Islamic Medicine History and Current Practice - International Society ...

Rosanna GORINIphers and scholars speculated about this connectionadvancing some conflicting theories. The earliestform of the theory of vision, called “atomistic intromissiontheory” is due to Leucippus of Miletus(about 490/80-420 B.C.) and Democritus of Abdera(about 460-370 B.C.). They hypothesized that atomsstreaming in various directions from an object producevisual sensations by entering the eyes ofobservers. An alternative theory, called “extramissiontheory”, is due to other pre-Socratic philosopherssuch as Empedocle of Acragas (about 495/90-435/30B.C.). They supposed that the eyes send out rays oflight to view the objects. Plato (about 427-347 B.C.)tried to unify both the intromission and extramissiontheories and his pupil Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)advanced a “mediumistic theory” by which the eyereceives rays rather than direct them outward. In particular,according to Aristotle, in the process ofhuman vision the object being looked at somehowaltered the medium between the object itself andviewer’s eye. Thus it was possible to see the objectbecause the medium’s alteration propagated to theeye. The extramission theory was reviewed andextended by Euclid of Alexandria (about 325-265B.C.), Claudius Ptolemy (about 85 B.C.-165 A.D.)and Galen (about 129 B.C.-210 A.D.) Al-Haythamclashed with the extramission theory and adfirmedthat the rays emanate in straight lines towards theeyes from every point of a visible object. Startingfrom the observation that, when the eyes are injuredby a strong light, the observer has a sensation of pain,followed by a persistence of the images he deducedthat light must be an external agent which enters theeye and temporary modifies its structure. Moreover,basing himself on Aristotle’s studies, he consideredthat the eye perceives only the light and the coloursand that the estimate on the size, the distance and theshape of the observed objects derivates from morecomplex rational judgements.The knowledge of the role played by the brain ininterpreting what is seen by the eyes allowed Al-Haytham to explain optical illusions, including the“Moon illusion”. This phenomenon through whichheavenly bodies look bigger at the horizon than at thezenith, has been recorded and investigated sinceantiquity and it has been referred to as the “moonAL-HAYTHAM THE MAN OF EXPERIENCE.FIRST STEPS IN THE SCIENCE OF VISIONillusion” since it is particularly clear in the case of themoon. Al-Haytham explained why the moon and thesun appear larger on the horizon. He realized that ourbrain is deceived by objects like trees, hills or houseson the horizon, into thinking that the moon is gettingbigger. When the moon is high in the sky, there are noreferences on the ground with whom we can compareit and thus it looks smaller. According to Ross & Rossal-Haytham was probably the first author to explainthe moon illusion by the size-distance invarianceprinciple (5).His main book is a seven volume work, Kitab al-Manazir, which he completed between 1028 and 1038.Initially al-Haytham’ s work was available in Arabiclanguage and was therefore accessibile only to veryfew European scholars until the 13 th century when, in1270 Kitab al-Manazir was translated into Latin by thePolish scholar Witelio. It was widely available inEurope when it was first published by FrederickRisner at Basel in 1572 as Opticae Thesaurus,Alhazeni Arabis libri septem. In the Risner’s editionthe Gerard of Cremona’s Latin translation De crepusculiset nubium ascensionibus and the Optica ofWitelio are also incorporated (6). The Kitab al-Manazir - exemplary for combining natural philosophyand mathematics - inspired many books on opticsfrom the thirteenth to the seventeenth century andexerted a great influence upon western scholars, as forexample Roger Bacon (1214-1292/4 A.D.), Witelio(1230/35-1275 A.D.) and Johannes Kepler (1571-1630A.D.). According to Howard, the Kitab formed thebasis upon which Keplero solved the problem ofimage formation (7) and, according to the translationby Lindberg, Keplero says: “I say that vision occurswhen the image of the whole hemisphere of the worldthat is before the eye is fixed on the reddish white concavesurface of the retina. How the image or picture iscomposed by visual spirits that reside in the retina andthe optic nerve, and whether it is made to appearbefore the soul or the tribunal of the visual faculty bya spirit within the hollows of the brain or whether thevisual faculty like a magistrate sent by the soul goesforth from the administrative chamber of the brain intothe optic nerve and the retina to meet the image, asthough descending to a lower court - this I leave to bedisputed by the physicists” (8).54 JISHIM 2003, 2