ALHAZEN. Opticae Thesaurus...Libri Septem, nunc primùm editi. Eiusdem liber De Crepusculis & Nubium ascensionibus. Item Vitellonis...Libri X. Omnes instaurati, figuris illustrati & aucti, adjectis etiam in Alhazenum commentariis, a Federico Risnero.
Woodcut printer’s device on title, a fine woodcut on verso of title (repeated on the title to the second part), very numerous optical diagrams in the text, including one of the anatomy of the eye, & a woodcut printer’s device on verso of final leaf (otherwise blank). 4 p.l. (the final leaf is blank), 288 pp.; 4 p.l., 474 pp., 1 leaf. Two parts in one vol. Folio, 18th-cent. boards (rebacked with the orig. spine laid-down, recornered, light browning throughout). Basel: Episcopius, 1572. First edition of Alhazen’s Optics, the most important and most influential Arabic treatise on physics, and a work that exercised profound influence on Western science in the 16th and 17th centuries, especially upon Kepler, Snell, Fermat, and Harriot. Sarton calls Alhazen “the greatest Muslim physicist and one of the greatest students of optics of all times...[his book] showed a great progress in experimental method.” Alhazen (965-1039), “preserved for us all that was known by the ancients in the field of optics and added some contributions of his own. His book remained a standard authority thru the 1600s. He understood that light emanated spherically from a point and greatly improved on Ptolemy’s uncertain rule for refraction which, he showed, held true only for small angles. He covered many cases of reflection and refraction and his explanation of the structure and function of the eye was followed for 600 years. He noted the magnifying power of a segment of a glass sphere and believed the velocity of light to be finite. He studied spherical and parabolic mirrors, spherical aberration, lenses and atmospheric refraction, especially twilight.”–Dibner, Heralds of Science, 138. The medieval science of perspectiva as developed by Alhazen exerted a considerable influence on the optical and perspective theories in Renaissance and later art, particularly in the work of Ghiberti, Alberti, Leonardo da Vinci, Poussin, et al. Certain ophthalmological terms originated from the Latin translation of Alhazen’s Arabic text, such as retina and cornea. The De Crepusculis contains Alhazen’s ingenious calculation of the height of the atmosphere (1st ed.: 1542). The second part contains Witelo’s Optica, the earliest treatise on optics written by a European. It was first published in 1535. An attractive copy and rather scarce, preserved in a strong cloth box. Occasional unimportant and light dampstaining. ❧ D.S.B., VI, pp. 189-210–“The Optics is not a philosophical dissertation on the nature of light, but an experimental and mathematical investigation of its properties, particularly insofar as these relate to vision.” Kemp, The Science of Art, pp. 22, 26, 55, 104, 127, 130, 131, 189, & 237. Sarton, I, pp. 721-22.
$US85000
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