Empiricism Without the Senses: How the Instrument Replaced the Eye

Gal, Ofer; Chen-Morris, Raz

doi:10.1007/978-90-481-3686-5_7

Ofer Gal² &
Raz Chen-Morris³

Part of the book series: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science ((AUST,volume 25))

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10 Citations

Abstract

The optical instruments developed through the seventeenth century allowed peering into the very far and the very small; a spectacle never before experienced. The telescope, and later the microscope, was now expected to answer fundamental questions and resolve cosmological riddles by direct observation into the foundations of nature. But this ability came at an unexpected price and with unexpected results. For Kepler and Galileo, the new instruments did not offer extension and improvement to the senses; they replaced them altogether. To rely on their authority was to admit that the human eye is nothing but an instrument, and a flawed one at that. Rather than the intellect’s window to the world, the human senses became a part of this world, a source of obscure and unreliable data, demanding uncertain deciphering. Accurate scientific observation meant that we are always wrong.

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Notes

1.
Kepler 1965 [1610], 22.
2.
Kepler’s ulterior motives constitute the crux of Biagioli’s recent reconstruction of this exchange (Biagioli 2006, esp. 33–39). Biagioli queries Kepler’s hasty and enthusiastic reply to Galileo’s request to assess his telescopic observations, when in fact Kepler had not yet seen a telescope or observed personally the celestial phenomena Galileo claimed to have seen. Biagioli claims that the distance between Galileo and Kepler and the partial information Kepler had regarding Galileo’s status in the Florentine court contributed to this exchange. Albeit, one should notice that Kepler’s inability to build a high power telescope was due to specific practical problems concerning lens production and not to lack of theory about how telescopes work and how lenses magnify. Kepler’s embraced Galileo’s telescope as a confirmation of his optical theories and of his proposed observational practice using instruments in preference of a naked eye.
3.
Kepler 1965 [1610], 20.
4.
Kepler 1965 [1610], 21.
5.
Galilei 1989 [1610], 38–39.
6.
See Malet 2005, Shea 1972, and van Helden 1974.
7.
van Helden 1974, 53.
8.
Grassi 1619, 5–6.
9.
Grassi 1619, 14.
10.
Concerning the significance of the superlunary position of comets see Van Nouhuys 1998. On the difficulties the Jesuits had with Tycho’s cosmology see: Baldini 1992, 217–250; Blackwell 1992, esp. 148–153; Lattis 1994, 94–102, 211–216.
11.
Cassirer 1942, 316.
12.
Favaro asserts that “the pages of the first part … have corrections and additions in Galileo’s handwriting. A second part … is entirely in Galileo’s writing. The third part in Guiducci’s hand … but there are correction by [Galileo]” and concludes that “the entire discourse may be said to be essentially his work.” Quoted in Drake and O’Malley 1960, xvi–xvii.
13.
Galileo 1623, 169.
14.
Galilei 1623, 236. “La ricchezza della natura.” In Galilei 1890–1909, 6: 281.
15.
Grassi 1619, 11.
16.
Grassi 1619, 6.
17.
Guiducci 1619, 36–37.
18.
Galilei 1890–1909, 2: 277–284. Cf. Dupré 2003, 373.
19.
Grassi 1619, 14. Italics added. “Si enim in aliis etiam regionibus eodem tempore eadem stella cometae proxima observaretur, nullum maius atque evidentius optari poterat argumentum, quodemonstraretur nullum aut perexiguam parallaxim cometae fuisse, cum hocabsque ullo instrumento, unico oculorum intuitu, observari posset.” Grassi in Galilei 1890–1909, 6: 31.
20.
Guiducci 1619, 40. One should note how much Galileo’s argument is as removed from “opposition to the closed system of the schools,” as Drake presented “The Assayer” in the preface to Drake and O’ Malley, 1960, xxiii. Galileo’s rejection of the parallax is based on proto-Aristotelian concept of the comets as resulting from exuding vapors, and furthermore, preserves “the Aristotelian duality” between heavens and the “elemental sphere.”
21.
Grassi 1619, 17.
22.
Galileo 1623, 220.
23.
Sarsi 1619, 80–81.
24.
Grassi 1619, 79.
25.
Grassi 1619, 82.
26.
Grassi 1619, 14.
27.
Galilei 1623, 209.
28.
Galilei 1623, 221.
29.
Galilei 1623, 321. “Senza il telescipio, l’occhio libero niuna di cotali figure distingue.” Galilei 1890–1909, 6: 359.
30.
Galilei 1623, 324.
31.
This is a recapitulation of his arguments (including the hairy metaphor) in the Sidereus Nuncius: “The reason for this is that when the stars are observed with the naked eye, they do not show themselves according to their simple and, so to speak, naked size, but rather surrounded by a certain brightness and crowned by twinkling rays … Stars are therefore seen unshorn in the midst of darkness, but daylight can shear them of their hair … The spyglass likewise does the same thing: for first it takes away the borrowed and accidental brightness from the stars and thereupon it enlarges their simple globes.” Galilei 1989 [1610], 57–58.
32.
Kepler 1965 [1610], 21–22.
33.
Kepler 1937– [1604]; Kepler 2000 [1604]. We will use Ad Vitellionem (1937– [1604]) to refer to the original Latin and Optics (2000 [1604]) to refer to Donahue’s translation.
34.
Kepler 2000 [1604], 259.
35.
The relation between the camera obscura and the eye is at the heart of the historiographic debate concerning Kepler’s optics. For Straker (1971, and cf. Crombie 1953) the instrument represents Kepler’s novel commitment to the mechanization of the eye and his indebtedness to the artisanal tradition. Kepler’s claim that the locus of images is the retina rather than the crystalline humor, Straker argues, is an immediate consequence of comparing the eye to a camera obscura. Lindberg, in contrast, argues for Kepler’s reliance on the perspectivist tradition, stresses that “only on one occasion did [Kepler] explicitly compared the eye to a camera obscura” (Lindberg 1976, 206). As we claimed above and will argue below, this debate is somewhat misdirected: Kepler’s main motivation in equating the eye and the camera obscura is legitimating the instrument no less than understanding the eye.
36.
Galilei 1890–1909, 5: 136–137. Quoted and translated in Biagioli 2006, 190.
37.
Cf. Dear 1995, esp. Chapter 2, and Feldhay 2000.
38.
Galilei 1890–1909, 5: 59–61. Quoted and discussed in Biagioli 2006, 200–201.
39.
Agvilonius 1613, 3. “Continetur omnis Optice triplici fere videndi ratione … triplici etiam modo quo deum creaturae cognoscunt, … comparauit. Prima directa, quae est oculi nostri, sic, ut in rem propositam intendit, cum illa cognitione componitur qua beatorum mentes praesentem Deum, facie ad faciem, ut D. Loquitur Paulus, contemplatur. Altera repercussa, sive earum rerum perceptio, quarum a speculis ad nos imagines revertuntur, cui non absimlis est illa cognitio, qua Deum per fidem in rebus creatis, veluti quodam speculo aut aenigmate videmus. Tertia denique, quam infractam vocant, ea est, qua rerum species per dissimilia diaphana transmissae, et ab iisdem quasi deformatae ac fractae in oculos immittuntur. Sic Ethnici divinitatis notionem aliquam, sed multis erroribus vitiatam, naturae solius lumine affecuti sunt.”
40.
For the import of the camera obscura in the study of Kepler’s optics see f.n. 35.
41.
Kepler 2000 [1604], 56.
42.
See Aristotle 1984, Problems Bk 15, Ch. 6, 911b1, 2:1417; Pecham 1970, 67. See also Lindberg 1968, 1969; Thro 1996, 20–54.
43.
Cf. Lindberg 1969, 303 ff. For Maurolyco on pinhole images see Zik and Hon 2007.
44.
Pecham 1970, 70–71.
45.
See Lindberg 1985, esp. 37–40; and Lindberg 1984, esp. 134–135, also Zik and Hon 2007, esp. 561.
46.
Kepler 1937– [1604], 41–42.
47.
Kepler 1937– [1604], 41–42.
48.
This is the central argument of Lindberg 1976.
49.
For the role of these visual impressions in medieval spirituality see: Park 1998, 254–271; Hamburger 2000, 47–69.
50.
Pecham 1970, 161.
51.
Kepler 2000 [1604], 45. Cf. Smith 1981.
52.
Alpers 1983, 41.
53.
Alberti 1972, 41.
54.
Grosseteste 1912, 60.
55.
Bacon 1983, 7. “species sit similes agenti et generanti eam in essential et diffinitione.” Bacon 1983, 7. For an extensive treatment of species in medieval optical theory see especially: Smith 1981; Spruit 1994. Tachau 1982 provides an authoritative treatment of the issues involved in medieval theory of species, and also Tachau 1988. See also Denery II 2005, esp 82–96.
56.
Smith 1981, 569.
57.
For the teleological nature of the Aristotelian theory of perception cf. Descartes 1998, 159–161.
58.
Pecham 1970, 121. Italics added.
59.
Pecham 1970, 121.
60.
Kepler 2000 [1604], 78.
61.
Kepler 2000 [1604], 184.
62.
For Kepler’s mathematization of light cf. Gal and Chen-Morris 2005.
63.
We discuss in detail Kepler’s transformation of optics from a teleological theory of human vision into a causal theory of the production of the images by light, as well as its far reaching epistemological ramifications, in Gal and Chen-Morris 2010 (in press).
64.
Aristotle 1984, Posterior analytics, II, 19, 100^a4–15, 165–166.
65.
Kepler 2000 [1604], 336.
66.
Kepler 2000 [1604], 298.
67.
Kepler 2000 [1604], 298.
68.
Kepler 2000 [1604], 57.
69.
Kepler 1937- [1604], 2:6.
70.
Galilei 1623, 326.
71.
Galilei 1623, 319–320.
72.
Galilei 1623, 322–323. “Figuratevi una determinate grandezza d’una capellatura; nel mezo della quale se voi intenderete essere un piccolissimo corpo luminoso, perderà la sua figura, coronato di troppo lunghi crini … il telescopio, accrescendo la stella ma non la chioma, fa che, dove prima il piccolissimo disco tra sì ampio fulgore era impercettibile … si può distinguere ed assai ben figurare.” Galilei 1890–1909; 6 360–361.
73.
Galilei 1623, 183–184.
74.
Scheiner 1619, 2.
75.
Galilei 1623, 209. Antoni Malet writes: “In our understanding of them, telescopes always work by producing geometrical optical images, real or virtual, regardless of whether or not any observer is peering through them. From our theoretical point of view, it does not matter whether an eye, or a screen, or just empty space gets the light rays coming out of the ocular lens, because the telescope always produces one geometrical image. However, in Kepler’s time, and up to the last decades of the seventeenth century, when somebody looked through a telescope, it was not understood to work by producing images similar to the pictures projected upon screens” (Malet 2005, 239). We differ from Malet in arguing that in spite of the absence of theoretical grounding, the independence of the geometrical image from the observer is exactly the position Galileo formulates and defends.
76.
Galileo 1623, 225.
77.
Dupré 2005. See also Zik and Van Helden 2003.
78.
Faber in Galileo 1623, 154. “[An], velut in vetulo languentes corpore ocelli, Mente tamen valida, per duo vitra vident, Forte senescenti tu sic OCULARIA mundo Aptasti, mirae dexteritatis opus?” Faber in Galilei 1890–1909, 6: 205.
79.
Kepler 1937– [1619], 6: 304.
80.
Galilei 1623, 212–213.
81.
Galilei 1623, 311.
82.
Galilei 1623, 311–312.
83.
Hooke 1665, xvii–xviii.
84.
Hooke 1665, xvii.
85.
Hooke 1665, xvii.
86.
Hooke 1674, 8.
87.
Kepler 2000 [1604], 180.

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Unit for History and Philosophy of Science, The University of Sydney, Bar Ilan University, Sydney, Australia
Ofer Gal
Science, Technology and Society Program, The University of Sydney, Bar Ilan University, Sydney, Australia
Raz Chen-Morris

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Gal, O., Chen-Morris, R. (2010). Empiricism Without the Senses: How the Instrument Replaced the Eye. In: Wolfe, C.T., Gal, O. (eds) The Body as Object and Instrument of Knowledge. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 25. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3686-5_7

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