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    Descartes' Dioptrics: Jeffrey K. Mcdonough

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    arun rajaram
    Descartes' "Dioptrics" is one of his earliest works on optics, likely begun in the 1620s. It was finally published in 1637 alongside Descartes' "Discourse on Method", "Meteorology", and "Geometry". The "Dioptrics" covers three main topics: the nature and laws of light, human vision and the anatomy of the eye, and improving vision through inventions like microscopes and telescopes. It influenced later thinkers and continues to be analyzed for its accounts of optics, physiology, and the relationship between theory and application.

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    Descartes' Dioptrics: Jeffrey K. Mcdonough

    Uploaded by

    arun rajaram
    49 views4 pages
    Descartes' "Dioptrics" is one of his earliest works on optics, likely begun in the 1620s. It was finally published in 1637 alongside Descartes' "Discourse on Method", "Meteorology", and "Geometry". The "Dioptrics" covers three main topics: the nature and laws of light, human vision and the anatomy of the eye, and improving vision through inventions like microscopes and telescopes. It influenced later thinkers and continues to be analyzed for its accounts of optics, physiology, and the relationship between theory and application.

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    29_descartes_dioptrics_the_cambridge_descartes_lexicon

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    Descartes' "Dioptrics" is one of his earliest works on optics, likely begun in the 1620s. It was finally published in 1637 alongside Descartes' "Discourse on Method", "Meteorology", and "Geometry". The "Dioptrics" covers three main topics: the nature and laws of light, human vision and the anatomy of the eye, and improving vision through inventions like microscopes and telescopes. It influenced later thinkers and continues to be analyzed for its accounts of optics, physiology, and the relationship between theory and application.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    49 views4 pages

    Descartes' Dioptrics: Jeffrey K. Mcdonough

    Uploaded by

    arun rajaram
    Descartes' "Dioptrics" is one of his earliest works on optics, likely begun in the 1620s. It was finally published in 1637 alongside Descartes' "Discourse on Method", "Meteorology", and "Geometry". The "Dioptrics" covers three main topics: the nature and laws of light, human vision and the anatomy of the eye, and improving vision through inventions like microscopes and telescopes. It influenced later thinkers and continues to be analyzed for its accounts of optics, physiology, and the relationship between theory and application.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 4

    Descartes’ Dioptrics

    Jeffrey K. McDonough

    The Dioptrique, often translated as the Optics or, more literally, as the
    Dioptrics is one of Descartes’ earliest works. Likely begun in the mid to late
    1620’s, Descartes refers to it by name in a letter to Mersenne of 25
    November 1630 (AT I 182; CSM(K) III, 29). Its subject matter partially
    overlaps with Descartes’ more foundational project The World or Treatise on
    Light in which he offers a general mechanistic account of the universe
    including the formation, transmission, and reception of light. Although
    Galileo’s condemnation by the Church prompted Descartes to abandon, in
    1633, his plans for publishing The World, he continued in the ensuing years
    to vigorously pursue a number of scientific projects, including projects
    related to his work in optics. He was eventually persuaded to publish three
    essays highlighting some of his discoveries together with an introductory
    essay concerning “the method for rightly directing one’s reason and
    searching for truth in the sciences” (AT VI 1; O 3). As one of those essays,
    Descartes’ Dioptrics finally appeared in print together with the Discourse on
    Method, the Meteorology and the Geometry in the summer of 1637 in a French
    language edition. It was republished in a Latin edition (without the Geometry)
    in 1644.
    The subject matter of the Dioptrics may be thought of as covering
    three main topics and is formally divided by Descartes into ten chapters or
    “discourses”. The first main topic concerns the nature of light and the laws
    of optics. In the first discourse, Descartes invites his readers to “consider
    light as nothing else … than a certain movement or action, very rapid and
    very lively, which passes toward our eyes through the medium of the air and
    other transparent bodies” (AT VI 84; O 67). In the second discourse,
    Descartes attempts to derive the law of reflection (known since antiquity)
    and the law of refraction (first published in the Dioptrics) through a series of
    ingenious, mechanistic analogies to the behavior of tennis balls reflecting
    off of hard surfaces and puncturing thin sheets of cloth.
    The second main topic of the Dioptrics concerns human vision. In
    the third discourse, Descartes offers an anatomical description of the parts
    of the eye, including the pupil, the interior “humours,” and the optic nerve.

    Descartes’ “Dioptrics” to appear in The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon, ed. Larry 1


    Nolan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), submitted 2010.
    In the fourth, he provides an account of the senses in general, explaining
    “how the mind, located in the brain” comes to receive “impressions of
    external objects through the mediation of the nerves” (AT VI 109; O 87).
    The fifth discourse explains how light enters through the pupil of the eye, is
    refracted by the interior humours, and forms an inverted image on the
    retina at the back of the eye. The sixth discourse identifies various qualities
    by which objects of sight are apprehended, provides an account of our
    visual perception of distance, and highlights several ways in which human
    vision is systematically prone to error.
    The third main topic of the Dioptrics concerns the improvement
    human vision. In the opening paragraph of the seventh discourse, Descartes
    notes that the quality of human vision depends on three “principles,”
    namely visible objects, external organs, including all bodies “that we can
    place between the eye and object,” and interior organs such as the brain and
    nerves (AT VI 147-148; O 114). Prudently focusing his attention on how
    our external organs might be supplemented to maximize the distinctness,
    size, strength, and range of visual images, Descartes offers in the eighth
    discourse an account of “the shapes that transparent bodies must have in
    order to divert rays through refractions in every way that is useful to sight,”
    while in the ninth discourse he puts those results to practical use in
    explaining how our visual faculties may be extended through the
    construction of microscopes and telescopes (AT VI 165; O 127). Finally,
    the tenth discourse describes an ingenious, if ultimately impractical, method
    for cutting lenses, and intriguingly suggests that while telescopes may be
    esteemed insofar as they “promise to lift us into the heavens,” microscopes
    may in fact prove more useful since “by means of them we will be able to
    see the diverse mixtures and arrangements of the small particles which
    compose the animals and plants, and perhaps also the other bodies which
    surround us, and thereby derive great advantage in order to arrive at the
    knowledge of their nature” (AT VI 226; O 172).
    Due to an indiscretion by Jean de Beaugrand, then secretary to the
    French chancellor, a copy of Descartes’ Dioptrics was passed onto Pierre
    Fermat and other critics prior to its being licensed to appear publicly
    (Clarke 2006, 169). It can thus be said that Descartes’ masterpiece of
    geometrical optics has inspired praise, analysis, and disparagement since
    even before its (official) publication. Today, scholars continue to wrestle with
    Descartes’ account of light and his derivations of the laws of reflection and
    refraction (Shapiro 1974, Schuster 2000). There is great interest in his
    account of the physiology of vision, how that account fits into his larger
    philosophical system, and its influence on later thinkers such as Nicholas

    Descartes’ “Dioptrics” to appear in The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon, ed. Larry 2


    Nolan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), submitted 2010.
    Malebranche and George Berkeley (Wolf-Devine 1993, Atherton 1990).
    Finally, scholars have continued to return to Descartes’ Dioptrics for insight
    into his multifaceted understanding of the relationship between method,
    theory, and practical application (Garber 1993, Ribe 1997).

    For Further Reading

    Buchwald, J. Z. 2007. “Descartes’s Experimental Journey Past the


    Prism and Through the Invisible World to the Rainbow,” Annals of
    Science 65 (1): 1-46.

    Ribe, N. M. 1997. “Cartesian Optics and the Mastery of Nature,” Isis


    88: 42-61.

    Sabra, A. I. 1967. Theories of Light from Descartes to Newton. London:


    Oldbourne.

    Schuster, J. A. 2000. “Descartes Opticien: The Construction of the


    Law of Refraction and The Manufacture of its Physical Rationales,
    1618-1629,” in S. Gaukroger, J. Schuster, and J. Sutton, eds.,
    Descartes’ Natural Philosophy. London: Routledge, 258-312.

    Scott, J. F. 1987. The Scientific Work of René Descartes. New York:


    Garland Publishing, Inc.

    Smith, A. M. 1987. “Descartes’s Theory of Light and Refraction: A


    Discourse on Method,” Transactions of the American Philosophical
    Society 77 (3): 1-92.

    Wolf-Devine, C. 1993. Descartes on Seeing, Epistemology and Visual


    Perception. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

    Related Entries

    Color; Discourse on Method; Experiment; Explanation; Geometry; Hydrostatics;


    Laws of Nature; Light; Meteorology; Method; Perception; Physics; Rainbow;
    Treatise on Light; Fermat, Pierre de; Galilei, Galileo; Golius (Jacob Gool),

    Descartes’ “Dioptrics” to appear in The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon, ed. Larry 3


    Nolan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), submitted 2010.
    Huygens, Constantijn and Christiaan; Kepler, Johannes; Mersenne, Marin;
    Mydorge, Claude; Newton, Isaac; Regius, Henricus (Henri le Roy)

    Bibliography of Other Works Cited

    Atherton, M. 1990. Berkeley’s Revolution in Vision. Ithaca, NY: Cornell


    University Press.

    Clarke, D. 2006. Descartes, A Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge


    University Press.

    Garber, D. 1993. “Descartes and Experiment in the Discourse and


    Essays,” in Stephen Voss, ed., Essays on the Philosophy of Science
    of René Descartes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 288-310.
    Reprinted in D. Garber, 2001, Descartes Embodied, Reading Cartesian
    Philosophy through Cartesian Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University
    Press, 85-110.

    Shapiro, A. E. 1974. “Light, Pressure, and Rectilinear Propagation:


    Descartes’ Celestial Optics and Newton’s Hydrostatics,” Studies in
    the History and Philosophy of Science 5 (3): 239-296.

    Descartes’ “Dioptrics” to appear in The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon, ed. Larry 4


    Nolan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), submitted 2010.

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