August 21, 2018 Tuesday
Bedtime Story
Ibn al-Haytham vs. Stewart Duke-Elder
Ibn al-Haytham’s ‘Book of optics’ is a
masterpiece of a textbook concerning optics, anatomy of the eye and visual
system.
It cannot be called, of course, a textbook
of ophthalmology since it does not deal with majority of eye disorders except
perhaps the common refractive errors.
Yet the book reminds me of the Scottish
ophthalmologist Stewart Duke-Elder who was a prolific writer and is best known
by ophthalmologists - at least of my and older generations - for his seven
volumes of ‘Textbook of Ophthalmology’ and fifteen volumes of ‘System of
Ophthalmology’.
To us his fifteen volume ‘System of
Ophthalmology’ was simply known us as ‘Duke-Elder’ and most of us would have at
least referred some stuff from it at least once though I can assure that almost
no ophthalmology resident would have completely read all the fifteen tomes from
cover to cover.
Even though Duke-Elder published several
scientific papers and served as the editor and chairman of the editorial
committee of the British journal of Ophthalmology and went on to become the
Fellow of the Royal Society, in my opinion he would never be in the league of
Ibn al-Haytham who was an original scientist par excellence.
Ibn al-Haytham did not have the technological
advancement all around him that Duke-Elder was surrounded with for they were
separated temporally with a time span of 900 Years, almost a millennium.
And if Ibn al-Haytham was born in the
Islamic Golden Age in basra, modern Iraq then Duke-Elder was working in London,
which was literally the center of the world considering that the Greenwich Mean
Time runs through the Royal Borough of Greenwhich in London.
The Book of Optics comprises of seven books
and just look how modern these books sound, at least in names even if in their
content they were lacking the depth of today’s knowledge.
Book I – was about al–Haytham’s theories on
light, color and vision.
Book II – was about al-Haytham’s theory of
visual perception
Book III and Book VI – explains
al-Haytham’s theories of errors in visual perception (or in modern terms
optical aberrations and refractive errors) with Book VI specifically explaining
the errors related to reflection.
Book IV and Book V – is where al-Haytham
lays out experimental evidence that back his theories on reflection.
Book VII – is where al-Haytham propounds
his theory on refraction.
It is certain that he understood the
principles of linear perspective though he never applied to art since he
himself was not an artist.
So as far as it known, the earlier
civilizations - Civilizations that came before European Renaissance - did not
make a systematic study of the art of perspective as is known to us from the
records left over.
We shall continue our story on the art and
mathematics of perspective in the nights to come.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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