The Physics of Vision in Kepler, Descartes, and Milton

2020 ◽  
pp. 103-131
Author(s):  
Erin Webster
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Retinal Image ◽  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Retinal Projection ◽  
Camera Obscura ◽  
New Model ◽  
Johannes Kepler ◽  
Projection Screen ◽  
Intellectual Context

This chapter provides a new intellectual context for John Milton’s treatment of light and vision in Paradise Lost (1667) by locating Milton’s poem within the framework of seventeenth-century optical theory. It does so by examining the parallels and distinctions between the role played by light in Milton’s model of vision and models proposed by Johannes Kepler and René Descartes. The main argument of the chapter is that Milton adopts Kepler’s theory of the retinal image, which posits that the human eye operates according to the mechanical principles of a camera obscura. But where Kepler and Descartes use the analogy of the camera obscura to explain the properties of light as it relates to vision, Milton uses it to express the fragility of vision within this new model. Speaking from a position of blindness, Milton’s narrator explores the theological and epistemological implications of having light at ‘one entrance quite shut out’, thereby being ‘presented with a Universal blanc’ (PL 3.48–50) in the place of the retinal projection screen.

The Curious Eye

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Webster
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Human Vision ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
Robert Boyle ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
Johannes Kepler ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Historical Moment

The Curious Eye explores early modern debates over two related questions: what are the limits of human vision, and to what extent can these limits be overcome by technological enhancement? Today, in our everyday lives we rely on optical technology to provide us with information about visually remote spaces even as we question the efficacy and ethics of such pursuits. But the debates surrounding the subject of technologically mediated vision have their roots in a much older literary tradition in which the ability to see beyond the limits of natural human vision is associated with philosophical and spiritual insight as well as social and political control. The Curious Eye provides insight into the subject of optically mediated vision by returning to the literature of the seventeenth century, the historical moment in which human visual capacity in the West was first extended through the application of optical technologies to the eye. Bringing imaginative literary works by Francis Bacon, John Milton, Margaret Cavendish, and Aphra Behn together with optical and philosophical treatises by Johannes Kepler, René Descartes, Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton, The Curious Eye explores the social and intellectual impact of the new optical technologies of the seventeenth century on its literature. At the same time, it demonstrates that social, political, and literary concerns are not peripheral to the optical science of the period but rather an integral part of it, the legacy of which we continue to experience.

Interpreting Tillotson

1993 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard Reedy
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
New Model ◽  
Church Politics ◽  
The Church

As archbishop of Canterbury after 1691, John Tillotson (1630–1694) guided the Church of England in the years following the accession of William and Mary in 1688. Whether he guided the church wisely has always been a matter of contention, because Tillotson not only took the oaths to the new monarchs but also helped to fill the vacated offices and sees of those who had not. Although apparently of a genial disposition, with personal gifts of generosity and piety, Tillotson made many enemies because of his church politics. The theological importance of his writings and their place in intellectual history have also provoked controversy. I believe that he is one of the great, yet much misunderstood, writers of late seventeenth-century England; this article offers a new model for interpreting his intellectual significance.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Erin Webster
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Retinal Image ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Optical Devices ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Optical Technology ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Subject

This chapter introduces the study by providing an overview of the epistemological, ethical, social, and political issues surrounding the subject of technologically mediated vision in early modern England. It lays out the key optical developments of the period, including the invention of the telescope and the microscope, and provides a brief synopsis of Johannes Kepler’s theory of the retinal image, which over the course of the seventeenth century gradually came to replace older, species-based models of vision. This context having been established, the introduction describes the general contours of the debate surrounding the efficacy and ethics of optical technology in the seventeenth century and identifies and introduces the major works to be discussed in subsequent chapters. It closes with an explanation of the study’s methodological approach, which is to read the texts it includes not only as being about optical devices but also as acting as optical devices—literary lenses that can be used to reveal the hidden motivations, assumptions, and desires present within their words.

Repackaging Milton for the Late Seventeenth-Century Book Trade

Making Milton ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 42-52
Author(s):  
Emma Depledge
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Turning Points ◽  
Book Trade ◽  
Political Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Impact

This chapter focuses on the magisterial 1688 folio edition of Paradise Lost, published by Jacob Tonson and Richard Bentley, exploring the possible reasons why these men chose to publish Milton at this time, as well as the impact the edition had both on Milton’s authorial afterlife and on their careers as stationers. The chapter places the 1688 Paradise Lost folio in the wider context of Tonson’s career, including his involvement in pirate publication schemes and his status (from 1678) as Dryden’s publisher, to argue that the 1688 edition of Paradise Lost, one of the most profound turning points in Milton’s authorial afterlife, had less to do with the political context of 1688 and the perceived vendibility of the poem and more to do with Tonson’s own ambitions and frustrations as a stationer.

Exposing the seventeenth-century optical camera obscura

Endeavour ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 54-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Lefèvre
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Camera Obscura

Translating the Concept of Experiment in the Late Eighteenth Century

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-97
Author(s):  
Eirini Goudarouli ◽  
Dimitris Petakos
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Intellectual Activity ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Concepts ◽  
Intellectual Context ◽  
Basic Concepts ◽  
Different Cultures

The Philosophical Grammar: Being a View of the Present State of Experimented Physiology, or Natural Philosophy, In Four Parts (1735) by Benjamin Martin was translated into Greek by Anthimos Gazis in 1799. According to the history of concepts, no political, social, or intellectual activity can occur without the establishment of a common vocabulary of basic concepts. By interfering in the linguistic structure, the act of translation may affect crucially the encounter of different cultures. By bringing together the history of science and the history of concepts, this article treats the transfer of the concept of experiment from the seventeenth-century British philosophical context to the eighteenth-century Greek-speaking intellectual context. The article focuses mainly on the different ways Gazis’s translation contributed to the construction of a particular conceptual framework for the appropriation of new knowledge.

Predestination and freedom in Milton's Paradise Lost

2006 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-80
Author(s):  
Benjamin Myers
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Fluid Sphere ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
Human Decision ◽  
History Of

John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost (1667) offers a highly creative seventeenth-century reconstruction of the doctrine of predestination, a reconstruction which both anticipates modern theological developments and sheds important light on the history of predestinarian thought. Moving beyond the framework of post-Reformation controversies, the poem emphasises both the freedom and the universality of electing grace, and the eternally decisive role of human freedom in salvation. The poem erases the distinction between an eternal election of some human beings and an eternal rejection of others, portraying reprobation instead as the temporal self-condemnation of those who wilfully reject their own election and so exclude themselves from salvation. While election is grounded in the gracious will of God, reprobation is thus grounded in the fluid sphere of human decision. Highlighting this sphere of human decision, the poem depicts the freedom of human beings to actualise the future as itself the object of divine predestination. While presenting its own unique vision of predestination, Paradise Lost thus moves towards the influential and distinctively modern formulations of later thinkers like Schleiermacher and Barth.

scholarly journals Johannes Kepler: The Sky as a Retinal Image

Perception ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 43 (12) ◽  
pp. 1283-1285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Gilchrist
Keyword(s):  
Retinal Image ◽  
Johannes Kepler
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