Text Emergence of Experimental Method and Physical Optics
Read the text and answer the questions: What is your attitude to Ibn al-Haytham? Have you read any of his books? Do you like them?
The use of experiments in the sense of empirical procedures in geometrical optics dates back to second century Roman Egypt, where Ptolemy carried out several early such experiments on reflection, refraction and binocular vision. Due to his Platonic methodological paradigm of “saving the appearances”, however, he discarded or rationalized any empirical data that did not support his theories, as the idea of experiment did not hold any importance in Antiquity. The incorrect emission theory of vision thus continued to dominate optics through to the 10th century.