Grosseteste and an Ancient Optical Principle

Author(s): Colin M. Turbayne

Source: Isis, Vol. 50, No. 4 (Dec., 1959), pp. 467-472
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society
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an Ancient
Grosseteste and
Optical
Principle
By Colin M. Turbayne *
REVOLUTION in the history of science occurredin the thirteeth century
A
at Oxford. The man who started it was Robert Grosseteste (ca. 1168A
1253). "Grossetesteappears to have been the first medieval writer to recognize
and deal with ... experimental verification" in science. Theories were to be re-

tained only if they met the test of experience. By thus uniting the experimental
habit with the Greek geometrical method, he and his successors "created modern experimental science." The characteristic science in which he applied his
ideas on method was optics. "He was the first medieval writer to discuss
[optics] systematically."
These views are Dr. A. C. Crombie's, presented in his admirable Robert
Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science.' His argument, exceptionally well documented, loses strength by his treatment of a fundamental
point in Grosseteste's optics. The fundamental point is "The Ancient Principle," so named by Isaac Barrow in his Eighteen Lectures.2This principle is
as old as Euclid, and it stood until after Kepler. The question is: Did Grosseteste subscribe to it or not? If he did, he was in the classical tradition. If not,
he knew less about optics than his precursors: Euclid, Ptolemy, and the Arabs.
Dr. Crombie does not give Grosseteste the credit for understanding it. I shall
try to show that he did, first by sketching the history of the principle, and then
by presenting Grosseteste's relevant remarks.
The Ancient Principle is a rule for locating the optical image in optical systems after reflection or refraction. A concise eighteenth-century statement of
it is as follows:
Any given visiblepoint of an objectappearsat the intersectionof the reflected
or the refractedvisual ray producedand of a line drawn throughthe visible
point perpendicularto the reflectingor refractingsurface whether plane or
spherical.3
It is independent of the distinction, made by Kepler and now in general use,
between the virtual and the real image. It is also independent of the emission
and immission theories of vision (the former, that there are visual rays, was
held, for example, by Plato and Euclid; the latter, by Democritus and Aristotle), and it appeared to work well enough with plane and spherical surfaces.
* University of Rochester, N. Y. I am indebted to my colleague, Mr. John Stewart,
for helpful advice on the subject matter of this
paper.

Oxford, 1953.
Lectiones XVIII (London, 1669), lect. 18.
3 Robert Smith, A CompleatSystem of Opticks (Cambridge, 1738), par. 212.
2

467

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468

COLIN

M. TURBAYNE

Euclid, in his Catoptrics4(c. 300 B.C.), apparently understood The Ancient

Principle which his diagrams illustrate, because three of his theorems are deducible from it, though not, it seems to me, from his postulates.
IMAGE
OBJECT

IMAGE
IMGE
MIRROR

EYE
OJC

OBjECT

EYE
EYE

FIG. 1

FIG.

FIG.

Th. 16 In plane mirrors the object appears on the perpendicular drawn from
the object (fig. 1.)
Th. 17 In convex mirrors the object appears on the line drawn from the
object to the center of the sphere (fig. 2.)
Th. 18 In concave mirrors the object appears on the line drawn from the object to the center of the sphere (fig. 3.)
Similar accounts were given by Ptolemy, Ibn al-Haitham, Witelo, and Roger
Bacon. Ibn al-Haitham (who relinquished the emission theory) stated the
principle as it applied to reflection: "In any plane, spherical convex, or spherical concave mirror, the image is seen at the junction of the perpendicular
of incidence and the reflected ray," I "the perpendicular of incidence" being
an immissionist's name for Euclid's normal line drawn from the object to the
surface of the plane mirror or to the center of the convex or concave mirror.
In his, Bacon stated the principle as it applied to refraction: "Vision by refraction is at the intersection of the visual ray with the cathetus, as has been
stated in regard to reflection,"6 "the cathetus" being a neutral name for the
perpendicular of incidence. He used the principle to explain the bent appearance of the stick seen in water.
In 1604, Kepler' in his Supplement to Witelo, correctly rejected The Ancient
Principle (though for incorrect reasons such as: if the mirror at its junction
with the cathetus "is covered or blocked off [the image] can nevertheless be
clearly seen,") in favor of new principles that become axioms 7 and 8 of Newton's Opticks (1704) and the foundations of modern geometrical optics.7
Nevertheless, in his Catoptrics, the Jesuit mathematician, Andree Tacquet
(1602-1660), tried to retain The Ancient Principle, "the most fecund in all
catoptrics": "In plane and convex mirrors,any point of the object appears nowhere else than at the intersection of the reflected ray with the perpendicular
4 Euclide: L'Optique et la Catoptrique, chapter 2; my translation.
6 The Opus Majus, transl. by R. B. Burke
aeuvres traduites pour la premiere fois du
(Philadelphia, 1928), p. 565.
grec en frangais par Paul Ver Eecke (Paris
7 Ad Vitellionem Paralipomena, quibus As& Bruges, 1938); my translation.
tronomiir pars Optica traditur (Frankfurt),
5 Optica? Thesaurus Aihazeni Arabis ... a
Federico Risnero (Basiliae, 1572), book 5, chapter 3, 1; my translation.

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GROSSETESTE

AND

OPTICS

469

of incidence."8 In treating reflection in concave mirrors, however, he found

a certain odd case: "If the eye is between the center and the mirror, then objects placed below the center make two images: an inverted one between the
center and the mirror, and an erect one beyond the mirror [see fig. 4]." 1
The first image ("real" in modern optics) is accounted for by the principle,
even though it may "appear" behind the eye, "but the second, though established by a sure experiment (experientia certa constet) no less than the first,

OBJECT
FIG. 4

cannot be demonstrated from it" because this image "repeatedly appears outside the junction of the reflected ray and the cathetus."'0 Having witnessed
the collapse of The Ancient Principle, Tacquet could not bring himself to reject it outright: "In cave mirrors we postulate this only so far as its truth
reveals itself"'1; and he left it at that.
Barrow, using Kepler's new principles (still basic to geometrical optics),
found that they too were insufficient to explain not only Tacquet's case but
also its complement for lenses; and he said:
Nor is our principlealone struckat by this experiment,but likewiseall others
that ever came to my knowledgeare, every whit as much, endangeredby it.
The ancientone especially(which is most commonlyreceived,and comesnear8 Catoptrica tribus libris
exposita, from his
Opera mathematica,2nd ed. (Antwerp, 1707),
book 1, prop. 22; my translation.

9 Ibid., book 3, prop. 29.

10

Ibid., book 3, props. 29 and 30.

11 Ibid., book 3, prop. 22.

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470

COLIN

M. TURBAYNE

est to mine) seems to be so effectuallyoverthrownthereby that the most

learnedTacquethas been forced to reject that principle,as false and uncertain, on which alone he had built almost his whole Catoptrics;and consequentlyby taking away the foundation,hath himself pulled down the superstructurehe had raisedon it.12
Barrow could not bring himself to "renounce that which I know to be manifestly agreeable to reason," and concluded that "in the present case something peculiar lies hid, which being involved in the subtilty of nature will, perhaps, hardly be discovered till such time as the manner of vision is more perfectly made known.""'
I now return to the question: Did Grosseteste subscribe to The Ancient
Principle? Two passages, one from his On Lines, Angles, and Figures, the other
from his On the Rainbow, reveal his views on refraction and reflection. The
first is very general:
The ray falling [on anothertransparentbody] at equalangles or perpendicularlykeepsto a straightline of passage. But the one that falls at unequalangles
deviates from the straight line.... This deviationis called the refractionof
the ray.... If this second body is denser than the first, then the ray is refracted to the right and passes betweenthe straight line of passage and the
perpendiculardrawn from the place of refractionon this second body."4
The diagram (fig. 5) copies Dr. Crombie's, for Grosseteste left none. It shows
what Grosseteste probably intended: AO and OC are the incident and refracted rays, while AOE and COD are the angles of incidence and refraction.
In the second passage Grosseteste was more specific:
That the size of the angle in the refractionof a ray may be thus determined,
experimentsshow us similarto those by which we can discoverthat the reflection of the ray falling on a mirror makes an angle equal to the angle of
incidence.... A thing that is seen through the medium of several transparent
bodies does not appear to be as it truly is, but appears to be at the junction
betzweenthe ray passing out from the eye in continuous and direct projection,
and the line coming from the thing seen wzhichfalls on the surface of the second
transparent body nearer the eye at equal angles on both sides. This is shown

by the same experimentas, and similarreasoningto, those by which we know

12Barrow, op. cit., lect. 18; George Berkeley's translation in his An Essay towards a
New Theory of Vision (Dublin, 1709), sec.
29.
18 The second image that Barrow and Tacquet saw is, indeed, inexplicable on the principles of ancient or modern geometrical optics,
for, in terms of the one it is outside the junction of the cathetus and the reflected ray, and
in terms of the other it is neither real (the
rays do not actually pass through it) nor
sirtual (the rays cannot be projected to pass
through it). This image or effigy, therefore,
does not exist. Yet Barrow and Tacquet
saw it, and anyone can confirm it. Two similar criticisms of the foundations of modern
optics have been made since Kepler fathered
the science: one by Berkeley in 1709 (A New

Theory of Vision), and the other, independently of him, by Professor Vasco Ronchi in
1955 (Optics: the Science of Vision [Bologna,
1955; New York, 1957]). Both offer solutions to what Berkeley called "The Barrovian
Case" which, Berkeley claimed (sec. 33), "entirely subverts" the received theories, and
which, Professor Ronchi concludes (sec. 192),
modern optics is "utterly inadequate to explain." See Colin Turbayne, "Berkeley and
Ronchi on Optics," Proceedings XII International Congress of Philosophy (in press).
14De lineis, angulis, et figuris, in L. Baur,
Die philosophischen Werke des Robert Grosseteste, Bischofs von Lincoln (Miinster,
1912), p. 63; Crombie's translation, op. cit.,
pp. 120-121, my italics.

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GROSSETESTE

AND

471

OPTICS

that things seen in a mirror appear at the junction of directly projected vision
and the line coming to the surface of the mirror at an equal angle.15

This shows that Grosseteste subscribed to Euclid's law of reflection and emission theory of vision. Thus, in figure 5, the incident ray projected is the same
as the visual ray projected AOB. It shows also, it seems, that Grosseteste subscribed to The Ancient Principle, the junction being that of the visual ray
projected and the cathetus.
But, in the absence of diagrams, another interpretation of this passage is
possible: Grosseteste used the words, "The line coming from the thing
seen ... ," to mean not the cathetus but the refracted ray. This view is adopted
by Dr. Crombie: In figure 5, [By an observer at A] if an object were placed
at C, it would be seen at 0, where BOC = COD." 16 In this view, a stick
placed under water would be seen on the surface.'7 Accordingly, Dr. Crombie
E
A

70

,-

0
DENSER
MEDIUM

DENSER
MEDIUM
C

FIG.

FIG.

interprets Grosseteste's law of refraction for rays entering a denser medium:

"The refracted ray bisects the angle between the projection of the incident
ray and the perpendicularto the common surface at the point of entry of the
incident ray into the denser medium,"18 or, which is the same thing, the angle
of refraction equals half the angle of incidence. Thus, by the word "between"
(inter) in the first passage, Grosseteste meant midway between. Having taken
this view, and holding those views expressed in the first paragraph of this
paper, Dr. Crombie is forced to conclude:
15 De iride, British Museum MS Royal
6.E.V., 14C., fols. 241r-vb; cf. Baur, op. cit.,
pp. 74-75; Crombie's translation, op. cit., p.
123, my italics. In the MS the italicized portions run as follows: Res autem, quae videtur
per medium plurium perspicuorum, non apparet esse ut ipsa est secundumveritatem, sed
apparet esse in concursu radii egredientis ab
oculo in continuum et directum protractum
et lineae ductae a re visa cadentis in superficiem secundi perspicui propinquioremoculo

ad angulos sequales undique.... Res visae in

speculis apparent in concursu visus directe
protracti et lineae ductae super speculi superficiem ad angulos undiqueaequales.
16 Crombie, op. cit., p. 123.
17 This happens sometimes with lenses, and
with mirrors, as Professor Ronchi has pointed
out, op. cit., secs. 128 and 170; but it is doubtful whether Grosseteste was aware of such
exceptional cases.
18 Crombie, op. cit., p. 123.

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472

COLIN

M. TURBAYNE

Very simple experimentscould have shown Grossetestethat his quantitative

law of refractionwas not correct.He was in fact, primarilya methodologist
ratherthan an experimentalist.... Nevertheless,it was one of the basic principles of his theory of sciencethat theoriesmust be put to the test of experiment and that if they were contradictedby experimentthen they had to be
abandoned."'

However, in the light of my earlier account, it is far more likely that in the
second passage, Grosseteste meant to state nothing but The Ancient Principle.
"Commonlyreceived" in classical optics, it would be astonishing if he had not
subscribed to it. Certainly he read Euclid's Catoptrics20(in which the diagrams clearly illustrate the principle), probably Ptolemy's Optics, and possibly Ibn al-Haitham's Book of Optics. In which case he intended the line
coming from the thing seen to be the cathetus and not the refracted ray. This
is confirmedby his use of linea for the line in question and radius for the ray.
By the phrase "at equal angles on both sides" (ad angulos undique aequales)
he obviously meant right angles. Compare the phrase "at equal angles or
perpendicularly" (ad angulos aequales sive perpendiculariter) in the first
passage. Accordingly, in figure 6, by an observer at A, if an object were placed
at C, it would be seen at X where the visual ray AO, after "continuous and
direct projection" intersects the cathetus CY. If this is so, then the passage
does not reveal Grosseteste's law of refraction. But it does show a rule for
finding the angle of refraction experimentally; it does show that he understood
and accepted The Ancient Principle; and it is consistent with the view that
he put his theories to the test of experiment.
19Ibid., p. 124.
20Called "De speculis" in his De natura

pp. 70 and 74, and Crombie, op. cit., pp. 116

and 119.

locorum and in his De iride; cf. Baur, op. cit.,

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