosophy

Aristotle recognized four kinds of causes, and where applicable, the most important of them is the nal cause. The
nal cause was the aim, goal, or purpose of some natural process or man-made thing. Until the scientic revolution,
it was very natural to see such aims, such as a childs growth, for example, leading to a mature adult. Intelligence was
assumed only in the purpose of man-made artifacts; it was not attributed to other animals or to nature.
In "mechanical philosophy" no eld or action at a distance is permitted, particles or corpuscles of matter are fundamentally inert. Motion is caused by direct physical collision. Where natural substances had previously been understood organically, the mechanical philosophers viewed them as machines.[58] As a result, Isaac Newton's theory
seemed like some kind of throwback to spooky action at a distance. According to Thomas Kuhn, he and Descartes
held the teleological principle that God conserved the amount of motion in the universe:
Gravity, interpreted as an innate attraction between every pair of particles of matter, was an occult
quality in the same sense as the scholastics tendency to fall had been.... By the mid eighteenth century
that interpretation had been almost universally accepted, and the result was a genuine reversion (which
is not the same as a retrogression) to a scholastic standard. Innate attractions and repulsions joined size,
shape, position and motion as physically irreducible primary properties of matter.[59]
Newton had also specically attributed the inherent power of inertia to matter, against the mechanist thesis that
matter has no inherent powers. But whereas Newton vehemently denied gravity was an inherent power of matter,
his collaborator Roger Cotes made gravity also an inherent power of matter, as set out in his famous preface to the
Principias 1713 second edition which he edited, and contra Newton himself. And it was Cotess interpretation of
gravity rather than Newtons that came to be accepted. (See also Entropic gravity).
1.3.6
Institutionalization
The rst moves towards the institutionalization of scientic investigation and dissemination took the form of the
establishment of societies, where new discoveries were aired, discussed and published.
The rst scientic society to be established was the Royal Society of England. This grew out of an earlier group,
centred around Gresham College in the 1640s and 1650s. According to a history of the College:
10
Isaac Newton in a 1702 portrait by Godfrey Kneller.
the scientic network which centred on Gresham College played a crucial part in the meetings which
led to the formation of the Royal Society.[60]
These physicians and natural philosophers were inuenced by the "new science", as promoted by Francis Bacon in
his New Atlantis, from approximately 1645 onwards. A group known as The Philosophical Society of Oxford was run
under a set of rules still retained by the Bodleian Library.[61]
On 28 November 1660, the 1660 committee of 12 announced the formation of a College for the Promoting of
Physico-Mathematical Experimental Learning, which would meet weekly to discuss science and run experiments.
At the second meeting, Robert Moray announced that the King approved of the gatherings, and a Royal Charter
was signed on 15 July 1662 which created the Royal Society of London, with Lord Brouncker serving as the rst
President. A second Royal Charter was signed on 23 April 1663, with the King noted as the Founder and with the
11
The Royal Society had its origins in Gresham College, and was the rst scientic socety in the world.
name of the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge"; Robert Hooke was appointed
as Curator of Experiments in November. This initial royal favour has continued, and since then every monarch has
been the patron of the Society.[62]
The French Academy of Sciences was established in 1666.
The Societys rst Secretary was Henry Oldenburg. Its early meetings included experiments performed rst by Robert
Hooke and then by Denis Papin, who was appointed in 1684. These experiments varied in their subject area, and were
12
both important in some cases and trivial in others.[63] The society began publication of Philosophical Transactions
from 1665, making it the oldest and longest-running scientic journal in the world, and the rst journal to establish
the tradition of peer review.[64] and B, which deals with the biological sciences.[65]
The French established the Academy of Sciences in 1666. In contrast to the private origins of its British counterpart,
the Academy was founded as a government body by Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Its rules were set down in 1699 by King
Louis XIV, when it received the name of 'Royal Academy of Sciences and was installed in the Louvre in Paris.
1.4 New ideas

As the scientic revolution was not marked by any single change, the following new ideas contributed to what is called
the scientic revolution. Many of them were revolutions in their own elds.
1.4.1
Heliocentrism
For almost ve millennia, the geocentric model of the Earth as the center of the universe had been accepted by all but
a few astronomers. In Aristotles cosmology, Earths central location was perhaps less signicant than its identication
as a realm of imperfection, inconstancy, irregularity and change, as opposed to the heavens, (Moon, Sun, planets,
stars) which were regarded as perfect, permanent, unchangeable, and in religious thought, the realm of heavenly
beings. The Earth was even composed of dierent material, the four elements earth, water, re, and air,
while suciently far above its surface (roughly the Moons orbit), the heavens were composed of dierent substance
called aether.[66] The heliocentric model that replaced it involved not only the radical displacement of the earth to
an orbit around the sun, but its sharing a placement with the other planets implied a universe of heavenly components
made from the same changeable substances as the Earth. Heavenly motions no longer needed to be governed by a
theoretical perfection, conned to circular orbits.
Copernicus 1543 work on the heliocentric model of the solar system tried to demonstrate that the sun was the center
of the universe. Few were bothered by this suggestion, and the pope and several archbishops were interested enough
by it to want more detail.[67] His model was later used to create the calendar of Pope Gregory XIII.[68] However, the
idea that the earth moved around the sun was doubted by most of Copernicus contemporaries. It contradicted not
only empirical observation, due to the absence of an observable stellar parallax,[69] but more signicantly at the time,
the authority of Aristotle.
The discoveries of Johannes Kepler and Galileo gave the theory credibility. Kepler was an astronomer who, using
the accurate observations of Tycho Brahe, proposed that the planets move around the sun not in circular orbits, but
in elliptical ones. Together with his other laws of planetary motion, this allowed him to create a model of the solar
system that was an improvement over Copernicus original system. Galileos main contributions to the acceptance
of the heliocentric system were his mechanics, the observations he made with his telescope, as well as his detailed
presentation of the case for the system. Using an early theory of inertia, Galileo could explain why rocks dropped
from a tower fall straight down even if the earth rotates. His observations of the moons of Jupiter, the phases of
Venus, the spots on the sun, and mountains on the moon all helped to discredit the Aristotelian philosophy and the
Ptolemaic theory of the solar system. Through their combined discoveries, the heliocentric system gained support,
and at the end of the 17th century it was generally accepted by astronomers.
This work culminated in the work of Isaac Newton. Newtons Principia formulated the laws of motion and universal
gravitation, which dominated scientists view of the physical universe for the next three centuries. By deriving Keplers
laws of planetary motion from his mathematical description of gravity, and then using the same principles to account
for the trajectories of comets, the tides, the precession of the equinoxes, and other phenomena, Newton removed the
last doubts about the validity of the heliocentric model of the cosmos. This work also demonstrated that the motion
of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies could be described by the same principles. His prediction that the Earth
should be shaped as an oblate spheroid was later vindicated by other scientists. His laws of motion were to be the
solid foundation of mechanics; his law of universal gravitation combined terrestrial and celestial mechanics into one
great system that seemed to be able to describe the whole world in mathematical formulae.
1.4.2
Gravitation
As well as proving the heliocentric model, Newton also developed the theory of gravitation. In 1679, Newton began
to consider gravitation and its eect on the orbits of planets with reference to Keplers laws of planetary motion. This
1.4. NEW IDEAS
13
Portrait of Johannes Kepler.
followed stimulation by a brief exchange of letters in 167980 with Robert Hooke, who had been appointed to manage
the Royal Society's correspondence, and who opened a correspondence intended to elicit contributions from Newton
to Royal Society transactions. [70] Newtons reawakening interest in astronomical matters received further stimulus
by the appearance of a comet in the winter of 16801681, on which he corresponded with John Flamsteed.[71] After
the exchanges with Hooke, Newton worked out proof that the elliptical form of planetary orbits would result from a
centripetal force inversely proportional to the square of the radius vector (see Newtons law of universal gravitation
History and De motu corporum in gyrum). Newton communicated his results to Edmond Halley and to the Royal
Society in De motu corporum in gyrum, in 1684.[72] This tract contained the nucleus that Newton developed and
expanded to form the Principia.[73]
14
Isaac Newton's Principia, developed the rst set of unied scientic laws.
The Principia was published on 5 July 1687 with encouragement and nancial help from Edmond Halley.[74] In this
work, Newton stated the three universal laws of motion that contributed to many advances during the Industrial
Revolution which soon followed and were not to be improved upon for more than 200 years. Many of these advancements continue to be the underpinnings of non-relativistic technologies in the modern world. He used the Latin word
gravitas (weight) for the eect that would become known as gravity, and dened the law of universal gravitation.
Newtons postulate of an invisible force able to act over vast distances led to him being criticised for introducing
"occult agencies into science.[75] Later, in the second edition of the Principia (1713), Newton rmly rejected such
criticisms in a concluding General Scholium, writing that it was enough that the phenomena implied a gravitational
attraction, as they did; but they did not so far indicate its cause, and it was both unnecessary and improper to frame
hypotheses of things that were not implied by the phenomena. (Here Newton used what became his famous expression
hypotheses non ngo[76] ).
1.4.3
Medical discoveries
The writings of Greek physician Galen had dominated European thinking in the subject for over a millennium. It
was the publicized ndings of the Italian scholar Vesalius that rst demonstrated the mistakes in the Galenic model.
His anatomical teachings were based upon the dissection of human corpses, rather than the animal dissections that
Galen had used as a guide. Published in 1543, Vesalius De humani corporis fabrica[77] was a groundbreaking work
of human anatomy. It emphasized the priority of dissection and what has come to be called the anatomical view
of the body, seeing human internal functioning as an essentially corporeal structure lled with organs arranged in
three-dimensional space. This was in stark contrast to many of the anatomical models used previously, which had
strong Galenic/Aristotelean elements, as well as elements of astrology.
Besides the rst good description of the sphenoid bone, he showed that the sternum consists of three portions and
the sacrum of ve or six; and described accurately the vestibule in the interior of the temporal bone. He not only
veried the observation of Etienne on the valves of the hepatic veins, but he described the vena azygos, and discovered
the canal which passes in the fetus between the umbilical vein and the vena cava, since named ductus venosus. He
described the omentum, and its connections with the stomach, the spleen and the colon; gave the rst correct views of
the structure of the pylorus; observed the small size of the caecal appendix in man; gave the rst good account of the
mediastinum and pleura and the fullest description of the anatomy of the brain yet advanced. He did not understand
1.4. NEW IDEAS
15
the inferior recesses; and his account of the nerves is confused by regarding the optic as the rst pair, the third as the
fth and the fth as the seventh.
Further groundbreaking work was carried out by William Harvey, who published De Motu Cordis in 1628. Harvey
made a detailed analysis of the overall structure of the heart, going on to an analysis of the arteries, showing how their
pulsation depends upon the contraction of the left ventricle, while the contraction of the right ventricle propels its
charge of blood into the pulmonary artery. He noticed that the two ventricles move together almost simultaneously
and not independently like had been thought previously by his predecessors.[78]
In the eighth chapter, Harvey estimated the capacity of the heart, how much blood is expelled through each pump
of the heart, and the number of times the heart beats in a half an hour. From these estimations, he demonstrated
that according to Gaelens theory that blood was continually produced in the liver, the absurdly large gure of 540
pounds of blood would have to be produced every day. Having this simple but essential mathematical proportion
at hand which proved the overall impossible aforementioned role of the liver Harvey went on to prove how the
blood circulated in a circle by means of countless experiments initially done on serpents and sh: tying their veins and
arteries in separate periods of time, Harvey noticed the modications which occurred; indeed, as he tied the veins,
the heart would become empty, while as he did the same to the arteries, the organ would swell up.
This process was later performed on the human body (in the image on the left): the physician tied a tight ligature
onto the upper arm of a person. This would cut o blood ow from the arteries and the veins. When this was done,
the arm below the ligature was cool and pale, while above the ligature it was warm and swollen. The ligature was
loosened slightly, which allowed blood from the arteries to come into the arm, since arteries are deeper in the esh
than the veins. When this was done, the opposite eect was seen in the lower arm. It was now warm and swollen.
The veins were also more visible, since now they were full of blood.
Various other advances in medical understanding and practice were made. French physician Pierre Fauchard started
dentistry science as we know it today, and he has been named the father of modern dentistry. Surgeon Ambroise
Par (c.15101590) was a leader in surgical techniques and battleeld medicine, especially the treatment of wounds,[79]
and Herman Boerhaave (16681738) is sometimes referred to as a father of physiology due to his exemplary teaching in Leiden and his textbook Institutiones medicae (1708).
1.4.4
Chemistry
Chemistry, and its antecedent alchemy, became an increasingly important aspect of scientic thought in the course
of the 16th and 17th centuries. The importance of chemistry is indicated by the range of important scholars who
actively engaged in chemical research. Among them were the astronomer Tycho Brahe,[80] the chemical physician
Paracelsus, Robert Boyle, Thomas Browne and Isaac Newton. Unlike the mechanical philosophy, the chemical
philosophy stressed the active powers of matter, which alchemists frequently expressed in terms of vital or active
principlesof spirits operating in nature.[81]
Practical attempts to improve the rening of ores and their extraction to smelt metals was an important source of
information for early chemists in the 16th century, among them Georg Agricola (14941555), who published his
great work De re metallica in 1556.[82] His work describes the highly developed and complex processes of mining
metal ores, metal extraction and metallurgy of the time. His approach removed the mysticism associated with the
subject, creating the practical base upon which others could build.[83]
English chemist Robert Boyle (16271691) is considered to have rened the modern scientic method for alchemy
and to have separated chemistry further from alchemy.[84] Although his research clearly has its roots in the alchemical
tradition, Boyle is largely regarded today as the rst modern chemist, and therefore one of the founders of modern
chemistry, and one of the pioneers of modern experimental scientic method. Although Boyle was not the original
discover, he is best known for Boyles law, which he presented in 1662:[85] the law describes the inversely proportional
relationship between the absolute pressure and volume of a gas, if the temperature is kept constant within a closed
system.[86]
Boyle is also credited for his landmark publication The Sceptical Chymist in 1661, which is seen as a cornerstone book
in the eld of chemistry. In the work, Boyle presents his hypothesis that every phenomenon was the result of collisions
of particles in motion. Boyle appealed to chemists to experiment and asserted that experiments denied the limiting
of chemical elements to only the classic four: earth, re, air, and water. He also pleaded that chemistry should cease
to be subservient to medicine or to alchemy, and rise to the status of a science. Importantly, he advocated a rigorous
approach to scientic experiment: he believed all theories must be proved experimentally before being regarded as
true. The work contains some of the earliest modern ideas of atoms, molecules, and chemical reaction, and marks
16
the beginning of the history of modern chemistry.
1.4.5
Optics
Important work was done in the eld of optics. Johannes Kepler published Astronomiae Pars Optica (The Optical
Part of Astronomy) in 1604. In it, he described the inverse-square law governing the intensity of light, reection by
at and curved mirrors, and principles of pinhole cameras, as well as the astronomical implications of optics such as
parallax and the apparent sizes of heavenly bodies. Astronomiae Pars Optica is generally recognized as the foundation
of modern optics (though the law of refraction is conspicuously absent).[87]
Willebrord Snellius (15801626) found the mathematical law of refraction, now known as Snells law, in 1621.
Subsequently Ren Descartes (15961650) showed, by using geometric construction and the law of refraction (also
known as Descartes law), that the angular radius of a rainbow is 42 (i.e. the angle subtended at the eye by the edge
of the rainbow and the rainbows centre is 42).[88] He also independently discovered the law of reection, and his
essay on optics was the rst published mention of this law.[89]
Christiaan Huygens (16291695) wrote several works in the area of optics. These included the Opera reliqua (also
known as Christiani Hugenii Zuilichemii, dum viveret Zelhemii toparchae, opuscula posthuma) and the Trait de la
lumire.
Isaac Newton investigated the refraction of light, demonstrating that a prism could decompose white light into a
spectrum of colours, and that a lens and a second prism could recompose the multicoloured spectrum into white
light. He also showed that the coloured light does not change its properties by separating out a coloured beam and
shining it on various objects. Newton noted that regardless of whether it was reected or scattered or transmitted, it
stayed the same colour. Thus, he observed that colour is the result of objects interacting with already-coloured light
rather than objects generating the colour themselves. This is known as Newtons theory of colour. From this work
he concluded that any refracting telescope would suer from the dispersion of light into colours. The interest of the
Royal Society encouraged him to publish his notes On Colour (later expanded into Opticks). Newton argued that light
is composed of particles or corpuscles and were refracted by accelerating toward the denser medium, but he had to
associate them with waves to explain the diraction of light.
In his Hypothesis of Light of 1675, Newton posited the existence of the ether to transmit forces between particles.
In 1704, Newton published Opticks, in which he expounded his corpuscular theory of light. He considered light to
be made up of extremely subtle corpuscles, that ordinary matter was made of grosser corpuscles and speculated that
through a kind of alchemical transmutation Are not gross Bodies and Light convertible into one another, ...and may
not Bodies receive much of their Activity from the Particles of Light which enter their Composition?"[90]
1.4.6
Electricity
Dr. William Gilbert, in De Magnete, invented the New Latin word electricus from (elektron), the Greek
word for amber. Gilbert undertook a number of careful electrical experiments, in the course of which he discovered
that many substances other than amber, such as sulphur, wax, glass, etc.,[91] were capable of manifesting electrical
properties. Gilbert also discovered that a heated body lost its electricity and that moisture prevented the electrication
of all bodies, due to the now well-known fact that moisture impaired the insulation of such bodies. He also noticed
that electried substances attracted all other substances indiscriminately, whereas a magnet only attracted iron. The
many discoveries of this nature earned for Gilbert the title of founder of the electrical science.[92] By investigating
the forces on a light metallic needle, balanced on a point, he extended the list of electric bodies, and found also that
many substances, including metals and natural magnets, showed no attractive forces when rubbed. He noticed that dry
weather with north or east wind was the most favourable atmospheric condition for exhibiting electric phenomenaan
observation liable to misconception until the dierence between conductor and insulator was understood.[93]
Robert Boyle also worked frequently at the new science of electricity, and added several substances to Gilberts list
of electrics. He left a detailed account of his researches under the title of Experiments on the Origin of Electricity.[93]
Boyle, in 1675, stated that electric attraction and repulsion can act across a vacuum. One of his important discoveries
was that electried bodies in a vacuum would attract light substances, this indicating that the electrical eect did not
depend upon the air as a medium. He also added resin to the then known list of electrics.[92][94][95][96][91]
This was followed in 1660 by Otto von Guericke, who invented an early electrostatic generator. By the end of the
17th Century, researchers had developed practical means of generating electricity by friction with an electrostatic
generator, but the development of electrostatic machines did not begin in earnest until the 18th century, when they
1.5. NEW MECHANICAL DEVICES
17
became fundamental instruments in the studies about the new science of electricity. The rst usage of the word
electricity is ascribed to Sir Thomas Browne in his 1646 work, Pseudodoxia Epidemica. In 1729 Stephen Gray (1666
1736) demonstrated that electricity could be transmitted through metal laments.[97]
1.5 New mechanical devices

As an aid to scientic investigation, various tools, measuring aids and calculating devices were developed in this
period.
Refracting telescopes rst appeared in the Netherlands in 1608. The spectacle makers Hans Lippershey, Zacharias
Janssen and Jacob Metius of Alkmaar all contributed to its invention.[98] Galileo was one of the rst scientists to use
this new tool for his astronomical observations in 1609.[99]
The reecting telescope was described by James Gregory in his book Optica Promota (1663). He argued that a mirror
shaped like the part of a conic section, would correct the spherical aberration that awed the accuracy of refracting
telescopes. His design, the "Gregorian telescope", however, remained un-built.
In 1666, Isaac Newton argued that the faults of the refracting telescope were fundamental because the lens refracted
light of dierent colors dierently. He concluded that light could not be refracted through a lens without causing
chromatic aberrations[100] From these experiments Newton concluded that no improvement could be made in the
refracting telescope.[101] However, he was able to demonstrate that the angle of reection remained the same for all
colors, so he decided to build a reecting telescope.[102] It was completed in 1668 and is the earliest known functional
reecting telescope.[103]
50 years later, John Hadley developed ways to make precision aspheric and parabolic objective mirrors for reecting
telescopes, building the rst parabolic Newtonian telescope and a Gregorian telescope with accurately shaped mirrors.[104][105]
These were successfully demonstrated to the Royal Society.[106]
The invention of the vacuum pump paved the way for the experiments of Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke into
the nature of vacuum and atmospheric pressure. The rst such device was made by Otto von Guericke in 1654. It
consisted of a piston and an air gun cylinder with aps that could suck the air from any vessel that that it was connected
to. In 1657, he pumped the air out of two cojoined hemispheres and demonstrated that a team of sixteen horses were
incapable of pulling it apart.[107] The air pump construction was greatly improved by Robert Hooke in 1658.[108]
Evangelista Torricelli (16071647) was best known for his invention of the mercury barometer. The motivation
for the invention was to improve on the suction pumps that were used to raise water out of the mines. Torricelli
constructed a sealed tube lled with mercury, set vertically into a basin of the same substance. The column of
mercury fell downwards, leaving a Torricellian vacuum above.[109]
1.5.1
Calculating devices
John Napier invented logarithms as a powerful mathematical tool. With the help of the prominent mathematician
Henry Briggs their logarithmic tables embodied a computational advance that made calculations by hand much
quicker.[110] His Napiers bones used a set of numbered rods as a multiplication tool using the system of lattice
multiplication. The way was opened to later scientic advances, particularly in astronomy and dynamics.
At Oxford University, Edmund Gunter built the rst analog device to aid computation. The 'Gunters scale' was a
large plane scale, engraved with various scales, or lines. Natural lines, such as the line of chords, the line of sines and
tangents are placed on one side of the scale and the corresponding articial or logarithmic ones were on the other side.
This calculating aid was a predecessor of the slide rule. It was William Oughtred (15751660) who rst used two
such scales sliding by one another to perform direct multiplication and division, and thus is credited as the inventor
of the slide rule in 1622.
Blaise Pascal (16231662) invented the mechanical calculator in 1642.[111] The introduction of his Pascaline in 1645
launched the development of mechanical calculators rst in Europe and then all over the world.[112][113] Gottfried
Leibniz (16461716), building on Pascals work, became one of the most prolic inventors in the eld of mechanical
calculators; he was the rst to describe a pinwheel calculator, in 1685,[114] and invented the Leibniz wheel, used in the
arithmometer, the rst mass-produced mechanical calculator. He also rened the binary number system, foundation
of virtually all modern computer architectures.[115]
John Hadley (16821744) was the inventor of the octant, the precursor to the sextant (invented by John Bird), which
18
greatly improved the science of navigation.
1.5.2
Industrial machines
Denis Papin (16471712) was best known for his pioneering invention of the steam digester, the forerunner of the
steam engine.[116] The rst working steam engine was patented in 1698 by the inventor Thomas Savery, as a "...new
invention for raising of water and occasioning motion to all sorts of mill work by the impellent force of re, which will
be of great use and advantage for drayning mines, serveing townes with water, and for the working of all sorts of mills
where they have not the benett of water nor constant windes. [sic][117] The invention was demonstrated to the Royal
Society on 14 June 1699 and the machine was described by Savery in his book The Miners Friend; or, An Engine
to Raise Water by Fire (1702),[118] in which he claimed that it could pump water out of mines. Thomas Newcomen
(16641729) perfected the practical steam engine for pumping water, the Newcomen steam engine. Consequently,
he can be regarded as a forefather of the Industrial Revolution.[119]
Abraham Darby I (16781717) was the rst, and most famous, of three generations of the Darby family who played
an important role in the Industrial Revolution. He developed a method of producing high-grade iron in a blast furnace
fueled by coke rather than charcoal. This was a major step forward in the production of iron as a raw material for the
Industrial Revolution.
1.6 Scientic developments

Key ideas and people that emerged from the 16th and 17th centuries:
First printed edition of Euclids Elements in 1482.
Nicolaus Copernicus (14731543) published On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres in 1543, which advanced the heliocentric theory of cosmology.
Andreas Vesalius (15141564) published De Humani Corporis Fabrica (On the Structure of the Human Body)
(1543), which discredited Galen's views. He found that the circulation of blood resolved from pumping of the
heart. He also assembled the rst human skeleton from cutting open cadavers.
Franciscus Vieta (15401603) published In Artem Analycitem Isagoge (1591), which gave the rst symbolic
notation of parameters in literal algebra.
William Gilbert (15441603) published On the Magnet and Magnetic Bodies, and on the Great Magnet the
Earth in 1600, which laid the foundations of a theory of magnetism and electricity.
Tycho Brahe (15461601) made extensive and more accurate naked eye observations of the planets in the late
16th century. These became the basic data for Keplers studies.
Sir Francis Bacon (15611626) published Novum Organum in 1620, which outlined a new system of logic
based on the process of reduction, which he oered as an improvement over Aristotle's philosophical process
of syllogism. This contributed to the development of what became known as the scientic method.
Galileo Galilei (15641642) improved the telescope, with which he made several important astronomical discoveries, including the four largest moons of Jupiter, the phases of Venus, and the rings of Saturn, and made
detailed observations of sunspots. He developed the laws for falling bodies based on pioneering quantitative
experiments which he analyzed mathematically.
Johannes Kepler (15711630) published the rst two of his three laws of planetary motion in 1609.
William Harvey (15781657) demonstrated that blood circulates, using dissections and other experimental
techniques.
Ren Descartes (15961650) published his Discourse on the Method in 1637, which helped to establish the
scientic method.
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (16321723) constructed powerful single lens microscopes and made extensive
observations that he published around 1660, opening up the micro-world of biology.
1.7. CONTRARY VIEWS
19
Isaac Newton (16431727) built upon the work of Kepler and Galileo. He showed that an inverse square
law for gravity explained the elliptical orbits of the planets, and advanced the law of universal gravitation.
His development of innitesimal calculus opened up new applications of the methods of mathematics to science. Newton taught that scientic theory should be coupled with rigorous experimentation, which became
the keystone of modern science.
1.7 Contrary views

See also: Historical revisionism
Not all historians of science agree that there was any revolution in the 16th or 17th century. The continuity thesis is
the hypothesis that there was no radical discontinuity between the intellectual development of the Middle Ages and
the developments in the Renaissance and early modern period. Thus the idea of an intellectual or scientic revolution
following the Renaissance isaccording to the continuity thesisa myth. Some continuity theorists point to earlier
intellectual revolutions occurring in the Middle Ages, usually referring to either a European "Renaissance of the 12th
century"[120][121] or a medieval "Muslim scientic revolution",[122][123][124] as a sign of continuity.[125]
Another contrary view has been recently proposed by Arun Bala in his dialogical history of the birth of modern
science. Bala proposes that the changes involved in the Scientic Revolutionthe mathematical realist turn, the
mechanical philosophy, the atomism, the central role assigned to the Sun in Copernican heliocentrismhave to be
seen as rooted in multicultural inuences on Europe. He sees specic inuences in Alhazen's physical optical theory,
Chinese mechanical technologies leading to the perception of the world as a machine, the Hindu-Arabic numeral
system, which carried implicitly a new mode of mathematical atomic thinking, and the heliocentrism rooted in in
ancient Egyptian religious ideas associated with Hermeticism.[126]
Bala argues that by ignoring such multicultural impacts we have been led to a Eurocentric conception of the scientic
revolution.[127] However he clearly states: The makers of the revolution Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes,
Newton, and many others had to selectively appropriate relevant ideas, transform them, and create new auxiliary
concepts in order to complete their task... In the ultimate analysis, even if the revolution was rooted upon a multicultural base it is the accomplishment of Europeans in Europe.[128] Critics note that lacking documentary evidence of
transmission of specic scientic ideas, Balas model will remain a working hypothesis, not a conclusion.[129]
A third approach takes the term Renaissance literally as a rebirth. A closer study of Greek Philosophy and Greek
Mathematics demonstrates that nearly all of the so-called revolutionary results of the so-called scientic revolution
were in actuality restatements of ideas that were in many cases older than those of Aristotle and in nearly all cases
at least as old as Archimedes. Aristotle even explicitly argues against some of the ideas that were demonstrated
during the scientic revolution, such as heliocentrism. The basic ideas of the scientic method were well known to
Archimedes and his contemporaries, as demonstrated in the well known discovery of buoyancy. Atomism was rst
thought of by Leucippus and Democritus. This view of the scientic revolution reduces it to a period of relearning
classical ideas that is very much an extension of the Renaissance. This view of the scientic revolution does not deny
that a change occurred but argues that it was a reassertion of previous knowledge (a renaissance) and not the creation
of new knowledge. It cites statements from Newton, Copernicus and others in favour of the Pythagorean worldview
as evidence. [130][131]
1.8 See also

History of science in the Renaissance
History of the Center of the Universe
Science in the Age of Enlightenment
Medical Renaissance
Copernican Revolution
Merton Thesis
Natural philosophy
Age of Enlightenment
20

Science in the Middle Ages
Scientic law
Scientic method
Rationalism
The Copernican Question: Prognostication, Skepticism, and Celestial Order
1.8.1
Revolutions
Revolution
British Agricultural Revolution/Neolithic Revolution
Industrial Revolution
Commercial Revolution
Digital Revolution
Chemical Revolution
Information Revolution
1.9 References
[1] Galilei, Galileo (1974) Two New Sciences, trans. Stillman Drake, (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Pr. pp. 217, 225, 2967.
[2] Moody, Ernest A. (1951). Galileo and Avempace: The Dynamics of the Leaning Tower Experiment (I)". Journal of the
History of Ideas 12 (2): 163193. doi:10.2307/2707514. JSTOR 2707514.
[3] Clagett, Marshall (1961) The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages. Madison, Univ. of Wisconsin Pr. pp. 21819,
2525, 346, 40916, 547, 5768, 67382
[4] Maier, Anneliese (1982) Galileo and the Scholastic Theory of Impetus, pp. 103123 in On the Threshold of Exact
Science: Selected Writings of Anneliese Maier on Late Medieval Natural Philosophy. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania
Pr. ISBN 0812278313
[5] Hannam, p. 342
[6] Grant, pp. 2930, 427.
[7] Scientic Revolution in Encarta. 2007.
[8] Cohen, I. Bernard (1976). The Eighteenth-Century Origins of the Concept of Scientic Revolution. Journal of the
History of Ideas 37 (2): 257288. doi:10.2307/2708824. JSTOR 2708824.
[9] Clairaut, Alexis-Claude (1747). Du systme du monde, dans les principes de la gravitation universelle.
[10] Whewell, William (1837). History of the inductive sciences 2. pp. 275, 280.
[11] Whewell, William (1840). Philosophy of the Inductive sciences 2. p. 318.
[12] Physical Sciences. Encyclopedia Britannica 25 (15th ed.). 1993. p. 830.
[13] Hunt, Shelby D. (2003). Controversy in marketing theory: for reason, realism, truth, and objectivity. M.E. Sharpe. p. 18.
ISBN 0-7656-0932-0.
[14] Donne, John An Anatomy of the World, quoted in Kuhn, Thomas S. (1957) The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr. p. 194.
[15] Herbert Buttereld, The Origins of Modern Science, 13001800, (New York: Macmillan Co., 1959).p. viii.
[16] Harrison, Peter. Christianity and the rise of western science. Retrieved 28 August 2014.
[17] Noll, Mark, Science, Religion, and A. D. White: Seeking Peace in the Warfare Between Science and Theology (PDF), The
Biologos Foundation, p. 4, retrieved 14 January 2015
1.9. REFERENCES
21
[18] Lindberg, David C.; Numbers, Ronald L. (1986), Introduction, God & Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter Between
Christianity and Science, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, pp. 5, 12, ISBN 0520055381, It would
be indefensible to maintain, with Hooykaas and Jaki, that Christianity was fundamentally responsible for the successes of
seventeenth-century science. It would be a mistake of equal magnitude, however, to overlook the intricate interlocking of
scientic and religious concerns throughout the century.
[19] Grant, pp. 5563, 87104
[20] Pedersen, pp. 106110.
[21] Grant, pp. 638, 10416.
[22] Pedersen, p. 25
[23] Pedersen, pp. 8689.
[24] Kuhn, Thomas (1957) The Copernican Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr. p. 142.
[25] Eastwood, Bruce S. (1982). Kepler as Historian of Science: Precursors of Copernican Heliocentrism according to De
revolutionibus, I, 10. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 126: 367394. reprinted in Eastwood, B. S.
(1989) Astronomy and Optics from Pliny to Descartes, London: Variorum Reprints.
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(2): 108. doi:10.1098/rsnr.1966.0014.
[27] Espinoza, Fernando (2005). An analysis of the historical development of ideas about motion and its implications for
teaching. Physics Education 40 (2): 141. Bibcode:2005PhyEd..40..139E. doi:10.1088/0031-9120/40/2/002.
[28] Newton, Isaac (1962). Hall, A.R.; Hall, M.B., eds. Unpublished Scientic Papers of Isaac Newton. Cambridge University
Press. pp. 31011. All those ancients knew the rst law [of motion] who attributed to atoms in an innite vacuum a motion
which was rectilinear, extremely swift and perpetual because of the lack of resistance... Aristotle was of the same mind,
since he expresses his opinion thus...[in Physics 4.8.215a19-22], speaking of motion in the void [in which bodies have no
gravity and] where there is no impediment he writes: 'Why a body once moved should come to rest anywhere no one can
say. For why should it rest here rather than there ? Hence either it will not be moved, or it must be moved indenitely,
unless something stronger impedes it.'
[29] Sorabji, R. (2005). The Philosophy of the Commentators, 200600 AD: Physics. G Reference, Information and Interdisciplinary Subjects Series. Cornell University Press. p. 348. ISBN 978-0-8014-8988-4. LCCN 2004063547. An impetus
is an inner force impressed into a moving body from without. It thus contrasts with purely external forces like the action of
air on projectiles in Aristotle, and with purely internal forces like the nature of the elements in Aristotle and his followers.
Impetus theories also contrast with theories of inertia which replaced them in the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries.
Such inertial ideas are merely sporadic in Antiquity and not consciously attended to as a separate option. Aristotle, for
example, argues in Phys. 4.8 that in a vacuum a moving body would never stop, but the possible implications for inertia
are not discussed.
[30] Heath, Thomas L. (1949) Mathematics in Aristotle. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 1156.
[31] Drake, S. (1964). Galileo and the Law of Inertia. American Journal of Physics 32 (8): 601. doi:10.1119/1.1970872.
[32] Hannam, p. 162
[33] Empiricism: The inuence of Francis Bacon, John Locke, and David Hume. Sweet Briar College. Archived from the
original on 8 July 2013. Retrieved 21 October 2013.
[34] Bacon, Francis. "Novum Organum".
[35] Bacon, Francis (1605), Temporis Partus Maximus.
[36] Zagorin, Perez (1998), Francis Bacon, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 84, ISBN 069100966X
[37] Durant, Will. The Story of Philosophy. Page 101 Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. 1926. ISBN 978-0-671-69500-2
[38] Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, 2000, CD-ROM, version 2.5.
[39] Gimpel, Jean (1976) The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages. New York, Penguin. ISBN
0760735824. p. 194.
[40] Thomson, Thomas (1812) History of the Royal Society: from its Institution to the End of the Eighteenth Century. R. Baldwin.
p. 461
22
[41] Singer, Charles (1941). A Short History of Science to the Nineteenth Century. Clarendon Press. p. 217.
[42] Whitehouse, David (2009). Renaissance Genius: Galileo Galilei & His Legacy to Modern Science. Sterling Publishing
Company. p. 219. ISBN 1-4027-6977-6.
[43] Weidhorn, Manfred (2005). The Person of the Millennium: The Unique Impact of Galileo on World History. iUniverse. p.
155. ISBN 0-595-36877-8.
[44] Hetnarski, Richard B.; Ignaczak, Jzef (2010). The Mathematical Theory of Elasticity (2nd ed.). CRC Press. p. 3. ISBN
1-4398-2888-1.
[45] Finocchiaro, M. A. (2007). The Person of the Millennium: The Unique Impact of Galileo on World History ? By Manfred
Weidhorn. The Historian 69 (3): 601. doi:10.1111/j.1540-6563.2007.00189_68.x.
[46] Sharratt, pp. 20405
[47] Drake, Stillman (1957). Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo. New York: Doubleday & Company. pp. 237238. ISBN
0-385-09239-3.
[48] Wallace, William A. (1984) Galileo and His Sources: The Heritage of the Collegio Romano in Galileos Science, Princeton:
Princeton Univ. Pr. ISBN 0-691-08355-X
[49] Sharratt, pp. 20204
[50] Sharratt, 20204
[51] Favaro, Antonio, ed. (18901909). Le Opere di Galileo Galilei, Edizione Nazionale [The Works of Galileo Galilei, National
Edition] (in Italian) 8. Florence: Barbera. pp. 27475. ISBN 88-09-20881-1.
[52] Dear, Peter (2009) Revolutionizing the Sciences. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691142068. pp. 6567, 13438.
[53] Grant, pp. 10103, 14850.
[54] Pedersen, p. 231.
[55] McCluskey, Stephen C. (1998) Astronomies and Cultures in Early Medieval Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr. pp.
18084, 198202.
[56] Galilei, Galileo (1967) [Composed in 1632]. Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. Translated by Stillman
Drake (2nd ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 103.
In the 1661 translation by Thomas Salusbury: "... the knowledge of those few comprehended by humane understanding, equalleth the divine, as to the certainty objectiv ... p. 92 (from the Archimedes Project)
In the original Italian: "... ma di quelle poche intese dall'intelletto umano credo che la cognizione agguagli la divina
nella certezza obiettiva, poich arriva a comprenderne la necessit ... (from the copy at the Italian Wikisource)
[57] Galileo Galilei, Il Saggiatore (The Assayer, 1623), as translated by Stillman Drake (1957), Discoveries and Opinions of
Galileo pp. 2378
[58] Westfall, pp. 3033.
[59] Kuhn, Thomas (1970), The Structure of Scientic Revolutions. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226458075. pp.
10506.
[60] Chartres, Richard and Vermont, David (1998) A Brief History of Gresham College. Gresham College. ISBN 094782216X.
p. 38
[61] London Royal Society. University of St Andrews. Retrieved 8 December 2009.
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2009.
[63] Henderson (1941) p. 29
[64] Philosophical Transactions A About the journal. The Royal Society. Retrieved 11 December 2009.
[65] Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. The Royal Society. Retrieved 11 December 2009.
[66] Lewis, C.S. (2012), The Discarded Image, Canto Classics, pp. 3, 4, ISBN 978-1107604704
[67] Hannam, p. 303
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[68] Hannam, p. 329

[69] Hannam, p. 283
[70] Correspondence of Isaac Newton, vol.2, 16761687 ed. H W Turnbull, Cambridge University Press 1960; at page 297,
document No. 235, letter from Hooke to Newton dated 24 November 1679.
[71] Westfall, pp. 3912
[72] Whiteside D T (ed.) (1974) Mathematical Papers of Isaac Newton, vol. 6, 16841691, Cambridge University Press. p. 30.
[73] Isaac Newton (16431727), BBC History
[74] Halley biography. Groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk. Retrieved on 26 September 2011.
[75] Edelglass et al., Matter and Mind, ISBN 0-940262-45-2. p. 54
[76] On the meaning and origins of this expression, see Kirsten Walsh, Does Newton feign an hypothesis?, Early Modern
Experimental Philosophy, 18 October 2010.
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[78] Harvey, William De motu cordis, cited in Debus, Allen G. (1978) Man and Nature in the Renaissance. Cambridge Univ.
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[79] Zimmer, Carl. (2004) Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain and How It Changed the World. New York: Free
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[80] Hannaway, O. (1986). Laboratory Design and the Aim of Science: Andreas Libavius versus Tycho Brahe. Isis 77 (4):
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[81] Westfall, Richard S. (1983) Never at Rest. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521274354. pp. 1823.
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[83] von Zittel, Karl Alfred (1901) History of Geology and Palaeontology, p. 15
[84] Robert Boyle. understandingscience.ucc.ie
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[89] Ren Descartes, Encarta, Microsoft, 2008, archived from the original on 31 October 2009, retrieved 15 August 2007
[90] Dobbs, J.T. (December 1982), Newtons Alchemy and His Theory of Matter, Isis 73 (4): 523, doi:10.1086/353114
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[91] Priestley, Joseph (1757) History of Electricity. London
[92] Maver, William, Jr.: Electricity, its History and Progress, The Encyclopedia Americana; a library of universal knowledge,
vol. X, pp. 172. (1918). New York: Encyclopedia Americana Corp.
[93] Dampier, W. C. D. (1905). The theory of experimental electricity. Cambridge physical series. Cambridge [Eng.: University Press.
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Franklin. New York: J. Wiley & Sons.
[95] Boyle, Robert (1676). Experiments and notes about the mechanical origin or production of particular qualities.
[96] Boyle, Robert (1675) Experiments on the Origin of Electricity
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24
[98] galileo.rice.edu The Galileo Project > Science > The Telescope by Al Van Helden The Hague discussed the patent
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Sacharias Janssen had a telescope at about the same time but was at the Frankfurt Fair where he tried to sell it
[99] Loker, Aleck (2008). Proles in Colonial History. Aleck Loker. pp. 15. ISBN 978-1-928874-16-4.
[100] Newton, Isaac. Optics, bk. i. pt. ii. prop. 3
[101] Treatise on Optics, p. 112
[102] White, Michael (1999). Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer. Perseus Books. p. 170. ISBN 978-0-7382-0143-6.
[103] Hall, Alfred Rupert. Isaac Newton: adventurer in thought. p. 67
[104] King, Henry C. (2003). The History of the Telescope. Courier Dover Publications. pp. 77. ISBN 978-0-486-43265-6.
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[108] Wilson, George (15 January 1849). On the Early History of the Air-pump in England. Proceedings of the Royal Society
of Edinburgh.
[109] Timbs, John (1868). Wonderful Inventions: From the Mariners Compass to the Electric Telegraph Cable. London: George
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[110] "Napier, John". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 18851900.
[111] Marguin, Jean (1994). Histoire des instruments et machines calculer, trois sicles de mcanique pensante 16421942.
Hermann. p. 48. ISBN 978-2-7056-6166-3. citing Taton, Ren (1963). Le calcul mcanique. Paris: Presses universitaires
de France.
[112] Schum, David A. (1979). A Review of a Case against Blaise Pascal and His Heirs. Michigan Law Review 77 (3):
446483. JSTOR 1288133.
[113] Pascal biography. Groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk. Retrieved on 26 September 2011.
[114] Smith, David Eugene (1929). A Source Book in Mathematics. New York and London: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.
pp. 173181.
[115] McEvoy, John G. (March 1975). A Revolutionary Philosophy of Science: Feyerabend and the Degeneration of Critical
Rationalism into Sceptical Fallibilism. Philosophy of Science 42 (1): 49. JSTOR 187297.
[116] Denis Papin. NNDB
[117] Jenkins, Rhys (1936). Links in the History of Engineering and Technology from Tudor Times. Ayer Publishing. p. 66.
ISBN 0-8369-2167-4.
[118] Savery, Thomas (1827). The Miners Friend: Or, an Engine to Raise Water by Fire. S. Crouch.
[119] Thomas Newcomen (16631729), BBC History
[120] Grant
[121] Hannam, James (31 October 2012) Medieval Christianity and the Rise of Modern Science, Part 2. biologos.org
[122] Hassan, Ahmad Y and Hill, Donald Routledge (1986), Islamic Technology: An Illustrated History, p. 282, Cambridge
University Press.
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[124] Briault, Robert (1919). The Making of Humanity. London, G. Allen & Unwin ltd. p. 188.
[125] Hu, Toby E. (2003) The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West, 2nd. ed., Cambridge: Cambridge
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[126] Saliba, George (1999). Whose Science is Arabic Science in Renaissance Europe? Columbia University.
[127] Bala, Arun (2006) Dialogue of Civilizations in the Birth of Modern Science. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0230609791
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25
[128] "Book Review of The Dialogue of Civilizations in the Birth of Modern Science by Arun Bala". MuslimHeritage.com
[129] Sobol, Peter G. (December 2007). Review of The Dialogue of Civilizations and the Birth of Modern Science". Isis 98 (4):
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[130] Africa, Thomas W. (1961). Copernicus Relation to Aristarchus and Pythagoras. Isis 52 (3): 403409. doi:10.1086/349478.
JSTOR 228080.
[131] A survey of the debate over the signicance of these antecedents is in Lindberg, D. C. (1992) The Beginnings of Western
Science: The European Scientic Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450.
Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr. ISBN 0226482316. pp. 35568.
1.10 Sources
Grant, E. (1996). The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages: Their Religious, Institutional, and
Intellectual Contexts. Cambridge Univ. Press. ISBN 0521567629.
Hannam, James (2011). The Genesis of Science. ISBN 1-59698-155-5.
Pedersen, Olaf (1993). Early Physics and Astronomy: A Historical Introduction. Cambridge Univ. Press. ISBN
0-521-40899-7.
Sharratt, Michael (1994). Galileo: Decisive Innovator. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-52156671-1.
Westfall, Richard S. (1971). The Construction of Modern Science. New York: John Wiley and Sons. ISBN
0-521-29295-6.
26
1.10. SOURCES
27
Image of veins from William Harvey's Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus. Harvey demonstrated
that blood circulated around the body, rather than being created in the liver.
28
Title page from The Sceptical Chymist, a foundational text of chemistry, written by Robert Boyle in 1661.
1.10. SOURCES
Newtons Opticks or a treatise of the reections, refractions, inections and colours of light.
29
30
Otto von Guericke's experiments on electrostatics, published 1672.
1.10. SOURCES
31
Air pump built by Robert Boyle. Many new instruments were devised in this period, which greatly aided in the expansion of scientic
knowledge.
32
An ivory set of Napiers Bones, an early calculating device invented by John Napier.
1.10. SOURCES
The 1698 Savery Engine was the rst successful steam engine.
33
34
Matteo Ricci (left) and Xu Guangqi (right) in Athanasius Kircher, La Chine ... Illustre, Amsterdam, 1670.
Chapter 2
Optics
This article is about the branch of physics. For the book by Sir Isaac Newton, see Opticks. For the musical artist, see
Optical (artist). For other uses, see Optic (disambiguation).
Optics is the branch of physics which involves the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with
matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it.[1] Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible,
ultraviolet, and infrared light. Because light is an electromagnetic wave, other forms of electromagnetic radiation
such as X-rays, microwaves, and radio waves exhibit similar properties.[1]
Most optical phenomena can be accounted for using the classical electromagnetic description of light. Complete
electromagnetic descriptions of light are, however, often dicult to apply in practice. Practical optics is usually done
using simplied models. The most common of these, geometric optics, treats light as a collection of rays that travel in
straight lines and bend when they pass through or reect from surfaces. Physical optics is a more comprehensive model
of light, which includes wave eects such as diraction and interference that cannot be accounted for in geometric
optics. Historically, the ray-based model of light was developed rst, followed by the wave model of light. Progress in
electromagnetic theory in the 19th century led to the discovery that light waves were in fact electromagnetic radiation.
Some phenomena depend on the fact that light has both wave-like and particle-like properties. Explanation of these
eects requires quantum mechanics. When considering lights particle-like properties, the light is modelled as a
collection of particles called "photons". Quantum optics deals with the application of quantum mechanics to optical
systems.
Optical science is relevant to and studied in many related disciplines including astronomy, various engineering elds,
photography, and medicine (particularly ophthalmology and optometry). Practical applications of optics are found
in a variety of technologies and everyday objects, including mirrors, lenses, telescopes, microscopes, lasers, and bre
optics.
2.1 History
Main article: History of optics
See also: Timeline of electromagnetism and classical optics
Optics began with the development of lenses by the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians. The earliest known lenses,
made from polished crystal, often quartz, date from as early as 700 BC for Assyrian lenses such as the Layard/Nimrud
lens.[2] The ancient Romans and Greeks lled glass spheres with water to make lenses. These practical developments
were followed by the development of theories of light and vision by ancient Greek and Indian philosophers, and the
development of geometrical optics in the Greco-Roman world. The word optics comes from the ancient Greek word
, meaning appearance, look.[3]
Greek philosophy on optics broke down into two opposing theories on how vision worked, the "intromission theory"
and the emission theory.[4] The intro-mission approach saw vision as coming from objects casting o copies of
themselves (called eidola) that were captured by the eye. With many propagators including Democritus, Epicurus,
Aristotle and their followers, this theory seems to have some contact with modern theories of what vision really is,
but it remained only speculation lacking any experimental foundation.
Plato rst articulated the emission theory, the idea that visual perception is accomplished by rays emitted by the
eyes. He also commented on the parity reversal of mirrors in Timaeus.[5] Some hundred years later, Euclid wrote a
35
36
CHAPTER 2. OPTICS
Optics includes study of dispersion of light.
treatise entitled Optics where he linked vision to geometry, creating geometrical optics.[6] He based his work on Platos
emission theory wherein he described the mathematical rules of perspective and described the eects of refraction
qualitatively, although he questioned that a beam of light from the eye could instantaneously light up the stars every
time someone blinked.[7] Ptolemy, in his treatise Optics, held an extramission-intromission theory of vision: the rays
(or ux) from the eye formed a cone, the vertex being within the eye, and the base dening the visual eld. The
rays were sensitive, and conveyed information back to the observers intellect about the distance and orientation of
surfaces. He summarised much of Euclid and went on to describe a way to measure the angle of refraction, though
he failed to notice the empirical relationship between it and the angle of incidence.[8]
During the Middle Ages, Greek ideas about optics were resurrected and extended by writers in the Muslim world. One
of the earliest of these was Al-Kindi (c. 80173) who wrote on the merits of Aristotelian and Euclidean ideas of optics,
2.1. HISTORY
37
The Nimrud lens
favouring the emission theory since it could better quantify optical phenomenon.[10] In 984, the Persian mathematician
Ibn Sahl wrote the treatise On burning mirrors and lenses, correctly describing a law of refraction equivalent to
Snells law.[11] He used this law to compute optimum shapes for lenses and curved mirrors. In the early 11th century,
Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham) wrote the Book of Optics (Kitab al-manazir) in which he explored reection and refraction
and proposed a new system for explaining vision and light based on observation and experiment.[12][13][14][15][16] He
rejected the emission theory of Ptolemaic optics with its rays being emitted by the eye, and instead put forward the
idea that light reected in all directions in straight lines from all points of the objects being viewed and then entered
the eye, although he was unable to correctly explain how the eye captured the rays.[17] Alhazens work was largely
ignored in the Arabic world but it was anonymously translated into Latin around 1200 A.D. and further summarised
and expanded on by the Polish monk Witelo[18] making it a standard text on optics in Europe for the next 400 years.
In the 13th century medieval Europe the English bishop Robert Grosseteste wrote on a wide range of scientic topics
discussing light from four dierent perspectives: an epistemology of light, a metaphysics or cosmogony of light, an
etiology or physics of light, and a theology of light,[19] basing it on the works Aristotle and Platonism. Grossetestes
most famous disciple, Roger Bacon, wrote works citing a wide range of recently translated optical and philosophical
works, including those of Alhazen, Aristotle, Avicenna, Averroes, Euclid, al-Kindi, Ptolemy, Tideus, and Constantine
the African. Bacon was able to use parts of glass spheres as magnifying glasses to demonstrate that light reects from
objects rather than being released from them.
The rst wearable eyeglasses were invented in Italy around 1286.[20] This was the start of the optical industry of
grinding and polishing lenses for these spectacles, rst in Venice and Florence in the thirteenth century,[21] and
later in the spectacle making centres in both the Netherlands and Germany.[22] Spectacle makers created improved
types of lenses for the correction of vision based more on empirical knowledge gained from observing the eects of
the lenses rather than using the rudimentary optical theory of the day (theory which for the most part could not even
38
CHAPTER 2. OPTICS
Alhazen(Ibn al-Haytham), the father of Optics [9]
adequately explain how spectacles worked).[23][24] This practical development, mastery, and experimentation with
lenses led directly to the invention of the compound optical microscope around 1595, and the refracting telescope in
1608, both of which appeared in the spectacle making centres in the Netherlands.[25][26]
In the early 17th century Johannes Kepler expanded on geometric optics in his writings, covering lenses, reection
by at and curved mirrors, the principles of pinhole cameras, inverse-square law governing the intensity of light, and
the optical explanations of astronomical phenomena such as lunar and solar eclipses and astronomical parallax. He
was also able to correctly deduce the role of the retina as the actual organ that recorded images, nally being able
to scientically quantify the eects of dierent types of lenses that spectacle makers had been observing over the
previous 300 years.[27] After the invention of the telescope Kepler set out the theoretical basis on how they worked
and described an improved version, known as the Keplerian telescope, using two convex lenses to produce higher
magnication.[28]
2.1. HISTORY
39
Reproduction of a page of Ibn Sahl's manuscript showing his knowledge of the law of refraction, now known as Snells law
Optical theory progressed in the mid-17th century with treatises written by philosopher Ren Descartes, which explained a variety of optical phenomena including reection and refraction by assuming that light was emitted by
objects which produced it.[29] This diered substantively from the ancient Greek emission theory. In the late 1660s
and early 1670s, Isaac Newton expanded Descartes ideas into a corpuscle theory of light, famously determining that
white light was a mix of colours which can be separated into its component parts with a prism. In 1690, Christiaan
Huygens proposed a wave theory for light based on suggestions that had been made by Robert Hooke in 1664. Hooke
himself publicly criticised Newtons theories of light and the feud between the two lasted until Hookes death. In
1704, Newton published Opticks and, at the time, partly because of his success in other areas of physics, he was
40
CHAPTER 2. OPTICS
Cover of the rst edition of Newtons Opticks
generally considered to be the victor in the debate over the nature of light.[29]
Newtonian optics was generally accepted until the early 19th century when Thomas Young and Augustin-Jean Fresnel
conducted experiments on the interference of light that rmly established lights wave nature. Youngs famous double
slit experiment showed that light followed the law of superposition, which is a wave-like property not predicted by
Newtons corpuscle theory. This work led to a theory of diraction for light and opened an entire area of study in
2.2. CLASSICAL OPTICS
41
physical optics.[30] Wave optics was successfully unied with electromagnetic theory by James Clerk Maxwell in the
1860s.[31]
The next development in optical theory came in 1899 when Max Planck correctly modelled blackbody radiation by
assuming that the exchange of energy between light and matter only occurred in discrete amounts he called quanta.[32]
In 1905 Albert Einstein published the theory of the photoelectric eect that rmly established the quantization of
light itself.[33][34] In 1913 Niels Bohr showed that atoms could only emit discrete amounts of energy, thus explaining
the discrete lines seen in emission and absorption spectra.[35] The understanding of the interaction between light and
matter which followed from these developments not only formed the basis of quantum optics but also was crucial for
the development of quantum mechanics as a whole. The ultimate culmination, the theory of quantum electrodynamics,
explains all optics and electromagnetic processes in general as the result of the exchange of real and virtual photons.[36]
Quantum optics gained practical importance with the inventions of the maser in 1953 and of the laser in 1960.[37]
Following the work of Paul Dirac in quantum eld theory, George Sudarshan, Roy J. Glauber, and Leonard Mandel
applied quantum theory to the electromagnetic eld in the 1950s and 1960s to gain a more detailed understanding of
photodetection and the statistics of light.
2.2 Classical optics

Classical optics is divided into two main branches: geometrical optics and physical optics. In geometrical, or ray
optics, light is considered to travel in straight lines, and in physical, or wave optics, light is considered to be an
electromagnetic wave.
Geometrical optics can be viewed as an approximation of physical optics which can be applied when the wavelength
of the light used is much smaller than the size of the optical elements or system being modelled.
2.2.1
Geometrical optics
Main article: Geometrical optics

Geometrical optics, or ray optics, describes the propagation of light in terms of rays which travel in straight lines,
1
1
2
interface
normal
Geometry of reection and refraction of light rays
and whose paths are governed by the laws of reection and refraction at interfaces between dierent media.[38] These
laws were discovered empirically as far back as 984 AD[11] and have been used in the design of optical components
and instruments from then until the present day. They can be summarised as follows:
42
CHAPTER 2. OPTICS
When a ray of light hits the boundary between two transparent materials, it is divided into a reected and a refracted
ray.
The law of reection says that the reected ray lies in the plane of incidence, and the angle of reection
equals the angle of incidence.
The law of refraction says that the refracted ray lies in the plane of incidence, and the sine of the angle
of refraction divided by the sine of the angle of incidence is a constant.
sin 1
=n
sin 2
where n is a constant for any two materials and a given colour of light. It is known as the refractive index.
The laws of reection and refraction can be derived from Fermats principle which states that the path taken between
two points by a ray of light is the path that can be traversed in the least time.[39]
Approximations
Geometric optics is often simplied by making the paraxial approximation, or small angle approximation. The
mathematical behaviour then becomes linear, allowing optical components and systems to be described by simple
matrices. This leads to the techniques of Gaussian optics and paraxial ray tracing, which are used to nd basic
properties of optical systems, such as approximate image and object positions and magnications.[40]
Reections
Main article: Reection (physics)
Reections can be divided into two types: specular reection and diuse reection. Specular reection describes
the gloss of surfaces such as mirrors, which reect light in a simple, predictable way. This allows for production
of reected images that can be associated with an actual (real) or extrapolated (virtual) location in space. Diuse
reection describes opaque, non limpid materials, such as paper or rock. The reections from these surfaces can only
be described statistically, with the exact distribution of the reected light depending on the microscopic structure of
the material. Many diuse reectors are described or can be approximated by Lamberts cosine law, which describes
surfaces that have equal luminance when viewed from any angle. Glossy surfaces can give both specular and diuse
reection.
In specular reection, the direction of the reected ray is determined by the angle the incident ray makes with the
surface normal, a line perpendicular to the surface at the point where the ray hits. The incident and reected rays and
the normal lie in a single plane, and the angle between the reected ray and the surface normal is the same as that
between the incident ray and the normal.[41] This is known as the Law of Reection.
For at mirrors, the law of reection implies that images of objects are upright and the same distance behind the
mirror as the objects are in front of the mirror. The image size is the same as the object size. The law also implies
that mirror images are parity inverted, which we perceive as a left-right inversion. Images formed from reection
in two (or any even number of) mirrors are not parity inverted. Corner reectors[41] retroreect light, producing
reected rays that travel back in the direction from which the incident rays came.
Mirrors with curved surfaces can be modelled by ray-tracing and using the law of reection at each point on the
surface. For mirrors with parabolic surfaces, parallel rays incident on the mirror produce reected rays that converge
at a common focus. Other curved surfaces may also focus light, but with aberrations due to the diverging shape
causing the focus to be smeared out in space. In particular, spherical mirrors exhibit spherical aberration. Curved
mirrors can form images with magnication greater than or less than one, and the magnication can be negative,
indicating that the image is inverted. An upright image formed by reection in a mirror is always virtual, while an
inverted image is real and can be projected onto a screen.[41]
43
mirror
P
normal
Diagram of specular reection
Refractions
Main article: Refraction
Refraction occurs when light travels through an area of space that has a changing index of refraction; this principle
allows for lenses and the focusing of light. The simplest case of refraction occurs when there is an interface between
a uniform medium with index of refraction n1 and another medium with index of refraction n2 . In such situations,
Snells Law describes the resulting deection of the light ray:
n1 sin 1 = n2 sin 2
44
CHAPTER 2. OPTICS
n1
v1
n2 index
v2 velocity
normal
interface
2
Q
Illustration of Snells Law for the case n1 < n2 , such as air/water interface
where 1 and 2 are the angles between the normal (to the interface) and the incident and refracted waves, respectively.
This phenomenon is also associated with a changing speed of light as seen from the denition of index of refraction
provided above which implies:
v1 sin 2 = v2 sin 1
where v1 and v2 are the wave velocities through the respective media.[41]
Various consequences of Snells Law include the fact that for light rays travelling from a material with a high index
of refraction to a material with a low index of refraction, it is possible for the interaction with the interface to result
in zero transmission. This phenomenon is called total internal reection and allows for bre optics technology. As
light signals travel down a bre optic cable, it undergoes total internal reection allowing for essentially no light lost
over the length of the cable. It is also possible to produce polarised light rays using a combination of reection and
refraction: When a refracted ray and the reected ray form a right angle, the reected ray has the property of plane
polarization. The angle of incidence required for such a scenario is known as Brewsters angle.[41]
Snells Law can be used to predict the deection of light rays as they pass through linear media as long as the indexes
of refraction and the geometry of the media are known. For example, the propagation of light through a prism results
in the light ray being deected depending on the shape and orientation of the prism. Additionally, since dierent
frequencies of light have slightly dierent indexes of refraction in most materials, refraction can be used to produce
dispersion spectra that appear as rainbows. The discovery of this phenomenon when passing light through a prism is
famously attributed to Isaac Newton.[41]
Some media have an index of refraction which varies gradually with position and, thus, light rays curve through the
medium rather than travel in straight lines. This eect is what is responsible for mirages seen on hot days where the
changing index of refraction of the air causes the light rays to bend creating the appearance of specular reections
in the distance (as if on the surface of a pool of water). Material that has a varying index of refraction is called
a gradient-index (GRIN) material and has many useful properties used in modern optical scanning technologies
including photocopiers and scanners. The phenomenon is studied in the eld of gradient-index optics.[42]
A device which produces converging or diverging light rays due to refraction is known as a lens. Thin lenses produce
focal points on either side that can be modelled using the lensmakers equation.[43] In general, two types of lenses
exist: convex lenses, which cause parallel light rays to converge, and concave lenses, which cause parallel light rays to
diverge. The detailed prediction of how images are produced by these lenses can be made using ray-tracing similar
to curved mirrors. Similarly to curved mirrors, thin lenses follow a simple equation that determines the location of
the images given a particular focal length ( f ) and object distance ( S1 ):
45
A ray tracing diagram for a converging lens.
1
1
1
+
=
S1
S2
f
where S2 is the distance associated with the image and is considered by convention to be negative if on the same side
of the lens as the object and positive if on the opposite side of the lens.[43] The focal length f is considered negative
for concave lenses.
Incoming parallel rays are focused by a convex lens into an inverted real image one focal length from the lens, on the
far side of the lens. Rays from an object at nite distance are focused further from the lens than the focal distance;
the closer the object is to the lens, the further the image is from the lens. With concave lenses, incoming parallel rays
diverge after going through the lens, in such a way that they seem to have originated at an upright virtual image one
focal length from the lens, on the same side of the lens that the parallel rays are approaching on. Rays from an object
at nite distance are associated with a virtual image that is closer to the lens than the focal length, and on the same
side of the lens as the object. The closer the object is to the lens, the closer the virtual image is to the lens.
Likewise, the magnication of a lens is given by
M =
S2
f
=
S1
f S1
where the negative sign is given, by convention, to indicate an upright object for positive values and an inverted object
for negative values. Similar to mirrors, upright images produced by single lenses are virtual while inverted images
are real.[41]
Lenses suer from aberrations that distort images and focal points. These are due to both to geometrical imperfections
and due to the changing index of refraction for dierent wavelengths of light (chromatic aberration).[41]
46
CHAPTER 2. OPTICS
A B C D E F GH I J K L
abcde f gh i j k l
-3f
-2f
-f
c d2f
ab
A
f
F
3f
g
G
4f
5f
Images of black letters in a thin convex lens of focal length f are shown in red. Selected rays are shown for letters E, I and K in blue,
green and orange, respectively. Note that E (at 2f) has an equal-size, real and inverted image; I (at f) has its image at innity; and
K (at f/2) has a double-size, virtual and upright image.
2.2.2
Physical optics
Main article: Physical optics

In physical optics, light is considered to propagate as a wave. This model predicts phenomena such as interference and
diraction, which are not explained by geometric optics. The speed of light waves in air is approximately 3.0108
47
m/s (exactly 299,792,458 m/s in vacuum). The wavelength of visible light waves varies between 400 and 700 nm,
but the term light is also often applied to infrared (0.7300 m) and ultraviolet radiation (10400 nm).
The wave model can be used to make predictions about how an optical system will behave without requiring an
explanation of what is waving in what medium. Until the middle of the 19th century, most physicists believed
in an ethereal medium in which the light disturbance propagated.[44] The existence of electromagnetic waves was
predicted in 1865 by Maxwells equations. These waves propagate at the speed of light and have varying electric
and magnetic elds which are orthogonal to one another, and also to the direction of propagation of the waves.[45]
Light waves are now generally treated as electromagnetic waves except when quantum mechanical eects have to be
considered.
Modelling and design of optical systems using physical optics
Many simplied approximations are available for analysing and designing optical systems. Most of these use a single
scalar quantity to represent the electric eld of the light wave, rather than using a vector model with orthogonal electric
and magnetic vectors.[46] The HuygensFresnel equation is one such model. This was derived empirically by Fresnel
in 1815, based on Huygens hypothesis that each point on a wavefront generates a secondary spherical wavefront,
which Fresnel combined with the principle of superposition of waves. The Kirchho diraction equation, which is
derived using Maxwells equations, puts the Huygens-Fresnel equation on a rmer physical foundation. Examples of
the application of HuygensFresnel principle can be found in the sections on diraction and Fraunhofer diraction.
More rigorous models, involving the modelling of both electric and magnetic elds of the light wave, are required
when dealing with the detailed interaction of light with materials where the interaction depends on their electric and
magnetic properties. For instance, the behaviour of a light wave interacting with a metal surface is quite dierent
from what happens when it interacts with a dielectric material. A vector model must also be used to model polarised
light.
Numerical modeling techniques such as the nite element method, the boundary element method and the transmissionline matrix method can be used to model the propagation of light in systems which cannot be solved analytically. Such
models are computationally demanding and are normally only used to solve small-scale problems that require accuracy
beyond that which can be achieved with analytical solutions.[47]
All of the results from geometrical optics can be recovered using the techniques of Fourier optics which apply many
of the same mathematical and analytical techniques used in acoustic engineering and signal processing.
Gaussian beam propagation is a simple paraxial physical optics model for the propagation of coherent radiation such
as laser beams. This technique partially accounts for diraction, allowing accurate calculations of the rate at which
a laser beam expands with distance, and the minimum size to which the beam can be focused. Gaussian beam
propagation thus bridges the gap between geometric and physical optics.[48]
Superposition and interference
Main articles: Superposition principle and Interference (optics)
In the absence of nonlinear eects, the superposition principle can be used to predict the shape of interacting waveforms through the simple addition of the disturbances.[49] This interaction of waves to produce a resulting pattern is
generally termed interference and can result in a variety of outcomes. If two waves of the same wavelength and
frequency are in phase, both the wave crests and wave troughs align. This results in constructive interference and
an increase in the amplitude of the wave, which for light is associated with a brightening of the waveform in that
location. Alternatively, if the two waves of the same wavelength and frequency are out of phase, then the wave crests
will align with wave troughs and vice versa. This results in destructive interference and a decrease in the amplitude of
the wave, which for light is associated with a dimming of the waveform at that location. See below for an illustration
of this eect.[49]
Since the HuygensFresnel principle states that every point of a wavefront is associated with the production of a new
disturbance, it is possible for a wavefront to interfere with itself constructively or destructively at dierent locations
producing bright and dark fringes in regular and predictable patterns.[49] Interferometry is the science of measuring these patterns, usually as a means of making precise determinations of distances or angular resolutions.[50] The
Michelson interferometer was a famous instrument which used interference eects to accurately measure the speed
of light.[51]
48
CHAPTER 2. OPTICS
When oil or fuel is spilled, colourful patterns are formed by thin-lm interference.
The appearance of thin lms and coatings is directly aected by interference eects. Antireective coatings use
destructive interference to reduce the reectivity of the surfaces they coat, and can be used to minimise glare and
unwanted reections. The simplest case is a single layer with thickness one-fourth the wavelength of incident light.
The reected wave from the top of the lm and the reected wave from the lm/material interface are then exactly
180 out of phase, causing destructive interference. The waves are only exactly out of phase for one wavelength, which
would typically be chosen to be near the centre of the visible spectrum, around 550 nm. More complex designs using
multiple layers can achieve low reectivity over a broad band, or extremely low reectivity at a single wavelength.
Constructive interference in thin lms can create strong reection of light in a range of wavelengths, which can be
narrow or broad depending on the design of the coating. These lms are used to make dielectric mirrors, interference
lters, heat reectors, and lters for colour separation in colour television cameras. This interference eect is also
what causes the colourful rainbow patterns seen in oil slicks.[49]
Diraction and optical resolution

Main articles: Diraction and Optical resolution
Diraction is the process by which light interference is most commonly observed. The eect was rst described in
1665 by Francesco Maria Grimaldi, who also coined the term from the Latin diringere, 'to break into pieces.[52][53]
Later that century, Robert Hooke and Isaac Newton also described phenomena now known to be diraction in
Newtons rings[54] while James Gregory recorded his observations of diraction patterns from bird feathers.[55]
The rst physical optics model of diraction that relied on the HuygensFresnel principle was developed in 1803
by Thomas Young in his interference experiments with the interference patterns of two closely spaced slits. Young
49
Diraction on two slits separated by distance d . The bright fringes occur along lines where black lines intersect with black lines and
white lines intersect with white lines. These fringes are separated by angle and are numbered as order n .
showed that his results could only be explained if the two slits acted as two unique sources of waves rather than
corpuscles.[56] In 1815 and 1818, Augustin-Jean Fresnel rmly established the mathematics of how wave interference
can account for diraction.[43]
The simplest physical models of diraction use equations that describe the angular separation of light and dark fringes
due to light of a particular wavelength (). In general, the equation takes the form
m = d sin
where d is the separation between two wavefront sources (in the case of Youngs experiments, it was two slits), is
the angular separation between the central fringe and the m th order fringe, where the central maximum is m = 0
.[57]
This equation is modied slightly to take into account a variety of situations such as diraction through a single gap,
diraction through multiple slits, or diraction through a diraction grating that contains a large number of slits
at equal spacing.[57] More complicated models of diraction require working with the mathematics of Fresnel or
Fraunhofer diraction.[58]
X-ray diraction makes use of the fact that atoms in a crystal have regular spacing at distances that are on the order
of one angstrom. To see diraction patterns, x-rays with similar wavelengths to that spacing are passed through the
crystal. Since crystals are three-dimensional objects rather than two-dimensional gratings, the associated diraction
pattern varies in two directions according to Bragg reection, with the associated bright spots occurring in unique
patterns and d being twice the spacing between atoms.[57]
Diraction eects limit the ability for an optical detector to optically resolve separate light sources. In general, light
that is passing through an aperture will experience diraction and the best images that can be created (as described in
diraction-limited optics) appear as a central spot with surrounding bright rings, separated by dark nulls; this pattern
is known as an Airy pattern, and the central bright lobe as an Airy disk.[43] The size of such a disk is given by
sin = 1.22
where is the angular resolution, is the wavelength of the light, and D is the diameter of the lens aperture. If the
angular separation of the two points is signicantly less than the Airy disk angular radius, then the two points cannot
be resolved in the image, but if their angular separation is much greater than this, distinct images of the two points
are formed and they can therefore be resolved. Rayleigh dened the somewhat arbitrary "Rayleigh criterion" that
50
CHAPTER 2. OPTICS
two points whose angular separation is equal to the Airy disk radius (measured to rst null, that is, to the rst place
where no light is seen) can be considered to be resolved. It can be seen that the greater the diameter of the lens or
its aperture, the ner the resolution.[57] Interferometry, with its ability to mimic extremely large baseline apertures,
allows for the greatest angular resolution possible.[50]
For astronomical imaging, the atmosphere prevents optimal resolution from being achieved in the visible spectrum
due to the atmospheric scattering and dispersion which cause stars to twinkle. Astronomers refer to this eect as the
quality of astronomical seeing. Techniques known as adaptive optics have been used to eliminate the atmospheric
disruption of images and achieve results that approach the diraction limit.[59]
Dispersion and scattering

Main articles: Dispersion (optics) and Scattering
Refractive processes take place in the physical optics limit, where the wavelength of light is similar to other distances,
as a kind of scattering. The simplest type of scattering is Thomson scattering which occurs when electromagnetic
waves are deected by single particles. In the limit of Thompson scattering, in which the wavelike nature of light
is evident, light is dispersed independent of the frequency, in contrast to Compton scattering which is frequencydependent and strictly a quantum mechanical process, involving the nature of light as particles. In a statistical sense,
elastic scattering of light by numerous particles much smaller than the wavelength of the light is a process known
as Rayleigh scattering while the similar process for scattering by particles that are similar or larger in wavelength
is known as Mie scattering with the Tyndall eect being a commonly observed result. A small proportion of light
scattering from atoms or molecules may undergo Raman scattering, wherein the frequency changes due to excitation
of the atoms and molecules. Brillouin scattering occurs when the frequency of light changes due to local changes
with time and movements of a dense material.[60]
Dispersion occurs when dierent frequencies of light have dierent phase velocities, due either to material properties
(material dispersion) or to the geometry of an optical waveguide (waveguide dispersion). The most familiar form of
dispersion is a decrease in index of refraction with increasing wavelength, which is seen in most transparent materials.
This is called normal dispersion. It occurs in all dielectric materials, in wavelength ranges where the material does
not absorb light.[61] In wavelength ranges where a medium has signicant absorption, the index of refraction can
increase with wavelength. This is called anomalous dispersion.[41][61]
The separation of colours by a prism is an example of normal dispersion. At the surfaces of the prism, Snells law
predicts that light incident at an angle to the normal will be refracted at an angle arcsin(sin () / n). Thus, blue light,
with its higher refractive index, is bent more strongly than red light, resulting in the well-known rainbow pattern.[41]
Dispersion: two sinusoids propagating at dierent speeds make a moving interference pattern. The red dot moves with the phase
velocity, and the green dots propagate with the group velocity. In this case, the phase velocity is twice the group velocity. The red dot
overtakes two green dots, when moving from the left to the right of the gure. In eect, the individual waves (which travel with the
phase velocity) escape from the wave packet (which travels with the group velocity).
Material dispersion is often characterised by the Abbe number, which gives a simple measure of dispersion based
on the index of refraction at three specic wavelengths. Waveguide dispersion is dependent on the propagation
constant.[43] Both kinds of dispersion cause changes in the group characteristics of the wave, the features of the
wave packet that change with the same frequency as the amplitude of the electromagnetic wave. Group velocity
dispersion manifests as a spreading-out of the signal envelope of the radiation and can be quantied with a group
dispersion delay parameter:
D=
1 dvg
vg2 d
where vg is the group velocity.[62] For a uniform medium, the group velocity is
51
(
)1
dn
vg = c n
d
where n is the index of refraction and c is the speed of light in a vacuum.[63] This gives a simpler form for the dispersion
delay parameter:
D=
d2 n
.
c d2
If D is less than zero, the medium is said to have positive dispersion or normal dispersion. If D is greater than zero, the
medium has negative dispersion. If a light pulse is propagated through a normally dispersive medium, the result is the
higher frequency components slow down more than the lower frequency components. The pulse therefore becomes
positively chirped, or up-chirped, increasing in frequency with time. This causes the spectrum coming out of a prism to
appear with red light the least refracted and blue/violet light the most refracted. Conversely, if a pulse travels through
an anomalously (negatively) dispersive medium, high frequency components travel faster than the lower ones, and the
pulse becomes negatively chirped, or down-chirped, decreasing in frequency with time.[64]
The result of group velocity dispersion, whether negative or positive, is ultimately temporal spreading of the pulse.
This makes dispersion management extremely important in optical communications systems based on optical bres,
since if dispersion is too high, a group of pulses representing information will each spread in time and merge, making
it impossible to extract the signal.[62]
Polarization
Main article: Polarization (waves)
Polarization is a general property of waves that describes the orientation of their oscillations. For transverse waves
such as many electromagnetic waves, it describes the orientation of the oscillations in the plane perpendicular to
the waves direction of travel. The oscillations may be oriented in a single direction (linear polarization), or the
oscillation direction may rotate as the wave travels (circular or elliptical polarization). Circularly polarised waves can
rotate rightward or leftward in the direction of travel, and which of those two rotations is present in a wave is called
the waves chirality.[65]
The typical way to consider polarization is to keep track of the orientation of the electric eld vector as the electromagnetic wave propagates. The electric eld vector of a plane wave may be arbitrarily divided into two perpendicular
components labeled x and y (with z indicating the direction of travel). The shape traced out in the x-y plane by the
electric eld vector is a Lissajous gure that describes the polarization state.[43] The following gures show some examples of the evolution of the electric eld vector (blue), with time (the vertical axes), at a particular point in space,
along with its x and y components (red/left and green/right), and the path traced by the vector in the plane (purple):
The same evolution would occur when looking at the electric eld at a particular time while evolving the point in
space, along the direction opposite to propagation.
Linear
Circular
Elliptical polarization
In the leftmost gure above, the x and y components of the light wave are in phase. In this case, the ratio of their
strengths is constant, so the direction of the electric vector (the vector sum of these two components) is constant.
Since the tip of the vector traces out a single line in the plane, this special case is called linear polarization. The
direction of this line depends on the relative amplitudes of the two components.[65]
In the middle gure, the two orthogonal components have the same amplitudes and are 90 out of phase. In this case,
one component is zero when the other component is at maximum or minimum amplitude. There are two possible
52
CHAPTER 2. OPTICS
phase relationships that satisfy this requirement: the x component can be 90 ahead of the y component or it can be
90 behind the y component. In this special case, the electric vector traces out a circle in the plane, so this polarization
is called circular polarization. The rotation direction in the circle depends on which of the two phase relationships
exists and corresponds to right-hand circular polarization and left-hand circular polarization.[43]
In all other cases, where the two components either do not have the same amplitudes and/or their phase dierence is
neither zero nor a multiple of 90, the polarization is called elliptical polarization because the electric vector traces out
an ellipse in the plane (the polarization ellipse). This is shown in the above gure on the right. Detailed mathematics
of polarization is done using Jones calculus and is characterised by the Stokes parameters.[43]
Changing polarization Media that have dierent indexes of refraction for dierent polarization modes are called
birefringent.[65] Well known manifestations of this eect appear in optical wave plates/retarders (linear modes) and in
Faraday rotation/optical rotation (circular modes).[43] If the path length in the birefringent medium is sucient, plane
waves will exit the material with a signicantly dierent propagation direction, due to refraction. For example, this is
the case with macroscopic crystals of calcite, which present the viewer with two oset, orthogonally polarised images
of whatever is viewed through them. It was this eect that provided the rst discovery of polarization, by Erasmus
Bartholinus in 1669. In addition, the phase shift, and thus the change in polarization state, is usually frequency
dependent, which, in combination with dichroism, often gives rise to bright colours and rainbow-like eects. In
mineralogy, such properties, known as pleochroism, are frequently exploited for the purpose of identifying minerals
using polarization microscopes. Additionally, many plastics that are not normally birefringent will become so when
subject to mechanical stress, a phenomenon which is the basis of photoelasticity.[65] Non-birefringent methods, to
rotate the linear polarization of light beams, include the use of prismatic polarization rotators which use total internal
reection in a prism set designed for ecient collinear transmission.[66]
Media that reduce the amplitude of certain polarization modes are called dichroic. with devices that block nearly
all of the radiation in one mode known as polarizing lters or simply "polarisers". Malus law, which is named after
tienne-Louis Malus, says that when a perfect polariser is placed in a linear polarised beam of light, the intensity, I,
of the light that passes through is given by
I = I0 cos2 i
where
I 0 is the initial intensity,
and i is the angle between the lights initial polarization direction and the axis of the polariser.[65]
A beam of unpolarised light can be thought of as containing a uniform mixture of linear polarizations at all possible
angles. Since the average value of cos2 is 1/2, the transmission coecient becomes
I
1
=
I0
2
In practice, some light is lost in the polariser and the actual transmission of unpolarised light will be somewhat lower
than this, around 38% for Polaroid-type polarisers but considerably higher (>49.9%) for some birefringent prism
types.[43]
In addition to birefringence and dichroism in extended media, polarization eects can also occur at the (reective)
interface between two materials of dierent refractive index. These eects are treated by the Fresnel equations. Part
of the wave is transmitted and part is reected, with the ratio depending on angle of incidence and the angle of
refraction. In this way, physical optics recovers Brewsters angle.[43] When light reects from a thin lm on a surface,
interference between the reections from the lms surfaces can produce polarization in the reected and transmitted
light.
Natural light Most sources of electromagnetic radiation contain a large number of atoms or molecules that emit
light. The orientation of the electric elds produced by these emitters may not be correlated, in which case the light
is said to be unpolarised. If there is partial correlation between the emitters, the light is partially polarised. If the
polarization is consistent across the spectrum of the source, partially polarised light can be described as a superposition
2.3. MODERN OPTICS
53
of a completely unpolarised component, and a completely polarised one. One may then describe the light in terms
of the degree of polarization, and the parameters of the polarization ellipse.[43]
Light reected by shiny transparent materials is partly or fully polarised, except when the light is normal (perpendicular) to the surface. It was this eect that allowed the mathematician tienne-Louis Malus to make the measurements
that allowed for his development of the rst mathematical models for polarised light. Polarization occurs when light
is scattered in the atmosphere. The scattered light produces the brightness and colour in clear skies. This partial
polarization of scattered light can be taken advantage of using polarizing lters to darken the sky in photographs.
Optical polarization is principally of importance in chemistry due to circular dichroism and optical rotation ("circular birefringence") exhibited by optically active (chiral) molecules.[43]
2.3 Modern optics

Main articles: Optical physics and Optical engineering
Modern optics encompasses the areas of optical science and engineering that became popular in the 20th century.
These areas of optical science typically relate to the electromagnetic or quantum properties of light but do include other
topics. A major subeld of modern optics, quantum optics, deals with specically quantum mechanical properties of
light. Quantum optics is not just theoretical; some modern devices, such as lasers, have principles of operation that
depend on quantum mechanics. Light detectors, such as photomultipliers and channeltrons, respond to individual
photons. Electronic image sensors, such as CCDs, exhibit shot noise corresponding to the statistics of individual
photon events. Light-emitting diodes and photovoltaic cells, too, cannot be understood without quantum mechanics.
In the study of these devices, quantum optics often overlaps with quantum electronics.[67]
Specialty areas of optics research include the study of how light interacts with specic materials as in crystal optics
and metamaterials. Other research focuses on the phenomenology of electromagnetic waves as in singular optics, nonimaging optics, non-linear optics, statistical optics, and radiometry. Additionally, computer engineers have taken an
interest in integrated optics, machine vision, and photonic computing as possible components of the next generation
of computers.[68]
Today, the pure science of optics is called optical science or optical physics to distinguish it from applied optical
sciences, which are referred to as optical engineering. Prominent subelds of optical engineering include illumination
engineering, photonics, and optoelectronics with practical applications like lens design, fabrication and testing of
optical components, and image processing. Some of these elds overlap, with nebulous boundaries between the
subjects terms that mean slightly dierent things in dierent parts of the world and in dierent areas of industry. A
professional community of researchers in nonlinear optics has developed in the last several decades due to advances
in laser technology.[69]
2.3.1
Lasers
Main article: Laser

A laser is a device that emits light (electromagnetic radiation) through a process called stimulated emission. The term
laser is an acronym for Light Amplication by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.[70] Laser light is usually spatially
coherent, which means that the light either is emitted in a narrow, low-divergence beam, or can be converted into one
with the help of optical components such as lenses. Because the microwave equivalent of the laser, the maser, was
developed rst, devices that emit microwave and radio frequencies are usually called masers.[71]
The rst working laser was demonstrated on 16 May 1960 by Theodore Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories.[73]
When rst invented, they were called a solution looking for a problem.[74] Since then, lasers have become a multibillion dollar industry, nding utility in thousands of highly varied applications. The rst application of lasers visible
in the daily lives of the general population was the supermarket barcode scanner, introduced in 1974.[75] The laserdisc
player, introduced in 1978, was the rst successful consumer product to include a laser, but the compact disc player
was the rst laser-equipped device to become truly common in consumers homes, beginning in 1982.[76] These
optical storage devices use a semiconductor laser less than a millimetre wide to scan the surface of the disc for data
retrieval. Fibre-optic communication relies on lasers to transmit large amounts of information at the speed of light.
Other common applications of lasers include laser printers and laser pointers. Lasers are used in medicine in areas
such as bloodless surgery, laser eye surgery, and laser capture microdissection and in military applications such as
missile defence systems, electro-optical countermeasures (EOCM), and lidar. Lasers are also used in holograms,
54
CHAPTER 2. OPTICS
bubblegrams, laser light shows, and laser hair removal.[77]
2.3.2
KapitsaDirac eect
The KapitsaDirac eect causes beams of particles to diract as the result of meeting a standing wave of light. Light
can be used to position matter using various phenomena (see optical tweezers).
2.4 Applications
Optics is part of everyday life. The ubiquity of visual systems in biology indicates the central role optics plays as the
science of one of the ve senses. Many people benet from eyeglasses or contact lenses, and optics are integral to the
functioning of many consumer goods including cameras. Rainbows and mirages are examples of optical phenomena.
Optical communication provides the backbone for both the Internet and modern telephony.
2.4.1
Human eye
Main articles: Human eye and Photometry (optics)

The human eye functions by focusing light onto a layer of photoreceptor cells called the retina, which forms the inner
lining of the back of the eye. The focusing is accomplished by a series of transparent media. Light entering the eye
passes rst through the cornea, which provides much of the eyes optical power. The light then continues through the
uid just behind the corneathe anterior chamber, then passes through the pupil. The light then passes through the
lens, which focuses the light further and allows adjustment of focus. The light then passes through the main body of
uid in the eyethe vitreous humour, and reaches the retina. The cells in the retina line the back of the eye, except
for where the optic nerve exits; this results in a blind spot.
There are two types of photoreceptor cells, rods and cones, which are sensitive to dierent aspects of light.[78] Rod
cells are sensitive to the intensity of light over a wide frequency range, thus are responsible for black-and-white vision.
Rod cells are not present on the fovea, the area of the retina responsible for central vision, and are not as responsive
as cone cells to spatial and temporal changes in light. There are, however, twenty times more rod cells than cone
cells in the retina because the rod cells are present across a wider area. Because of their wider distribution, rods are
responsible for peripheral vision.[79]
In contrast, cone cells are less sensitive to the overall intensity of light, but come in three varieties that are sensitive
to dierent frequency-ranges and thus are used in the perception of colour and photopic vision. Cone cells are highly
concentrated in the fovea and have a high visual acuity meaning that they are better at spatial resolution than rod cells.
Since cone cells are not as sensitive to dim light as rod cells, most night vision is limited to rod cells. Likewise, since
cone cells are in the fovea, central vision (including the vision needed to do most reading, ne detail work such as
sewing, or careful examination of objects) is done by cone cells.[79]
Ciliary muscles around the lens allow the eyes focus to be adjusted. This process is known as accommodation. The
near point and far point dene the nearest and farthest distances from the eye at which an object can be brought into
sharp focus. For a person with normal vision, the far point is located at innity. The near points location depends
on how much the muscles can increase the curvature of the lens, and how inexible the lens has become with age.
Optometrists, ophthalmologists, and opticians usually consider an appropriate near point to be closer than normal
reading distanceapproximately 25 cm.[78]
Defects in vision can be explained using optical principles. As people age, the lens becomes less exible and the
near point recedes from the eye, a condition known as presbyopia. Similarly, people suering from hyperopia cannot
decrease the focal length of their lens enough to allow for nearby objects to be imaged on their retina. Conversely,
people who cannot increase the focal length of their lens enough to allow for distant objects to be imaged on the retina
suer from myopia and have a far point that is considerably closer than innity. A condition known as astigmatism
results when the cornea is not spherical but instead is more curved in one direction. This causes horizontally extended
objects to be focused on dierent parts of the retina than vertically extended objects, and results in distorted images.[78]
All of these conditions can be corrected using corrective lenses. For presbyopia and hyperopia, a converging lens
provides the extra curvature necessary to bring the near point closer to the eye while for myopia a diverging lens
2.4. APPLICATIONS
55
provides the curvature necessary to send the far point to innity. Astigmatism is corrected with a cylindrical surface
lens that curves more strongly in one direction than in another, compensating for the non-uniformity of the cornea.[80]
The optical power of corrective lenses is measured in diopters, a value equal to the reciprocal of the focal length
measured in meters; with a positive focal length corresponding to a converging lens and a negative focal length
corresponding to a diverging lens. For lenses that correct for astigmatism as well, three numbers are given: one for
the spherical power, one for the cylindrical power, and one for the angle of orientation of the astigmatism.[80]
Visual eects
Main articles: Optical illusions and Perspective (graphical)
For the visual eects used in lm, video, and computer graphics, see visual eects.
Optical illusions (also called visual illusions) are characterized by visually perceived images that dier from objective
reality. The information gathered by the eye is processed in the brain to give a percept that diers from the object
being imaged. Optical illusions can be the result of a variety of phenomena including physical eects that create
images that are dierent from the objects that make them, the physiological eects on the eyes and brain of excessive
stimulation (e.g. brightness, tilt, colour, movement), and cognitive illusions where the eye and brain make unconscious
inferences.[81]
Cognitive illusions include some which result from the unconscious misapplication of certain optical principles. For
example, the Ames room, Hering, Mller-Lyer, Orbison, Ponzo, Sander, and Wundt illusions all rely on the suggestion
of the appearance of distance by using converging and diverging lines, in the same way that parallel light rays (or
indeed any set of parallel lines) appear to converge at a vanishing point at innity in two-dimensionally rendered
images with artistic perspective.[82] This suggestion is also responsible for the famous moon illusion where the moon,
despite having essentially the same angular size, appears much larger near the horizon than it does at zenith.[83] This
illusion so confounded Ptolemy that he incorrectly attributed it to atmospheric refraction when he described it in his
treatise, Optics.[8]
Another type of optical illusion exploits broken patterns to trick the mind into perceiving symmetries or asymmetries
that are not present. Examples include the caf wall, Ehrenstein, Fraser spiral, Poggendor, and Zllner illusions.
Related, but not strictly illusions, are patterns that occur due to the superimposition of periodic structures. For
example transparent tissues with a grid structure produce shapes known as moir patterns, while the superimposition
of periodic transparent patterns comprising parallel opaque lines or curves produces line moir patterns.[84]
Optical instruments
Main article: Optical instruments
Single lenses have a variety of applications including photographic lenses, corrective lenses, and magnifying glasses
while single mirrors are used in parabolic reectors and rear-view mirrors. Combining a number of mirrors, prisms,
and lenses produces compound optical instruments which have practical uses. For example, a periscope is simply two
plane mirrors aligned to allow for viewing around obstructions. The most famous compound optical instruments in
science are the microscope and the telescope which were both invented by the Dutch in the late 16th century.[85]
Microscopes were rst developed with just two lenses: an objective lens and an eyepiece. The objective lens is
essentially a magnifying glass and was designed with a very small focal length while the eyepiece generally has a
longer focal length. This has the eect of producing magnied images of close objects. Generally, an additional
source of illumination is used since magnied images are dimmer due to the conservation of energy and the spreading
of light rays over a larger surface area. Modern microscopes, known as compound microscopes have many lenses in
them (typically four) to optimize the functionality and enhance image stability.[85] A slightly dierent variety of
microscope, the comparison microscope, looks at side-by-side images to produce a stereoscopic binocular view that
appears three dimensional when used by humans.[86]
The rst telescopes, called refracting telescopes were also developed with a single objective and eyepiece lens. In
contrast to the microscope, the objective lens of the telescope was designed with a large focal length to avoid optical
aberrations. The objective focuses an image of a distant object at its focal point which is adjusted to be at the focal
point of an eyepiece of a much smaller focal length. The main goal of a telescope is not necessarily magnication, but
rather collection of light which is determined by the physical size of the objective lens. Thus, telescopes are normally
indicated by the diameters of their objectives rather than by the magnication which can be changed by switching
56
CHAPTER 2. OPTICS
eyepieces. Because the magnication of a telescope is equal to the focal length of the objective divided by the focal
length of the eyepiece, smaller focal-length eyepieces cause greater magnication.[85]
Since crafting large lenses is much more dicult than crafting large mirrors, most modern telescopes are reecting
telescopes, that is, telescopes that use a primary mirror rather than an objective lens. The same general optical considerations apply to reecting telescopes that applied to refracting telescopes, namely, the larger the primary mirror,
the more light collected, and the magnication is still equal to the focal length of the primary mirror divided by the
focal length of the eyepiece. Professional telescopes generally do not have eyepieces and instead place an instrument
(often a charge-coupled device) at the focal point instead.[85]
2.4.2
Photography
Main article: Science of photography

The optics of photography involves both lenses and the medium in which the electromagnetic radiation is recorded,
whether it be a plate, lm, or charge-coupled device. Photographers must consider the reciprocity of the camera and
the shot which is summarized by the relation
Exposure ApertureArea ExposureTime SceneLuminance[87]
In other words, the smaller the aperture (giving greater depth of focus), the less light coming in, so the length of time
has to be increased (leading to possible blurriness if motion occurs). An example of the use of the law of reciprocity is
the Sunny 16 rule which gives a rough estimate for the settings needed to estimate the proper exposure in daylight.[88]
A cameras aperture is measured by a unitless number called the f-number or f-stop, f/#, often notated as N , and
given by
f /# = N =
f
D
where f is the focal length, and D is the diameter of the entrance pupil. By convention, f/#" is treated as a single
symbol, and specic values of f/# are written by replacing the number sign with the value. The two ways to increase
the f-stop are to either decrease the diameter of the entrance pupil or change to a longer focal length (in the case of
a zoom lens, this can be done by simply adjusting the lens). Higher f-numbers also have a larger depth of eld due to
the lens approaching the limit of a pinhole camera which is able to focus all images perfectly, regardless of distance,
but requires very long exposure times.[89]
The eld of view that the lens will provide changes with the focal length of the lens. There are three basic classications
based on the relationship to the diagonal size of the lm or sensor size of the camera to the focal length of the lens:[90]
Normal lens: angle of view of about 50 (called normal because this angle considered roughly equivalent to
human vision[90] ) and a focal length approximately equal to the diagonal of the lm or sensor.[91]
Wide-angle lens: angle of view wider than 60 and focal length shorter than a normal lens.[92]
Long focus lens: angle of view narrower than a normal lens. This is any lens with a focal length longer than
the diagonal measure of the lm or sensor.[93] The most common type of long focus lens is the telephoto lens,
a design that uses a special telephoto group to be physically shorter than its focal length.[94]
Modern zoom lenses may have some or all of these attributes.
The absolute value for the exposure time required depends on how sensitive to light the medium being used is (measured by the lm speed, or, for digital media, by the quantum eciency).[95] Early photography used media that
had very low light sensitivity, and so exposure times had to be long even for very bright shots. As technology has
improved, so has the sensitivity through lm cameras and digital cameras.[96]
Other results from physical and geometrical optics apply to camera optics. For example, the maximum resolution
capability of a particular camera set-up is determined by the diraction limit associated with the pupil size and given,
roughly, by the Rayleigh criterion.[97]
2.5. SEE ALSO
2.4.3
57
Atmospheric optics
Main article: Atmospheric optics

The unique optical properties of the atmosphere cause a wide range of spectacular optical phenomena. The blue
colour of the sky is a direct result of Rayleigh scattering which redirects higher frequency (blue) sunlight back into
the eld of view of the observer. Because blue light is scattered more easily than red light, the sun takes on a reddish
hue when it is observed through a thick atmosphere, as during a sunrise or sunset. Additional particulate matter in the
sky can scatter dierent colours at dierent angles creating colourful glowing skies at dusk and dawn. Scattering o
of ice crystals and other particles in the atmosphere are responsible for halos, afterglows, coronas, rays of sunlight,
and sun dogs. The variation in these kinds of phenomena is due to dierent particle sizes and geometries.[98]
Mirages are optical phenomena in which light rays are bent due to thermal variations in the refraction index of air,
producing displaced or heavily distorted images of distant objects. Other dramatic optical phenomena associated
with this include the Novaya Zemlya eect where the sun appears to rise earlier than predicted with a distorted shape.
A spectacular form of refraction occurs with a temperature inversion called the Fata Morgana where objects on the
horizon or even beyond the horizon, such as islands, clis, ships or icebergs, appear elongated and elevated, like fairy
tale castles.[99]
Rainbows are the result of a combination of internal reection and dispersive refraction of light in raindrops. A single
reection o the backs of an array of raindrops produces a rainbow with an angular size on the sky that ranges from
40 to 42 with red on the outside. Double rainbows are produced by two internal reections with angular size of
50.5 to 54 with violet on the outside. Because rainbows are seen with the sun 180 away from the centre of the
rainbow, rainbows are more prominent the closer the sun is to the horizon.[65]
2.5 See also

Important publications in optics
List of optical topics
2.6 References
[1] McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (5th ed.). McGraw-Hill. 1993.
[2] Worlds oldest telescope?". BBC News. July 1, 1999. Retrieved Jan 3, 2010.
[3] T. F. Hoad (1996). The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. ISBN 0-19-283098-8.
[4] A History Of The Eye. stanford.edu. Retrieved 2012-06-10.
[5] T. L. Heath (2003). A manual of greek mathematics. Courier Dover Publications. pp. 181182. ISBN 0-486-43231-9.
[6] William R. Uttal (1983). Visual Form Detection in 3-Dimensional Space. Psychology Press. pp. 25. ISBN 978-0-89859289-4.
[7] Euclid (1999). Elaheh Kheirandish, ed. The Arabic version of Euclids optics = Kitb Uqldis f ikhtilf al-manir. New
York: Springer. ISBN 0-387-98523-9.
[8] Ptolemy (1996). A. Mark Smith, ed. Ptolemys theory of visual perception: an English translation of the Optics with
introduction and commentary. DIANE Publishing. ISBN 0-87169-862-5.
[9] Verma, RL (1969), Al-Hazen: father of modern optics
[10] Adamson, Peter (2006). Al-Kindi and the reception of Greek philosophy. In Adamson, Peter; Taylor, R.. The Cambridge companion to Arabic philosophy. Cambridge University Press. p. 45. ISBN 978-0-521-52069-0.
[11] Rashed, Roshdi (1990). A pioneer in anaclastics: Ibn Sahl on burning mirrors and lenses. Isis 81 (3): 464491.
doi:10.1086/355456. JSTOR 233423.
[12] A. I. Sabra and J. P. Hogendijk (2003). The Enterprise of Science in Islam: New Perspectives. MIT Press. pp. 85118.
ISBN 0-262-19482-1. OCLC 237875424 50252039.
58
CHAPTER 2. OPTICS
[13] G. Hateld (1996). Was the Scientic Revolution Really a Revolution in Science?". In F. J. Ragep, P. Sally, S. J. Livesey.
Tradition, Transmission, Transformation: Proceedings of Two Conferences on Pre-modern Science held at the University of
Oklahoma. Brill Publishers. p. 500. ISBN 9004101195.
[14] Nader El-Bizri (2005). A Philosophical Perspective on Alhazens Optics. Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 15: 189218.
doi:10.1017/S0957423905000172.
[15] Nader El-Bizri (2007). In Defence of the Sovereignty of Philosophy: al-Baghdadis Critique of Ibn al-Haythams Geometrisation of Place. Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 17: 5780. doi:10.1017/S0957423907000367.
[16] G. Simon (2006). The Gaze in Ibn al-Haytham. The Medieval History Journal 9: 89. doi:10.1177/097194580500900105.
[17] Ian P. Howard; Brian J. Rogers (1995). Binocular Vision and Stereopsis. Oxford University Press. p. 7. ISBN 978-0-19508476-4.
[18] Elena Agazzi; Enrico Giannetto; Franco Giudice (2010). Representing Light Across Arts and Sciences: Theories and Practices. V&R unipress GmbH. p. 42. ISBN 978-3-89971-735-8.
[19] D. C. Lindberg, Theories of Vision from al-Kindi to Kepler, (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1976), pp. 9499.
[20] Vincent, Ilardi (2007). Renaissance Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes. Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society. pp. 45. ISBN 9780871692597.
[21] '''The Galileo Project > Science > The Telescope''' by Al Van Helden ''. Galileo.rice.edu. Retrieved 2012-06-10.
[22] Henry C. King (2003). The History of the Telescope. Courier Dover Publications. p. 27. ISBN 978-0-486-43265-6.
[23] Paul S. Agutter; Denys N. Wheatley (2008). Thinking about Life: The History and Philosophy of Biology and Other Sciences.
Springer. p. 17. ISBN 978-1-4020-8865-0.
[24] Vincent Ilardi (2007). Renaissance Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes. American Philosophical Society. p. 210. ISBN
978-0-87169-259-7.
[25] Microscopes: Time Line, Nobel Foundation. Retrieved April 3, 2009
[26] Fred Watson (2007). Stargazer: The Life and Times of the Telescope. Allen & Unwin. p. 55. ISBN 978-1-74175-383-7.
[27] Vincent Ilardi (2007). Renaissance Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes. American Philosophical Society. p. 244. ISBN
978-0-87169-259-7.
[28] Caspar, Kepler, pp. 198202, Courier Dover Publications, 1993, ISBN 0486676056.
[29] A. I. Sabra (1981). Theories of light, from Descartes to Newton. CUP Archive. ISBN 0-521-28436-8.
[30] W. F. Magie (1935). A Source Book in Physics. Harvard University Press. p. 309.
[31] J. C. Maxwell (1865). "A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
of London 155: 459. Bibcode:1865RSPT..155..459C. doi:10.1098/rstl.1865.0008.
[32] For a solid approach to the complexity of Plancks intellectual motivations for the quantum, for his reluctant acceptance of
its implications, see H. Kragh, Max Planck: the reluctant revolutionary, Physics World. December 2000.
[33] Einstein, A. (1967). On a heuristic viewpoint concerning the production and transformation of light. In Ter Haar, D. The
Old Quantum Theory (PDF). Pergamon. pp. 91107. Retrieved March 18, 2010. The chapter is an English translation of
Einsteins 1905 paper on the photoelectric eect.
[34] Einstein, A. (1905). "ber einen die Erzeugung und Verwandlung des Lichtes betreenden heuristischen Gesichtspunkt
[On a heuristic viewpoint concerning the production and transformation of light]. Annalen der Physik (in German) 322
(6): 132148. Bibcode:1905AnP...322..132E. doi:10.1002/andp.19053220607.
[35] On the Constitution of Atoms and Molecules. Philosophical Magazine. 26, Series 6: 125. 1913.. The landmark paper
laying the Bohr model of the atom and molecular bonding.
[36] R. Feynman (1985). Chapter 1. QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. Princeton University Press. p. 6. ISBN
0-691-08388-6.
[37] N. Taylor (2000). LASER: The inventor, the Nobel laureate, and the thirty-year patent war. New York: Simon & Schuster.
ISBN 0-684-83515-0.
[38] Ariel Lipson; Stephen G. Lipson; Henry Lipson (28 October 2010). Optical Physics. Cambridge University Press. p. 48.
ISBN 978-0-521-49345-1. Retrieved 12 July 2012.
2.6. REFERENCES
59
[39] Sir Arthur Schuster (1904). An Introduction to the Theory of Optics. E. Arnold. p. 41.
[40] J. E. Greivenkamp (2004). Field Guide to Geometrical Optics. SPIE Field Guides vol. FG01. SPIE. pp. 1920. ISBN
0-8194-5294-7.
[41] H. D. Young (1992). 35. University Physics 8e. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-52981-5.
[42] E. W. Marchand, Gradient Index Optics, New York, NY, Academic Press, 1978.
[43] E. Hecht (1987). Optics (2nd ed.). Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-201-11609-X. Chapters 5 & 6.
[44] MV Klein & TE Furtak, 1986, Optics, John Wiley & Sons, New York ISBN 0471872970.
[45] Maxwell, James Clerk (1865). A dynamical theory of the electromagnetic eld (PDF). Philosophical Transactions of the
Royal Society of London 155: 499. doi:10.1098/rstl.1865.0008. This article accompanied a December 8, 1864 presentation
by Maxwell to the Royal Society. See also A dynamical theory of the electromagnetic eld.
[46] M. Born and E. Wolf (1999). Principle of Optics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-64222-1.
[47] J. Goodman (2005). Introduction to Fourier Optics (3rd ed, ed.). Roberts & Co Publishers. ISBN 0-9747077-2-4.
[48] A. E. Siegman (1986). Lasers. University Science Books. ISBN 0-935702-11-3. Chapter 16.
[49] H. D. Young (1992). University Physics 8e. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-52981-5.Chapter 37
[50] P. Hariharan (2003). Optical Interferometry (PDF) (2nd ed.). San Diego, USA: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-325220-2.
[51] E. R. Hoover (1977). Cradle of Greatness: National and World Achievements of Ohios Western Reserve. Cleveland: Shaker
Savings Association.
[52] J. L. Aubert (1760). Memoires pour l'histoire des sciences et des beaux arts. Paris: Impr. de S. A. S.; Chez E. Ganeau. p.
149.
[53] D. Brewster (1831). A Treatise on Optics. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown & Green and John Taylor. p. 95.
[54] R. Hooke (1665). Micrographia: or, Some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses. London:
J. Martyn and J. Allestry. ISBN 0-486-49564-7.
[55] H. W. Turnbull (19401941). Early Scottish Relations with the Royal Society: I. James Gregory, F.R.S. (16381675)".
Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 3: 22. doi:10.1098/rsnr.1940.0003. JSTOR 531136.
[56] T. Rothman (2003). Everythings Relative and Other Fables in Science and Technology. New Jersey: Wiley. ISBN 0-47120257-6.
[58] R. S. Longhurst (1968). Geometrical and Physical Optics, 2nd Edition. London: Longmans.
[59] Lucky Exposures: Diraction limited astronomical imaging through the atmosphere by Robert Nigel Tubbs
[60] C. F. Bohren and D. R. Human (1983). Absorption and Scattering of Light by Small Particles. Wiley. ISBN 0-471-293407.
[61] J. D. Jackson (1975). Classical Electrodynamics (2nd ed.). Wiley. p. 286. ISBN 0-471-43132-X.
[62] R. Ramaswami and K. N. Sivarajan (1998). Optical Networks: A Practical Perspective. London: Academic Press. ISBN
0123740924.
[63] Brillouin, Lon. Wave Propagation and Group Velocity. Academic Press Inc., New York (1960)
[64] M. Born and E. Wolf (1999). Principle of Optics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 1424. ISBN 0-52164222-1.
[66] F. J. Duarte (2015). Tunable Laser Optics (2nd ed.). New York: CRC. pp. 117120]. ISBN 978-1-4822-4529-5.
[67] D. F. Walls and G. J. Milburn Quantum Optics (Springer 1994)
[68] Alastair D. McAulay (16 January 1991). Optical computer architectures: the application of optical concepts to next generation
computers. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-471-63242-9. Retrieved 12 July 2012.
60
CHAPTER 2. OPTICS
[69] Y. R. Shen (1984). The principles of nonlinear optics. New York, Wiley-Interscience. ISBN 0-471-88998-9.
[70] laser. Reference.com. Retrieved 2008-05-15.
[71] Charles H. Townes Nobel Lecture. nobelprize.org
[72] The VLTs Articial Star. ESO Picture of the Week. Retrieved 25 June 2014.
[73] C. H. Townes. The rst laser. University of Chicago. Retrieved 2008-05-15.
[74] C. H. Townes (2003). The rst laser. In Laura Garwin and Tim Lincoln. A Century of Nature: Twenty-One Discoveries
that Changed Science and the World. University of Chicago Press. pp. 10712. ISBN 0-226-28413-1. Retrieved 200802-02.
[75] What is a bar code? denso-wave.com
[76] How the CD was developed. BBC News. 2007-08-17. Retrieved 2007-08-17.
[77] J. Wilson and J.F.B. Hawkes (1987). Lasers: Principles and Applications, Prentice Hall International Series in Optoelectronics. Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-523697-5.
[78] D. Atchison and G. Smith (2000). Optics of the Human Eye. Elsevier. ISBN 0-7506-3775-7.
[79] E. R. Kandel, J. H. Schwartz, T. M. Jessell (2000). Principles of Neural Science (4th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. pp.
507513. ISBN 0-8385-7701-6.
[80] D. Meister. Ophthalmic Lens Design. OptiCampus.com. Retrieved November 12, 2008.
[81] J. Bryner (2008-06-02). Key to All Optical Illusions Discovered. LiveScience.com.
[82] Geometry of the Vanishing Point at Convergence
[83] The Moon Illusion Explained, Don McCready, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
[84] A. K. Jain, M. Figueiredo, J. Zerubia (2001). Energy Minimization Methods in Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition.
Springer. ISBN 978-3-540-42523-6.
[85] H. D. Young (1992). 36. University Physics 8e. Cornell University. ISBN 0-201-52981-5.
[86] P. E. Nothnagle, W. Chambers, M. W. Davidson. Introduction to Stereomicroscopy. Nikon MicroscopyU.
[87] Samuel Edward Sheppard and Charles Edward Kenneth Mees (1907). Investigations on the Theory of the Photographic
Process. Longmans, Green and Co. p. 214.
[88] B. J. Suess (2003). Mastering Black-and-White Photography. Allworth Communications. ISBN 1-58115-306-6.
[89] M. J. Langford (2000). Basic Photography. Focal Press. ISBN 0-240-51592-7.
[90] Bruce Warren (2001). Photography. Cengage Learning. p. 71. ISBN 978-0-7668-1777-7.
[91] Leslie D. Stroebel (1999). View Camera Technique. Focal Press. ISBN 0-240-80345-0.
[92] S. Simmons (1992). Using the View Camera. Amphoto Books. p. 35. ISBN 0-8174-6353-4.
[93] Sidney F. Ray (2002). Applied Photographic Optics: Lenses and Optical Systems for Photography, Film, Video, Electronic
and Digital Imaging. Focal Press. p. 294. ISBN 978-0-240-51540-3.
[94] New York Times Sta (2004). The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge. Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-312-31367-8.
[95] R. R. Carlton, A. McKenna Adler (2000). Principles of Radiographic Imaging: An Art and a Science. Thomson Delmar
Learning. ISBN 0-7668-1300-2.
[96] W. Crawford (1979). The Keepers of Light: A History and Working Guide to Early Photographic Processes. Dobbs Ferry,
New York: Morgan & Morgan. p. 20. ISBN 0-87100-158-6.
[97] J. M. Cowley (1975). Diraction physics. Amsterdam: North-Holland. ISBN 0-444-10791-6.
[98] C. D. Ahrens (1994). Meteorology Today: an introduction to weather, climate, and the environment (5th ed.). West Publishing Company. pp. 8889. ISBN 0-314-02779-3.
[99] A. Young. An Introduction to Mirages.
2.7. EXTERNAL LINKS
61
Further reading
Born, Max; Wolf, Emil (2002). Principles of Optics. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 1139643401.
Hecht, Eugene (2002). Optics (4 ed.). Addison-Wesley Longman, Incorporated. ISBN 0805385665.
Serway, Raymond A.; Jewett, John W. (2004). Physics for scientists and engineers (6, illustrated ed.). Belmont,
CA: Thomson-Brooks/Cole. ISBN 0534408427.
Tipler, Paul A.; Mosca, Gene (2004). Physics for Scientists and Engineers: Electricity, Magnetism, Light, and
Elementary Modern Physics 2. W. H. Freeman. ISBN 9780716708100.
Lipson, Stephen G.; Lipson, Henry; Tannhauser, David Stefan (1995). Optical Physics. Cambridge University
Press. ISBN 0521436311.
Fowles, Grant R. (1975). Introduction to Modern Optics. Courier Dover Publications. ISBN 0486659577.
2.7 External links

Relevant discussions
Optics on In Our Time at the BBC. (listen now)

Textbooks and tutorials
Optics an open-source optics textbook
Optics2001 Optics library and community
Fundamental Optics Melles Griot Technical Guide
Physics of Light and Optics Brigham Young University Undergraduate Book
Wikibooks modules
Further reading
Optics and photonics: Physics enhancing our lives by Institute of Physics publications
Societies
62
CHAPTER 2. OPTICS
2.7. EXTERNAL LINKS
63
64
CHAPTER 2. OPTICS
2.7. EXTERNAL LINKS
I0
65
Polarizer
z
I
A polariser changing the orientation of linearly polarised light.

In this picture, 1 0 = .
The eects of a polarising lter on the sky in a photograph. Left picture is taken without polariser. For the right picture, lter was
adjusted to eliminate certain polarizations of the scattered blue light from the sky.
66
Experiments such as this one with high-power lasers are part of the modern optics research.
VLTs laser guided star.[72]
CHAPTER 2. OPTICS
2.7. EXTERNAL LINKS
67
Model of a human eye. Features mentioned in this article are 3. ciliary muscle, 6. pupil, 8. cornea, 10. lens cortex, 22. optic nerve,
26. fovea, 30. retina
68
The Ponzo Illusion relies on the fact that parallel lines appear to converge as they approach innity.
CHAPTER 2. OPTICS
2.7. EXTERNAL LINKS
Illustrations of various optical instruments from the 1728 Cyclopaedia
69
70
Photograph taken with aperture f/32
Photograph taken with aperture f/5
CHAPTER 2. OPTICS
2.7. EXTERNAL LINKS
71
A colourful sky is often due to scattering of light o particulates and pollution, as in this photograph of a sunset during the October
2007 California wildres.
Chapter 3
Byzantine science
Byzantine science played an important role in the transmission of classical knowledge to the Islamic world and to
Renaissance Italy, and also in the transmission of Arabic science to Renaissance Italy.[1] Its rich historiographical tradition preserved ancient knowledge upon which splendid art, architecture, literature and technological achievements
were built.
3.1 Classical and ecclesiastical studies

Byzantine science was essentially classical science.[2] Therefore, Byzantine science was in every period closely connected with ancient-pagan philosophy, and metaphysics. Despite some opposition to pagan learning, many of the
most distinguished classical scholars held high oce in the Church. The most noteworthy oppositions include the
closing of the Platonic Academy in 529, the obscurantism of Cosmas Indicopleustes, the condemnation of Ioannis
Italos (1082) and of Georgios Plethon because of their devotion to ancient philosophy. The writings of antiquity
never ceased to be cultivated in the Byzantine empire due to the impetus given to classical studies by the Academy of
Athens in the 4th and 5th centuries, the vigor of the philosophical academy of Alexandria, and to the services of the
University of Constantinople, which concerned itself entirely with secular subjects, to the exclusion of theology,[3]
which was taught in the Patriarchical Academy. Even the latter oered instruction in the ancient classics, and included literary, philosophical, and scientic texts in its curriculum. The monastic schools concentrated upon the
Bible, theology, and liturgy. Therefore, the monastic scriptoria expended most of their eorts upon the transcription
of ecclesiastical manuscripts, while ancient-pagan literature was transcribed, summarized, excerpted, and annotated
by laymen or clergy like Photios, Arethas of Caesarea, Eustathius of Thessalonica, and Basilius Bessarion.[4]
3.2 Mathematics
Byzantine scientists preserved and continued the legacy of the great Ancient Greek mathematicians and put mathematics in practice. In early Byzantium (5th to 7th century) the architects and mathematicians Isidore of Miletus and
Anthemius of Tralles used complex mathematical formulas to construct the great Hagia Sophia church, a technological breakthrough for its time and for centuries afterwards due to its striking geometry, bold design and height. In late
Byzantium (9th to 12th century) mathematicians like Michael Psellos considered mathematics as a way to interpret
the world.
3.3 Medicine
Main article: Byzantine medicine
Medicine was one of the sciences in which the Byzantines improved on their Greco-Roman predecessors. As a result,
Byzantine medicine had an inuence on Islamic medicine as well as the medicine of the Renaissance.
72
3.4. GREEK FIRE
73
The frontispiece of the Vienna Dioscurides shows a set of seven famous physicians. The most prominent man in the picture is Galen,
who sits on a folding chair.
3.4 Greek re
Main article: Greek re
Greek re was an incendiary weapon used by the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines typically used it in naval battles
74
CHAPTER 3. BYZANTINE SCIENCE
to great eect as it could continue burning even on water. It provided a technological advantage, and was responsible
for many key Byzantine military victories, most notably the salvation of Constantinople from two Arab sieges, thus
securing the Empires survival. Greek re proper however was invented in c. 672, and is ascribed by the chronicler
Theophanes to Kallinikos, an architect from Heliopolis in the former province of Phoenice, by then overrun by the
Muslim conquests.[5]
3.5 Byzantine and Islamic science

During the Middle Ages, there was frequently an exchange of works between Byzantine and Islamic science. The
Byzantine Empire initially provided the medieval Islamic world with Ancient and early Medieval Greek texts on
astronomy, mathematics and philosophy for translation into Arabic as the Byzantine Empire was the leading center
of scientic scholarship in the region at the beginning of the Middle Ages. Later as the Caliphate and other medieval
Islamic cultures became the leading centers of scientic knowledge, Byzantine scientists such as Gregory Choniades,
who had visited the famous Maragheh observatory, translated books on Islamic astronomy, mathematics and science into Medieval Greek, including for example the works of Ja'far ibn Muhammad Abu Mashar al-Balkhi,[6] Ibn
Yunus, Al-Khazini (who was of Byzantine Greek descent but raised in a Persian culture),[7] Muhammad ibn Ms
al-Khwrizm[8] and Nasr al-Dn al-Ts (such as the Zij-i Ilkhani and other Zij treatises) among others.[9]
There were also some Byzantine scientists who used Arabic transliterations to describe certain scientic concepts
instead of the equivalent Ancient Greek terms (such as the use of the Arabic talei instead of the Ancient Greek
horoscopus). Byzantine science thus played an important role in not only transmitting ancient Greek knowledge to
Western Europe and the Islamic world, but in also transmitting Arabic knowledge to Western Europe, such as the
transmission of the Tusi-couple, which later appeared in the work of Nicolaus Copernicus.[1] Byzantine scientists
also became acquainted with Sassanid and Indian astronomy through citations in some Arabic works.[7]
3.6 Humanism and Renaissance

During the 12th century the Byzantines provided their model of early humanism as a renaissance of interest in classical
authors, however, during the centuries before, (9-12) Humanism and wanting for classical learning was prominent
during the Macadonian Renaissance, and continued into what we see now as the 12th century Renaissance under the
Komnenoi. In Eustathius of Thessalonica Byzantine humanism found its most characteristic expression.[10] During
the 13th and 14th centuries, a period of intense creative activity, Byzantine humanism approached its zenith, and
manifested a striking analogy to the contemporaneous Italian humanism. Byzantine humanism believed in the vitality
of classical civilization, and of its sciences, and its proponents occupied themselves with scientic sciences.[11]
Despite the political, and military decline of these last two centuries, the Empire saw a ourishing of science and
literature, often described as the Palaeologean or Last Byzantine Renaissance.[12] Some of this eras most eminent
representatives are: Maximus Planudes, Manuel Moschopulus, Demetrius Triclinius and Thomas Magister. The
Academy at Trebizond, highly inuenced by Persian sciences, became a renowned center for the study of astronomy,
and other mathematical sciences, and medicine attracted the interest of almost all scholars.[11] In the nal century of
the Empire Byzantine grammarians were those principally responsible for carrying in person, and in writing ancient
Greek grammatical, and literary studies to early Renaissance Italy, and among them Manuel Chrysoloras was involved
over the never achieved union of the Churches.[12]
3.7 See also

Byzantine scholars in Renaissance
List of Byzantine scholars
Science in the Middle Ages
Islamic science
John Philoponus
3.8. REFERENCES
75
3.8 References
[1] George Saliba (2006-04-27). Islamic Science and the Making of Renaissance Europe. Retrieved 2008-03-01.
[2] Byzantine Medicine - Vienna Dioscurides. Antiqua Medicina. University of Virginia. Retrieved 2007-05-27.
[3] The faculty was composed exclusively of philosophers, scientists, rhetoricians, and philologists (Tatakes, Vasileios N.;
Moutafakis, Nicholas J. (2003). Byzantine Philosophy. Hackett Publishing. p. 189. ISBN 0-87220-563-0.)
[4] Anastos, Milton V. (1962). The History of Byzantine Science. Report on the Dumbarton Oaks Symposium of 1961.
Dumbarton Oaks Papers (Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University) 16: 409411. doi:10.2307/1291170. JSTOR
1291170.
[5] Pryor & Jereys 2006, pp. 607609
[6] Introduction to Astronomy, Containing the Eight Divided Books of Abu Mashar Abalachus. World Digital Library.
1506. Retrieved 2013-07-16.
[7] Pingree, David (1964). Gregory Chioniades and Palaeologan Astronomy. Dumbarton Oaks Papers 18: 13560.
[8] King, David A. (March 1991). Reviews: The Astronomical Works of Gregory Chioniades, Volume I: The Zij al- Ala'i by
Gregory Chioniades, David Pingree; An Eleventh-Century Manual of Arabo-Byzantine Astronomy by Alexander Jones.
Isis 82 (1): 1168. doi:10.1086/355661.
[9] Joseph Leichter (June 27, 2009). The Zij as-Sanjari of Gregory Chioniades. Internet Archive. Retrieved 2009-10-02.
[10] Tatakes-Moutafakis, Byzantine Philosophy, 110
[11] Tatakes-Moutafakis, Byzantine Philosophy, 189
[12] Robins, Robert Henry (1993). Chapter I. The Byzantine Grammarians: Their Place in History. Walter de Gruyter. p. 8.
ISBN 3-11-013574-4.
Chapter 4
Science in the medieval Islamic world

This article is about the history of science in the Islamic civilization between the 8th and 16th centuries. For information on science in the context of Islam, see Islam and science.
Science in the medieval Islamic world (also known, less accurately, as Islamic science or Arabic science) is the
science developed and practiced in the medieval Islamic world during the Islamic Golden Age (8th century CE
c. 1258 CE, sometimes considered to have extended to the 15th or 16th century). During this time, Indian, Assyrian, Iranian and Greek knowledge was translated into Arabic. These translations became a wellspring for scientic
advances, by scientists from the Muslim ruled areas, during the Middle Ages.[1]
Scientists within the Muslim ruled areas were of diverse ethnicities, including Persians,[2][3][4][5] Arabs, Assyrians,
Kurds[4] and Egyptians. They were also from diverse religious backgrounds. Most were Muslims,[6][7][8] but there
were also some Christians,[9] Jews[9][10] and irreligious.[11][12]
4.1 Science in the context of Islamic civilization

The term Islam refers either to the religion of Islam or to the Islamic civilization that formed around it.[13] Islamic
civilization is composed of many faiths and cultures, although the proportion of Muslims among its population has
increased over time.[14]
The religion of Islam was completed during the lifetime of the last Islamic prophet Muhammad. After his death in
632, Islam continued to expand under the leadership of its Muslim rulers, known as Caliphs. Struggles for leadership
of the growing religious community began at this time, and continue today. The early periods of Islamic history
after the death of Muhammad can be referred to as the Rashidun Caliphate. Then came the period of Umayyad
Caliphate.[15]
During the Umayyad Caliphate, the Islamic empire began to consolidate its territorial gains. Arabic became the
language of administration. The Arabs became a ruling class assimilated into their new surroundings across the
empire, rather than occupiers of conquered territories.[16]
4.1.1
The crystallization of Islamic thought and civilization
Through the Umayyad and, in particular, the succeeding Abbasid Caliphate's early phase, lies the period of Islamic
history known as the Islamic Golden Age. This era can be identied as the years between 692 and 945,[15] and ended
when the caliphate was marginalized by local Muslim rulers in Baghdad its traditional seat of power. From 945
onward until the sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258, the Caliph continued on as a gurehead, with power
devolving more to local amirs.[17]
During the Islamic Golden Age, stable political structures were established and trade ourished. The Chinese were
undergoing a revolution in commerce, and the trade routes between the lands of Islam and China boomed both
overland and along the coastal routes between the two civilizations.[17] Islamic civilization continued to be primarily
based upon agriculture, but commerce began to play a more important role as the caliphate secured peace within the
empire. The wars and cultural divisions that had separated peoples before the Arab conquests gradually gave way to a
76
4.1. SCIENCE IN THE CONTEXT OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION
77
The Abbasid Caliphate at its greatest extent, c. 850
new civilization encompassing diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds. This new Islamic civilization used the Arabic
language as transmitters of culture and Arabic increasingly became the language of commerce and government.[18]
Over time, the great religious and cultural works of the empire were translated into Arabic, the population increasingly
understood Arabic, and they increasingly professed Islam as their religion. The cultural heritages of the area included
strong Hellenic, Indic, Asyrian and Persian inuences. The Greek intellectual traditions were recognized, translated
and studied broadly. Through this process, the population of the lands of Islam gained access to all the important
works of all the cultures of the empire, and a new common civilization formed in this area of the world, based on the
religion of Islam. A new era of high culture and innovation ensued, where these diverse inuences were recognized
and given their respective places in the social consciousness.[19]
4.1.2
Domains of thought and culture in the High Caliphate
The pious scholars of Islam, men and women collectively known as the ulama, were the most inuential element
of society in the elds of Sharia law, speculative thought and theology. Their pronouncements dened the external
practice of Islam, including prayer, as well as the details of the Islamic way of life. They held strong inuence over
government, and especially the laws of commerce. They were not rulers themselves, but rather keepers and upholders
of the rule of law.[20]
Conversely, among the religious, there were inheritors of the more charismatic expressions of Christianity and Buddhism, in the Su orders. These Muslims had a more informal and varied approach to their religion. Islam also
expressed itself in other, more esoteric forms that could have signicant inuence over public discourse during times
of social unrest.[21]
Among the more worldly, adab polite, worldly culture permeated the lives of the professional, the courtly
and genteel classes. Art, literature, poetry, music and even some aspects of religion were among the areas widely
appreciated by those of a more rened taste among Muslim and non-Muslim alike. New trends and new topics owed
from the center of the Baghdad courts, to be adopted both quickly and widely across the lands of Islam.[21]
Apart from these other traditions stood falsafa; Greek philosophy, inclusive of the sciences as well as the philosophy
of the ancients. This science had been widely known across Mesopotamia and Iran since before the advent of Islam.
These sciences were in many ways contrary to the teachings of Islam and the ways of the adab, but were nonetheless
highly regarded in society. The ulama tolerated these outlooks and practices with reservation. Some faylasufs made
a good living in the practices of astrology and medicine.[21]
78
CHAPTER 4. SCIENCE IN THE MEDIEVAL ISLAMIC WORLD
4.2 Medieval Islamic science

4.2.1
Notable elds of inquiry
The roots of Islamic science drew primarily upon Arab, Persian, Indian and Greek learning. The extent of Islamic
scientic achievement is not as yet fully understood, but it is extremely vast.[1]
These achievements encompass a wide range of subject areas; most notably[1]
Mathematics
Astronomy
Medicine
Other notable areas, and specialized subjects, of scientic inquiry include
Physics
Alchemy and chemistry
Cosmology
Ophthalmology
Geography and cartography
Sociology
Psychology
4.2.2
Notable scientists
In medieval Islam, the sciences, which included philosophy, were viewed holistically. The individual scientic disciplines were approached in terms of their relationships to each other and the whole, as if they were branches of a
tree. In this regard, the most important scientists of Islamic civilization have been the polymaths, known as hakim
or sages. Their role in the transmission of the sciences was central.[22]
The hakim was most often a poet and a writer, skilled in the practice of medicine as well as astronomy and mathematics. These multi-talented sages, the central gures in Islamic science, elaborated and personied the unity of
the sciences. They orchestrated scientic development through their insights, and excelled in their explorations as
well.[22]
4.2.3
Arabs
Ibn Ishaq al-Kindi (801873) was a philosopher and polymath scientist heavily involved in the translation of
Greek classics into Arabic. He worked to reconcile the conicts between his Islamic faith and his anity for
reason; a conict that would eventually lead to problems with his rulers. He criticized the basis of alchemy and
astrology, and contributed to a wide range of scientic subjects in his writings. He worked on cryptography
for the caliphate, and even wrote a piece on the subject of time, space and relative movement.[23]
ibn al-Haytham (9651040), also known as Alhazen, was an Arab scientist born in Basra, Iraq. Later, he
moved to Egypt as an adult. Hasan Haytham worked in several elds, but is now known primarily for his
achievements in astronomy and optics. He was an experimentalist who questioned the ancient Greek works of
Ptolemy and Galen. At times, al-Haytham suggested Ptolomeys celestial model, and Galens explanation of
vision, had problems. The prevailing opinion of the time, Galens opinion, was that vision involved emission of
rays from the eye, an explanation al-Haytham cast doubt upon. He also studied the eects of light refraction,
and suggested the mathematics of reection and refraction needed to be consistent with the anatomy of the
eye.[24] He played an important role in the development of optics, experimental physics, theoretical physics,
and the scientic method.
4.2. MEDIEVAL ISLAMIC SCIENCE
79
ibn al-Nas (12131288) was a physician who was born in Damascus and practiced medicine as head physician
at the al-Mansuri hospital in Cairo. He wrote an inuential book on medicine, believed to have replaced ibnSinas Canon in the Islamic world if not Europe. He wrote important commentaries on Galen and ibn-Sinas
works. One of these commentaries was discovered in 1924, and yielded a description of pulmonary transit,
the circulation of blood from the right to left ventricles of the heart through the lungs.[25]
4.2.4
Moors
al-Battani (850922) was an astronomer who accurately determined the length of the solar year. He contributed
to numeric tables, such as the Tables of Toledo, used by astronomers to predict the movements of the sun, moon
and planets across the sky. Some of Battanis astronomic tables were later used by Copernicus. Battani also
developed numeric tables which could be used to nd the direction of Mecca from dierent locations. Knowing
the direction of Mecca is important for Muslims, as this is the direction faced during prayer.[26]
al-Zarqali (10281087) was an Andalusian artisan, skilled in working sheet metal, who became a famous
maker of astronomical equipment, an astronomer, and a mathematician. He developed a new design for a
highly accurate astrolabe which was used for centuries afterwards. He constructed a famous water clock that
attracted much attention in Toledo for centuries. He discovered that the Suns apogee moves slowly relative to
the xed stars, and obtained a very good estimate[27] for its rate of change.[28]
Abbas ibn Firnas (810887) was an Andalusian scientist, musician and inventor. He developed a clear glass
used in drinking vessels, and lenses used for magnication and the improvement of vision. He had a room in his
house where the sky was simulated, including the motion of planets, stars and weather complete with clouds,
thunder and lightning. He is most well known for reportedly surviving an attempt at controlled ight.[29]
al-Zahrawi (9361013) was an Andalusian surgeon who is known as the greatest surgeon of medieval Islam. His
most important surviving work is referred to as al-Tasrif (Medical Knowledge). It is a 30 volume set discussing
medical symptoms, treatments, and mostly pharmacology, but it is the last volume of the set which has attracted
the most attention over time. This last volume is a surgical manual describing surgical instruments, supplies
and procedures. Scholars studying this manual are discovering references to procedures previously believed to
belong to more modern times.[30]
al-Idrisi (11001166) was a Moroccan traveler from Ceuta, cartographer and geographer famous for a map of
the world he created for Roger, the Norman King of Sicily. al-Idrisi also wrote the Book of Roger, a geographic
study of the peoples, climates, resources and industries of all the world known at that time. In it, he incidentally
relates the tale of a Moroccan ship blown west in the Atlantic, and returning with tales of faraway lands.[31]
4.2.5
Persians
al-Khwarizmi (ca. 8th9th centuries) was a Persian mathematician,[32] geographer and astronomer. He is
regarded as the greatest mathematician of Islamic civilization. He was instrumental in the adoption of the Indian
numbering system, later known as Arabic numerals. He developed algebra, which also had Indian antecedents,
by introducing methods of simplifying the equations. He used Euclidean geometry in his proofs.[33]
al-Razi (ca. 854925/935) was a Persian born in Rey, Iran. He was a polymath who wrote on a variety of
topics, but his most important works were in the eld of medicine. He identied smallpox and measles, and
recognized fever was part of the bodys defenses. He wrote a 23-volume compendium of Chinese, Indian, Persian, Syriac and Greek medicine. al-Razi questioned some aspects of the classical Greek medical theory of how
the four humors regulate life processes. He challenged Galen's work on several fronts, including the treatment
of bloodletting. His trial of bloodletting showed it was eective; a result we now know to be erroneous.[34]
al-Farabi (ca. 870950) was a Persian/Iranian (born in Farab, Iran) rationalist philosopher and mathematician
who attempted to describe, geometrically, the repeating patterns popular in Islamic decorative motifs. His
book on the subject is titled Spiritual Crafts and Natural Secrets in the Details of Geometrical Figures.[35]
80

Avicenna (908946) was a Persian physician, astronomer, physicist and mathematician from Bukhara, Uzbekistan.
In addition to his master work, The Canon of Medicine, he also made important astronomical observations,
and discussed a variety of topics including the dierent forms energy can take, and the properties of light. He
contributed to the development of mathematical techniques such as Casting out nines.[36]
Omar Khayyam (10481131) was a Persian poet and mathematician who calculated the length of the year to
within 5 decimal places. He found geometric solutions to all 13 forms of cubic equations. He developed some
quadratic equations still in use. He is well known in the West for his poetry (rubaiyat).[37]
Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (12011274) was a Persian astronomer and mathematician whose life was overshadowed
by the Mongol invasions of Genghis Khan and his grandson Helagu. al-Tusi wrote an important revision to
Ptolemys celestial model, among other works. When he became Helagus astrologer, he was furnished with an
impressive observatory and gained access to Chinese techniques and observations. He developed trigonometry
to the point it became a separate eld, and compiled the most accurate astronomical tables available up to that
time.[38]
The Banu Musa brothers, Jafar-Muhammad, Ahmad and al-Hasan (ca. early 9th century) were three Persian
sons of a colorful astronomer and astrologer. They were scholars close to the court of caliph al-Mamun, and
contributed greatly to the translation of ancient works into Arabic. They elaborated the mathematics of cones
and ellipses, and performed astronomic calculations. Most notably, they contributed to the eld of automation
with the creations of automated devices such as the ones described in their Book of Ingenious Devices.[39][40][41]
Jabir ibn Hayyan (ca. 8th 9th centuries) was a Persian[42] alchemist who used extensive experimentation
and produced many works on science and alchemy which have survived to the present day. Jabir described
the laboratory techniques and experimental methods of chemistry. He identied many substances including
sulfuric and nitric acid. He described processes including sublimation, reduction and distillation. He utilized
equipment such as the alembic and the retort. There is considerable uncertainty as to the actual provenance of
many works that are ascribed to him.[43][44]
Jamshid al-Kashi (ca. 1380-1429) is credited with several theorems of trigonometry including the Law of
Cosines, also known as Al-Kashis Theorem. Furthermore he is often credited with the invention of decimal
fractions, and a method like Horners to calculate roots. He calculated correctly to 17 signicant gures.[45]
Ibn Sahl (ca. 9401000) was a Persian physicist and optical engineer who is credited with discovering the law
of refraction often referred to as Snells law. He used the law to produce the rst Aspheric lenses that focused
light without geometric aberrations.[46][47]
4.2.6
Assyrians
Hunayn ibn Ishaq (809873) was an Assyrian Nestorian Christian scholar, physician, and scientist. He was
one of the most important translators of the ancient Greek works into Arabic. His translations interpreted,
corrected and extended the ancient works. Some of his translations of medical works were used in Europe for
centuries. He also wrote on medical subjects, particularly on the human eye. His book Ten Treatises on the Eye
was inuential in the West until the 17th century.[48]
Thabit ibn Qurra (835901) was a Sabian translator and mathematician from Harran, in what is now Turkey.
He is known for his translations of Greek mathematics and astronomy, but as was common, he also added his
own work to the translations. He is known for having calculated the solution to a chessboard problem involving
an exponential series.[49]
4.3 The views of historians and scholars

4.3.1
On the impact of medieval Islamic science
There are several dierent views on Islamic science among historians of science.
4.3. THE VIEWS OF HISTORIANS AND SCHOLARS
81
The traditionalist view, as exemplied by Bertrand Russell,[50] holds that Islamic science, while admirable in
many technical ways, lacked the intellectual energy required for innovation and was chiey important as a
preserver of ancient knowledge and transmitter to medieval Europe.
The revisionist view, as exemplied by Abdus Salam,[51] George Saliba[52] and John M. Hobson[53] holds that
a Muslim scientic revolution occurred during the Middle Ages,[54]
Scholars such as Donald Routledge Hill and Ahmad Y Hassan express the view that Islam was the driving force
behind the Muslim achievements,[55]
According to Dallal, science in medieval Islam was practiced on a scale unprecedented in earlier human history
or even contemporary human history.[56]
Toby E. Hu[57][58] takes the view that, although Islamic science did produce a number of innovations, it did
not lead to the Scientic Revolution.
Will Durant,[59] Fielding H. Garrison,[60] Hossein Nasr and Bernard Lewis[61] held that Muslim scientists
helped in laying the foundations for an experimental science with their contributions to the scientic method
and their empirical, experimental and quantitative approach to scientic inquiry.
4.3.2
On the historiography of medieval Islamic science
See also: Islam and science and Historiography of early Islam

The history of science in the Islamic world, like all history, is lled with questions of interpretation.
Historians of science generally consider that the study of science in the Islamic world, like all history, must be seen
within the particular circumstances of time and place.
A. I. Sabra opened a recent overview of Arabic science by noting, I trust no one would wish to contest the
proposition that all of history is local history ... and the history of science is no exception.[62]
Some scholars avoid such local historical approaches and seek to identify essential relations between Islam and science
that apply at all times and places.
The Persian philosopher and historian of science, Seyyed Hossein Nasr saw a more positive connection in an
Islamic science that was spiritual and antisecular which point[ed] the way to a new 'Islamic science' that would
avoid the dehumanizing and despiritualizing mistakes of Western science.[63][64] Nasr identied a distinctly
Muslim approach to science, owing from Islamic monotheism and the related theological prohibition against
portraying graven images. In science, this is reected in a philosophical disinterest in describing individual
material objects, their properties and characteristics and instead a concern with the ideal, the Platonic form,
which exists in matter as an expression of the will of the Creator. Thus one can see why mathematics was to
make such a strong appeal to the Muslim: its abstract nature furnished the bridge that Muslims were seeking
between multiplicity and unity.[65]
Some historians of science, however, question the value of drawing boundaries that label the sciences, and the scientists who practice them, in specic cultural, civilizational, or linguistic terms.
Some scholars consider the practice to be an example of "boosterism" and object that it denes the achievements of scholars... in terms of their religion rather than their research.[66]
While others simply consider it futile. For example, Nasir al-Din Tusi (12011274), invented his mathematical
theorem, the Tusi Couple, while he was director of Maragheh observatory. Tusis patron and founder of the
observatory was the non-Muslim Mongol conqueror of Baghdad, Hulagu Khan. The Tusi-couple was rst
encountered in an Arabic text, written by a man who spoke Persian at home, and used that theorem, like many
other astronomers who followed him and were all working in the Arabic/Islamic world, in order to reform
classical Greek astronomy, and then have his theorem in turn be translated into Byzantine Greek towards the
beginning of the 14th century, only to be used later by Copernicus and others in Latin texts of Renaissance
Europe.[67]
82
4.4 Role of Christians

Christians especially Nestorian contributed to the Arab Islamic Civilization during the Ummayads and the Abbasids
by translating works of Greek philosophers to Syriac and afterwards to Arabic.[68] They also excelled in philosophy,
science (such as Hunayn ibn Ishaq, Qusta ibn Luqa, Masawaiyh, Patriarch Eutychius, Jabril ibn Bukhtishu etc) and
theology (such as Tatian, Bar Daisan, Babai the Great, Nestorius, Toma bar Yacoub etc.) and the personal physicians
of the Abbasid Caliphs were often Assyrian Christians such as the long serving Bukhtishu dynasty.[69][70]
4.5 Role of Persians

As Ibn Khaldun, the fourteenth-century Arab historiographer and sociologist suggests, it is a remarkable fact that
with few exceptions, most Muslim scholars in the intellectual sciences were Ajams ("Persians"):
Thus the founders of grammar were Sibawaih and after him, al-Farisi and Az-Zajjaj. All of them
were of Persian descent they invented rules of (Arabic) grammar great jurists were Persians
only the Persians engaged in the task of preserving knowledge and writing systematic scholarly works.
Thus the truth of the statement of the prophet becomes apparent, 'If learning were suspended in the
highest parts of heaven the Persians would attain it' The intellectual sciences were also the preserve
of the Persians, left alone by the Arabs, who did not cultivate them as was the case with all crafts
This situation continued in the cities as long as the Persians and Persian countries, Iraq, Khorasan and
Transoxiana [=modern Central Asia], retained their sedentary culture.
Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah, Translated by Franz Rosenthal (III, pp. 311-15, 271-4 [Arabic]; R.N.
Frye. p. 91.
4.6 See also

Alchemy and chemistry in medieval Islam
Astronomy in medieval Islam
Hindu and Buddhist contribution to science in medieval Islam
History of scientic method
Greek contributions to Islamic world
Islam and science
Islamic contributions to Medieval Europe
Latin translations of the 12th century
Islamic economics in the world
Islamic Golden Age
Early Islamic philosophy
Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain
Inventions in the Muslim world
Muslim Agricultural Revolution
Islamic philosophy
Logic in Islamic philosophy
Islamic studies
List of Muslim scientists
4.7. NOTES
83
Ibn Sina Academy of Medieval Medicine and Sciences

List of Arab scientists and scholars
List of Persian scientists and scholars
List of Turkish Philosophers and scientists
Mathematics in medieval Islam
Medicine in the medieval Islamic world
Medieval Islamic astrology
Ophthalmology in medieval Islam
Physics in medieval Islam
Psychology in medieval Islam
Qur'an and science
Scholasticism
Timeline of Islamic science and technology
Continuity thesis
4.7 Notes
[1] Robinson (editor), Francis (1996). The Cambridge Illustrated History of the Islamic World. Cambridge University Press.
pp. 228229.
[2] William Bayne Fisher, et al, The Cambridge History of Iran 4, Cambridge University Press, 1975, p. 396
[3] Shaikh M. Ghazanfar, Medieval Islamic economic thought: lling the great gap in European economics, Psychology
Press, 2003 (p. 114-115)
[4] Ibn Khaldun, Franz Rosenthal, N. J. Dawood (1967), The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, p. 430, Princeton
University Press, ISBN 0-691-01754-9.
[5] Joseph A. Schumpeter, Historian of Economics: Selected Papers from the History of Economics Society Conference,
1994, y Laurence S. Moss, Joseph Alois Schumpeter, History of Economics Society. Conference, Published by Routledge,
1996, ISBN 0-415-13353-X, p.64.
[6] Howard R. Turner (1997), Science in Medieval Islam, p. 270 (book cover, last page), University of Texas Press, ISBN
0-292-78149-0
[7] Hogendijk, Jan P. (January 1999), Bibliography of Mathematics in Medieval Islamic Civilization
[8] A. I. Sabra (1996). Greek Science in Medieval Islam. In Ragep, F. J.; Ragep, Sally P.; Livesey, Steven John. Tradition,
Transmission, Transformation: Proceedings of Two Conferences on Pre-modern Science held at the University of Oklahoma.
Brill Publishers. p. 20. ISBN 90-04-09126-2.
[9] Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam, 1987, p.6
[10] Salah Zaimeche (2003), Introduction to Muslim Science.
[11] Hogendijk 1989
[12] Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response
[13] Lewis, Brenard (1987). The Jews of Islam. Princeton University Press. pp. 56.
[14] Courbage, Youssef; Fargues, Phillipe (1995). Christians and Jews under Islam. London: I.B. Tauris Publishers. pp. ixx.
ISBN 1-86064-285-3.
[15] Marshall Hodgson, The Venture of Islam; Conscience and History in a World Civilization Vol 1. The University of Chicago,
1974, pg. 234.
84
[16] Marshall Hodgson, The Venture of Islam Conscience and History in a World Civilization Vol 1. The University of Chicago,
1974, pg. 230.
1974, pg. 233.
1974, pg. 235.
1974, pg. 236238.
1974, pg. 238.
1974, pg. 238239.
[22] Nasr, Seyyed Hossein (1968). Science and Civilization in Islam. Harvard University Press. p. 41.
[23] Masood (2009, pp.4952
[24] Masood (2009, pp.17375)
[25] Masood (2009, pp.11011)
[26] Masood (2009, pp.74, 14850)
[27] Linton (2004), p.97). Owing to the unreliability of the data al-Zarqali relied on for this estimate its remarkable accuracy
was somewhat fortuitous.
[28] Masood, Ehsan (2009). Science and Islam A History. Icon Books Ltd. pp. 7375.
[29] Masood (2009, pp.7173)
[30] Masood (2009, pp.108109)
[31] Masood (2009, pp.79-80)
[32] Toomer, Gerald (1990). Al-Khwrizm, Abu Jafar Muammad ibn Ms". In Gillispie, Charles Coulston. Dictionary of
Scientic Biography. 7. New York: Charles Scribners Sons. ISBN 0-684-16962-2.
[33] Masood (2009, pp.13945)
[34] Masood (2009, pp.74, 99105)
[35] Masood (2009, pp.14849)
[36] Masood (2009, pp.1045)
[37] Masood (2009, pp.5, 104, 145146)
[38] Masood (2009, pp.13235)
[39] Masood (2009, pp.16163)
[40] Lindberg, David (1978). Science in the Middle Ages. The University of Chicago Press. p. 23,56.
[41] Selin, Helaine, ed. (1997). Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures.
Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 151, 235, 375.
[42] Henry Corbin, The Voyage and the Messenger: Iran and Philosophy, Translated by Joseph H. Rowe, North Atlantic
Books, 1998. p.45:
[43] Masood (2009, pp.15355)
[44] Lagerkvist, Urf (2005). The Enigma of Ferment: from the Philosophers Stone to the First Biochemical Nobel Prize. World
Scientic Publishing. p. 32.
[45] O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., Ghiyath al-Din Jamshid Masud al-Kashi, MacTutor History of Mathematics
archive, University of St Andrews.
4.7. NOTES
85
[46] K. B. Wolf, Geometry and dynamics in refracting systems, European Journal of Physics 16, p. 14-20, 1995.
[47] R. Rashed, A pioneer in anaclastics: Ibn Sahl on burning mirrors and lenses, Isis 81, p. 464491, 1990
[48] Masood (2009, pp.4748, 59, 9697, 17172)
[49] Masood (2009, pp.4849)
[50] Bertrand Russell (1945), History of Western Philosophy, book 2, part 2, chapter X
[51] Abdus Salam, H. R. Dala, Mohamed Hassan (1994). Renaissance of Sciences in Islamic Countries, p. 162. World
Scientic, ISBN 9971-5-0713-7.
[52] (Saliba 1994, pp. 245, 250, 256257)
[53] (Hobson 2004, p. 178)
[54] Abid Ullah Jan (2006), After Fascism: Muslims and the struggle for self-determination, Islam, the West, and the Question
of Dominance, Pragmatic Publishings, ISBN 978-0-9733687-5-8.
[55] Ahmad Y Hassan and Donald Routledge Hill (1986), Islamic Technology: An Illustrated History, p. 282, Cambridge
University Press
[56] Dallal, Ahmad (2010). Islam, science, and the challenge of history. Yale University Press. p. 12. ISBN 9780300159110.
[57] (Hu 2003)
[58] Saliba, George (Autumn 1999). Seeking the Origins of Modern Science? Review of Toby E. Hu, The Rise of Early
Modern Science: Islam, China and the West. Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies 1 (2). Retrieved 200804-10.
[59] Will Durant (1980). The Age of Faith (The Story of Civilization, Volume 4), p. 162186. Simon & Schuster. ISBN
0-671-01200-2.
[60] Fielding H. Garrison, An Introduction to the History of Medicine: with Medical Chronology, Suggestions for Study and
Biblographic Data, p. 86
[61] Lewis, Bernard (2001). What Went Wrong? : Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response. Oxford University Press. p.
79. ISBN 0-19-514420-1.
[62] Sabra (2000) p. 216.
[63] F. Jamil Ragep, Freeing Astronomy from Philosophy: An Aspect of Islamic Inuence on Science, Osiris, topical issue
on Science in Theistic Contexts: Cognitive Dimensions, n.s. 16(2001): 4950, note 3
[64] Nasr, Seyyed Hossein (1968). The Principles of Islam. Science and Civilization in Islam. Harvard University Press. ISBN
0-946621-11-X. Retrieved 2008-02-03.
[65] Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Science and Civilization in Islam.
[66] Aaen-Stockdale, C.R. (2008). Ibn al-Haytham and psychophysics. Perception 37 (4): 636638. doi:10.1068/p5940.
PMID 18546671.
[67] George Saliba (1999). Whose Science is Arabic Science in Renaissance Europe?
[68] Hill, Donald. Islamic Science and Engineering. 1993. Edinburgh Univ. Press. ISBN 0-7486-0455-3, p.4
[69] Rmi Brague, Assyrians contributions to the Islamic civilization
[70] Britannica, Nestorian
86
4.8 References
Campbell, Donald (2001). Arabian Medicine and Its Inuence on the Middle Ages. Routledge. (Reprint of the
London, 1926 edition). ISBN 0-415-23188-4.
d'Alverny, Marie-Thrse. Translations and Translators, in Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable, eds.,
Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, p. 421462. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1982.
Hobson, John M. (2004). The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation. Cambridge University Press. ISBN
0-521-54724-5.
Hudson, A. (2003). Equity and Trusts (3rd ed.). London: Cavendish Publishing. ISBN 1-85941-729-9.
Hu, Toby E. (2003). The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West. Cambridge University
Press. ISBN 0-521-52994-8.
Joseph, George G. (2000). The Crest of the Peacock. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-00659-8.
Katz, Victor J. (1998). A History of Mathematics: An Introduction. Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-321-01618-1.
Levere, Trevor Harvey (2001). Transforming Matter: A History of Chemistry from Alchemy to the Buckyball.
Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-6610-3.
Linton, Christopher M. (2004). From Eudoxus to EinsteinA History of Mathematical Astronomy. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-82750-8
Masood, Ehsan (2009). Science and Islam A History. Icon Books Ltd.
Morelon, Rgis; Rashed, Roshdi (1996). Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science 3. Routledge. ISBN
0-415-12410-7.
Phillips, William D.; Carla Rahn Phillips; Jr. Phillips (1992). The Worlds of Christopher Columbus. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-44652-X.
Sabra, A. I. (2000) Situating Arab Science: Locality versus Essence, Isis, 87(1996):65470; reprinted in
Michael H. Shank, ed., The Scientic Enterprise in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, (Chicago: Univ. of
Chicago Pr.), pp. 215231.
Saliba, George (1994). A History of Arabic Astronomy: Planetary Theories During the Golden Age of Islam.
New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-8023-7.
Turner, Howard R. (1997). Science in Medieval Islam: An Illustrated Introduction. University of Texas Press.
ISBN 0-292-78149-0.
4.9 Further reading

Daa, Ali Abdullah al-; Stroyls, J.J. (1984). Studies in the exact sciences in medieval Islam. New York: Wiley.
ISBN 0-471-90320-5.
Nader El-Bizri, 'A Philosophical Perspective on Alhazens Optics, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy (Cambridge
University Press), Vol. 15 (2005), pp. 189218.
Nader El-Bizri, 'In Defence of the Sovereignty of Philosophy: al-Baghdadis Critique of Ibn al-Haythams
Geometrisation of Place', Arabic Sciences and Philosophy (Cambridge University Press), Vol. 17 (2007), pp.
5780.
Hogendijk, Jan P.; Abdelhamid I. Sabra (2003). The Enterprise of Science in Islam: New Perspectives. MIT
Press. ISBN 0-262-19482-1. Reviewed by Robert G. Morrison at
Hogendijk, Jan P.; Berggren, J. L. (1989). "Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam by J. Lennart
Berggren. Journal of the American Oriental Society 109 (4): 697698. doi:10.2307/604119. JSTOR 604119.)
Hill, Donald Routledge, Islamic Science And Engineering, Edinburgh University Press (1993), ISBN 0-74860455-3
4.10. EXTERNAL LINKS
87
Hu, Toby E. (1993, 2nd edition 2003), The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West. New
York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-52994-8. Reviewed by George Saliba at Seeking the Origins
of Modern Science?
Hu, Toby E. (2000). Science and Metaphysics in the Three Religions of the Books (PDF). Intellectual
Discourse 8 (2): 173198.
Kennedy, Edward S. (1970). The Arabic Heritage in the Exact Sciences. Al-Abhath 23: 327344.
Kennedy, Edward S. (1983). Studies in the Islamic Exact Sciences. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0-81566067-7.
Morelon, Rgis; Rashed, Roshdi (1996). Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science 23. Routledge. ISBN
0-415-02063-8.
Saliba, George (2007). Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance. The MIT Press. ISBN
0-262-19557-7.
Nasr, Seyyed Hossein (1976). Islamic Science: An Illustrated Study. Kazi Publications. ISBN 1-56744-312-5.
Nasr, Seyyed Hossein (2003). Science & Civilization in Islam (2nd ed.). Islamic Texts Society. ISBN 1903682-40-1.
Suter, Heinrich (1900). Die Mathematiker und Astronomen der Araber und ihre Werke. Abhandlungen zur
Geschichte der Mathematischen Wissenschaften Mit Einschluss Ihrer Anwendungen, X Heft. Leipzig.
Popular
Deen, S M (2007). Science Under Islam: Rise, Decline, Revival. LULU. ISBN 978-1-84799-942-9.
Television
BBC (2010). Science and Islam.
4.10 External links

Academic institutes
Commission on the History of Science and Technology in Islamic Societies at University of Barcelona
Other
How Greek Science Passed to the Arabs by De Lacy O'Leary
Saliba, George. Whose Science is Arabic Science in Renaissance Europe?".
Habibi, Golareh. Review article, Science Creative Quarterly.
Richard Covington, Rediscovering Arabic Science, 2007, Saudi Aramco World
88
Illustration of medieval Islamic scholars
The eye according to Hunain ibn Ishaq. From a manuscript dated circa 1200.
89
90
A page from al-Khwrizm's Algebra
91
Drawing of Self trimming lamp in Ahmad ibn Ms ibn Shkirs treatise on mechanical devices. The manuscript was written in
Arabic.
92
4.11 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

4.11.1
Text
Scientic revolution Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific%20revolution?oldid=662233841 Contributors: Zundark, The Anome,

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Contents

Ancient and medieval background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The mechanical philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

New mechanical devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Classical and ecclesiastical studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Byzantine and Islamic science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Humanism and Renaissance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Science in the medieval Islamic world

Science in the context of Islamic civilization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The crystallization of Islamic thought and civilization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Domains of thought and culture in the High Caliphate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Medieval Islamic science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Notable elds of inquiry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The views of historians and scholars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

On the impact of medieval Islamic science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

On the historiography of medieval Islamic science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4.10 External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4.11 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4.11.3 Content license . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

CHAPTER 1. SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

1.2 Ancient and medieval background

1.2. ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL BACKGROUND

CHAPTER 1. SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

1.3 Scientic method

1.3. SCIENTIFIC METHOD

Bacon rst described the experimental method.

CHAPTER 1. SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

1.3. SCIENTIFIC METHOD

Diagram from William Gilbert's De Magnete, a pioneering work of experimental science.

CHAPTER 1. SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

1.3. SCIENTIFIC METHOD

be only very slight.[50][51]

The mechanical philosophy

Main article: Mechanical philosophy

CHAPTER 1. SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

Isaac Newton in a 1702 portrait by Godfrey Kneller.

1.3. SCIENTIFIC METHOD

The French Academy of Sciences was established in 1666.

CHAPTER 1. SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

1.4 New ideas

1.4. NEW IDEAS

Portrait of Johannes Kepler.

CHAPTER 1. SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

1.4. NEW IDEAS

CHAPTER 1. SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

the beginning of the history of modern chemistry.

1.5. NEW MECHANICAL DEVICES

1.5 New mechanical devices

CHAPTER 1. SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

greatly improved the science of navigation.

1.6 Scientic developments

1.7. CONTRARY VIEWS

1.7 Contrary views

1.8 See also

CHAPTER 1. SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

CHAPTER 1. SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

[68] Hannam, p. 329

CHAPTER 1. SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

CHAPTER 1. SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION