Abstract
Renaissance advancements in light theory were grounded in innovative approaches to optics and ray theory by both scientists of the Arabic-speaking world as well as the great Scholastic philosophers who incorporated their discoveries into the edifice of Western proto-science. Heavenly lights – stars, planets, the sun, and virtually any body which transited the sky – were slowly evolving from religious phenomena to objects of natural philosophy. An arc can be followed from Classical and Neoplatonic philosophy to that of Medieval Arabic and Scholastic philosophy that increasingly views light (and other forms of radiation, whether or not they were visible), in newly material and predictable terms. These advancements in knowledge about the properties of light led to the development of new ways which humanity manipulated and interacted with light in the Renaissance.
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Filson, L. (2017). Light Theory. In: Sgarbi, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_941-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_941-1
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