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Robert Grosseteste and the pursuit of Religious and Scientific Learning in the Middle Ages pp 21–39Cite as

Grosseteste’s Meteorological Optics: Explications of the Phenomenon of the Rainbow After Ibn al-Haytham

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Part of the book series: Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind ((SHPM,volume 18))

Abstract

This chapter examines the meteorological optics of Robert Grosseteste (c. 1170–1253 ce) by way of critically analysing his explication of the phenomenon of the rainbow in the context of his reflections on the nature of light, the generation of colour, and the underpinning of his thought in onto-theological terms. This study aims at placing the meteorological optical oeuvre of Grosseteste in mediaeval European science against the background of the Greco-Arabic science of optics. This course of inquiry situates Grosseteste’s meteorology and his explication of the phenomenon of the rainbow in a comparative context that is set in-between the pioneering experimental research in optics of the Arab polymath Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen; eleventh century ce), as it was established in the Kitāb al-manāẓir (Book of Optics; De aspectibus; Perspectiva), and the refined reforming of the latter’s thesis on the rainbow through the Tanqīḥ al-manāẓir (Revision of The Optics) by the Persian optician Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī (thirteenth century ce).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Refer also to the authoritative interdisciplinary group publication of the Latin critical edition, annotated English translation, and analytic commentary of De colore as set in Dinkova-Bruun et al. (2013).

  2. 2.

    This tract focused on the reflection and refraction of the ray of light (De fractionibus et reflexionibus radiorum) see also Miccoli 2001; Turbayne 1959.

  3. 3.

    The impact of Ibn al-Haytham’s Optics reaches eventually the Renaissance perspectivists through its reception by Biagio Pelacani da Parma (d. c. 1416) as witnessed in the latter’s Questiones super perspectiva communi (Biard et al. 2009; El-Bizri 2010).

  4. 4.

    See Lucretius (1975).

  5. 5.

    Additional studies on De iride (De fraccionibus radiorum) figure in Boyer (1954), Boyer (1958), Eastwood (1966), Lindberg (1966) and Turbayne (1959).

  6. 6.

    The Aristotelian view is expressed in: Aristotle, Meteorologica, op. cit., III.2-5. On the history of the theory of the rainbow (see Boyer 1959), and refer also to division 63.2 from the De iride et radialibus impressionibus (On the rainbow and the impressions of irradiances) of Theodoric of Freiburg (Theodoricus 1914).

  7. 7.

    See also Dinkova-Bruun et al. (2013).

  8. 8.

    See Dinkova-Bruun et al. (2013).

  9. 9.

    This treatise is also supported by studies in Crombie (1961) and Eastwood (1968).

  10. 10.

    Grosseteste studied the properties of the sphere in ‘De sphaera (Grosseteste 1912h).’ Supporting studies are set in: Panti (2001, 2003, 2013) and Pacchi (1965).

  11. 11.

    C. A. Ronan confirms Crombie’s thesis in Ronan (1983).

  12. 12.

    See also El-Bizri (2005) and Rashed (2002).

  13. 13.

    This is mainly set in the Theodoric of Freiburg’s De iride et radialibus impressionibus, and also associated with his treatises De luce et eius origine and De coloribus (see Theodoricus 1914; Calma 2010; Flasch 2007).

  14. 14.

    I examined these aspects in detail elsewhere in El-Bizri (2005).

  15. 15.

    Regarding Ibn Sahl’s anaclastic research in dioptrics see Rashed (1990, 2005). If n1 is the refractive index of air and n2 is the refractive index of water, then \( {n}_2>{n}_1 \), and the incidence angle Θ1 would be larger than the refraction angle Θ2 (both measured against the normal to the surface at the point of incidence and refraction), then: n1 sin \( {\varTheta}_1={n}_2 \) sin Θ2.

  16. 16.

    The Arabic critical edition of Ibn al-Haytham’s Qawl fī al-ḍaw’ is contained in Ibn al-Haytham (1938–1939). The annotated French translation of this treatise is contained in Rashed (1992) (see also El-Bizri 2009).

  17. 17.

    Refer also to Rashed (1970).

  18. 18.

    See Ibn al-Haytham (2002), Book V in catoptrics, Figure [Shakl] 5/28, Part I, pp. 318–9, Part II, p. 198—English translation is author’s.

  19. 19.

    Refer to the Aristotelian model as explicated in Sayili (1939).

  20. 20.

    See Nazif (1942–1943). Lindberg observed in this regard that Ibn al-Haytham’s interpretation is ‘suspiciously Cartesian’ in a hint that Descartes’ Dioptrique may have benefited from an adapted Latinized transmission of Ibn al-Haytham’s thesis (see Lindberg 1983; Pavlos 2008; Bellosta 2002).

  21. 21.

    Refer to Omar (1977).

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  1. American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon

    Nader El-Bizri

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  1. Nader El-Bizri
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  1. Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln, UK

    Jack P. Cunningham

  2. University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK

    Mark Hocknull

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El-Bizri, N. (2016). Grosseteste’s Meteorological Optics: Explications of the Phenomenon of the Rainbow After Ibn al-Haytham. In: Cunningham, J.P., Hocknull, M. (eds) Robert Grosseteste and the pursuit of Religious and Scientific Learning in the Middle Ages. Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind, vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33468-4_2

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