"Mohammedan science made a great advance on that of the Greeks... [in] optics, and this was very largely a by-product of medicine. Optics comes much more in the doctor's province, especially in tropical and sub-tropical countries where there is a prevalence of eye diseases ...This goes right back to the ns, who were doing ...cataract operations, between 2000 and 2500 BC. Therefore... they introduced into science something ...which the Greeks did not have ...the lens. The Greeks ...knew that the mirror could focus the rays—that was due to Archimedes—but they did not have any lenses."
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Original Language: English
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Sources
John Desmond Bernal, The Extension of Man. A History of Physics before 1900 (1972)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/History_of_optics
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History of optics
begins with the development of lenses by the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians, followed by theories on light and vision developed by ancient Greek philosophers, and the development of in the Greco-Roman world. The word optics is derived from the Greek term τα ὀπτικά meaning "appearance or look". Optics was significantly reformed by the developments in the medieval Islamic world, such as the beginnings of physical and physiological optics, and then significantly advanced in early modern Europe
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