-PDF Download- A History Of Optics From Greek Antiquity To The Nineteenth Century EBOOK

A History of Optics from Greek Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century

Author: Olivier Darrigol

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2012-01-26

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 0191627453

This book is a long-term history of optics, from early Greek theories of vision to the nineteenth-century victory of the wave theory of light. It shows how light gradually became the central entity of a domain of physics that no longer referred to the functioning of the eye; it retraces the subsequent competition between medium-based and corpuscular concepts of light; and it details the nineteenth-century flourishing of mechanical ether theories. The author critically exploits and sometimes completes the more specialized histories that have flourished in the past few years. The resulting synthesis brings out the actors' long-term memory, their dependence on broad cultural shifts, and the evolution of disciplinary divisions and connections. Conceptual precision, textual concision, and abundant illustration make the book accessible to a broad variety of readers interested in the origins of modern optics.

Live Visuals

Author: Steve Gibson

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-07-29

Total Pages: 453

ISBN-13: 100061297X

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This volume surveys the key histories, theories and practice of artists, musicians, filmmakers, designers, architects and technologists that have worked and continue to work with visual material in real time. Covering a wide historical period from Pythagoras’s mathematics of music and colour in ancient Greece, to Castel’s ocular harpsichord in the 18th century, to the visual music of the mid-20th century, to the liquid light shows of the 1960s and finally to the virtual reality and projection mapping of the present moment, Live Visuals is both an overarching history of real-time visuals and audio-visual art and a crucial source for understanding the various theories about audio-visual synchronization. With the inclusion of an overview of various forms of contemporary practice in Live Visuals culture – from VJing to immersive environments, architecture to design – Live Visuals also presents the key ideas of practitioners who work with the visual in a live context. This book will appeal to a wide range of scholars, students, artists, designers and enthusiasts. It will particularly interest VJs, DJs, electronic musicians, filmmakers, interaction designers and technologists.

Superresolution Optical Microscopy

Author: Barry R. Masters

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-03-21

Total Pages: 415

ISBN-13: 3030216918

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This book presents a comprehensive and coherent summary of techniques for enhancing the resolution and image contrast provided by far-field optical microscopes. It takes a critical look at the body of knowledge that comprises optical microscopy, compares and contrasts the various instruments, provides a clear discussion of the physical principles that underpin these techniques, and describes advances in science and medicine for which superresolution microscopes are required and are making major contributions. The text fills significant gaps that exist in other works on superresolution imaging, firstly by placing a new emphasis on the specimen, a critical component of the microscope setup, giving equal importance to the enhancement of both resolution and contrast. Secondly, it covers several topics not typically discussed in depth, such as Bessel and Airy beams, the physics of the spiral phase plate, vortex beams and singular optics, photoactivated localization microscopy (PALM), stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM), structured illumination microscopy (SIM), and light-sheet fluorescence microscopy (LSFM). Several variants of these techniques are critically discussed. Noise, optical aberrations, specimen damage, and artifacts in microscopy are also covered. The importance of validation of superresolution images with electron microscopy is stressed. Additionally, the book includes translations and discussion of seminal papers by Abbe and Helmholtz that proved to be pedagogically relevant as well as historically significant. This book is written for students, researchers, and engineers in the life sciences, medicine, biological engineering, and materials science who plan to work with or already are working with superresolution light microscopes. The volume can serve as a reference for these areas while a selected set of individual chapters can be used as a textbook for a one-semester undergraduate or first-year graduate course on superresolution microscopy. Moreover, the text provides a captivating account of curiosity, skepticism, risk-taking, innovation, and creativity in science and technology. Good scientific practice is emphasized throughout, and the author’s lecture slides on responsible conduct of research are included as an online resource which will be of interest to students, course instructors, and scientists alike.

Perception and analogy

Author: Rosalind Powell

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2021-10-19

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 1526157039

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Perception and analogy explores ways of seeing scientifically in the eighteenth century. The book examines how sensory experience is conceptualised during the period, drawing novel connections between treatments of perception as an embodied phenomenon and the creative methods employed by natural philosophers. Covering a wealth of literary, theological, and pedagogical texts that engage with astronomy, optics, ophthalmology, and the body, it argues for the significance of analogies for conceptualising and explaining new scientific ideas. As well as identifying their use in religious and topographical poetry, the book addresses how analogies are visible in material culture through objects such as orreries, camera obscuras, and aeolian harps. It makes the vital claim that scientific concepts become intertwined with Christian discourse through reinterpretations of origins and signs, the scope of the created universe, and the limits of embodied knowledge.

Interference

Author: David D. Nolte

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-05-17

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 019269684X

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Ever wonder why soap bubbles become invisible right before they pop? Or why lenses are so blue they look purple? How is it possible to image black holes at the heart of distant galaxies? The answer to all these questions is Interference. This book tells the story of the science of optical interferometry - mankind's most sensitive form of measurement - and of the scientists who tamed light to make outstanding discoveries, from lasers and holograms to astronomy and quantum physics. In the past several years, interferometry has been used to discover exoplanets orbiting distant stars, to take the first image of a black hole, to detect the first gravitational waves and to create the first programmable quantum computer. This list of achievements points to the fertile and active field of interferometry for which this book provides a convenient and up - to - date guide for a wide audience interested in the science of light.

On the Genealogy of Color

Author: Zed Adams

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-10-16

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 1317401905

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In On the Genealogy of Color, Zed Adams argues for a historicized approach to conceptual analysis, by exploring the relevance of the history of color science for contemporary philosophical debates about color realism. Adams contends that two prominent positions in these debates, Cartesian anti-realism and Oxford realism, are both predicated on the assumption that the concept of color is ahistorical and unrevisable. Adams takes issue with this premise by offering a philosophical genealogy of the concept of color. This book makes a significant contribution to recent debates on philosophical methodology by demonstrating the efficacy of using the genealogical method to explore philosophical concepts, and will appeal to philosophers of perception, philosophers of mind, and metaphysicians.

The Optics of Giambattista Della Porta (ca. 1535–1615): A Reassessment

Author: Arianna Borrelli

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-03-22

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 3319502158

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This volume contains essays that examine the optical works of Giambattista Della Porta, an Italian natural philosopher during the Scientific Revolution. Coverage also explores the science and technology of early modern optics. Della Porta's groundbreaking book, Magia Naturalis (Natural Magic), includes a prototype of the camera. Yet, because of his obsession with magic, Della Porta's scientific achievements are often forgotten. As the contributors argue, his work inspired such great minds as Johanes Kepler and Francis Bacon. After reading this book, researchers, historians, and students will have a better appreciation of this influential scientist. They will also gain a greater understanding of an important period in the history of optics. Readers will learn about Della Porta's experimental method, a process governed by the protocols, aims, and theoretical assumptions of natural magic. Coverage also discusses the material properties and limitations of optical technology in the early 17th century, based on a recently discovered Dutch spyglass. It also demonstrates how diagrams were instrumental in the discovery of the sine law of refraction. In addition, the book includes an in-depth analysis of previously untranslated Latin sources. This makes the material useful to historians of optics unfamiliar with the language. More than 70 illustrations complement the text.

From Sight to Light

Author: A. Mark Smith

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2017-11-16

Total Pages: 470

ISBN-13: 022652857X

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From its inception in Greek antiquity, the science of optics was aimed primarily at explaining sight and accounting for why things look as they do. By the end of the seventeenth century, however, the analytic focus of optics had shifted to light: its fundamental properties and such physical behaviors as reflection, refraction, and diffraction. This dramatic shift—which A. Mark Smith characterizes as the “Keplerian turn”—lies at the heart of this fascinating and pioneering study. Breaking from previous scholarship that sees Johannes Kepler as the culmination of a long-evolving optical tradition that traced back to Greek antiquity via the Muslim Middle Ages, Smith presents Kepler instead as marking a rupture with this tradition, arguing that his theory of retinal imaging, which was published in 1604, was instrumental in prompting the turn from sight to light. Kepler’s new theory of sight, Smith reveals, thus takes on true historical significance: by treating the eye as a mere light-focusing device rather than an image-producing instrument—as traditionally understood—Kepler’s account of retinal imaging helped spur the shift in analytic focus that eventually led to modern optics. A sweeping survey, From Sight to Light is poised to become the standard reference for historians of optics as well as those interested more broadly in the history of science, the history of art, and cultural and intellectual history.

Gaze, Vision, and Visuality in Ancient Greek Literature

Author: Alexandros Kampakoglou

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2018-03-05

Total Pages: 535

ISBN-13: 3110571285

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Visual culture, performance and spectacle lay at the heart of all aspects of ancient Greek daily routine, such as court and assembly, cult and ritual, and art and culture. Seeing was considered the most secure means of obtaining knowledge, with many citing the etymological connection between ‘seeing’ and ‘knowing’ in ancient Greek as evidence for this. Seeing was also however often associated with mere appearances, false perception and deception. Gazing and visuality in the ancient Greek world have had a central place in the scholarship for some time now, enjoying an abundance of pertinent discussions and bibliography. If this book differs from the previous publications, it is in its emphasis on diverse genres: the concepts ‘gaze’, ‘vision’ and ‘visuality’ are considered across different Greek genres and media. The recipients of ancient Greek literature (both oral and written) were encouraged to perceive the narrated scenes as spectacles and to ‘follow the gaze’ of the characters in the narrative. By setting a broad time span, the evolution of visual culture in Greece is tracked, while also addressing broader topics such as theories of vision, the prominence of visuality in specific time periods, and the position of visuality in a hierarchisation of the senses.

Optics F2f

Author: Charles S. Adams

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2018-12-13

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0198786786

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This textbook on optics provides an introduction to key concepts of wave optics and light propagation. It uniquely makes extensive use of Fourier methods and the angular-spectrum approach, especially to provide a unified approach to Fraunhofer and Fresnel diffraction. A recurring theme is that simple building blocks such as plane and spherical waves can be summed to construct useful solutions. The text pays particular attention to analysing topics in contemporary optics such as propagation, dispersion, laser beams and wave guides, apodisation, tightly-focused vector fields, unconventional polarization states, and light-matter interactions. Throughout the text, the principles are applied through worked examples, and the book is copiously illustrated with more than 240 figures. The 200 end-of-chapter exercises offer further opportunities for testing the reader's understanding.