Vision, light and color in Al-Kindī, Ptolemy and the ancient commentators

Arabic Sciences and Philosophy

Volumn 16, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 207-236

  Adamson, Peter ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60950233654     PISSN: 09574239     EISSN: 14740524     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0957423906000312     Document Type: Review

References (71)

1. On the transmission of Greek philosophy and science to the Arabic speaking world generally, see C. D'Ancona, La Casa della Sapienza (Naples, 1996);
2. A. Badawī, La transmission de la philosophie grecque au monde arabe (Paris, 1968);
3. G. Endress, "Die wissenschaftliche Literatur," in Grundriß der arabischen Philologie Bd. III, Supplement, edited by W. Fischer (Wiesbaden, 1992);
4. D. Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture (London, 1998);
5. F. E. Peters, Aristoteles Arabus (Leiden, 1968).
6. On Ibn al-Haytham see D. C. Lindberg, Theories of Vision from al-Kindī to Kepler (Chicago, 1976);
7. S. B. Omar, Ibn al-Haytham's Optics (Minneapolis, 1977);
8. A. I. Sabra, The Optics of Ibn al-Haytham Books I-III: On Direct Vision, vols. 1-2 (London, 1989);
9. A. M. Smith, "Extremal principles in ancient and medieval optics," Physis, 31 (1994): 113-40.
10. For an overview of Arabic optics up to the time of al-Haytham, see E. Kheirandish, "The many aspects of 'appearances': Arabic optics to 950 AD," in J. P. Hogendijk and A. I. Sabra (eds.), The Enterprise of Science in Islam (Cambridge, MA, 2003), pp. 55-83.
11. For overviews of al-Kindī against the background of the translation movement, see G. Endress, "The circle of al-Kindī," in G. Endress and R. Kruk (eds.), The Ancient Tradition in Christian and Islamic Hellenism (Leiden, 1997), pp. 43-76;
12. P. Adamson, "Al-Kindī and the reception of Greek philosophy," in The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 32-51. I will shortly publish a monograph devoted to al-Kindī's thought in the Oxford University Press series Great Medieval Thinkers. Peter Pormann and I are at work on a book of translations, entitled The Philosophical Works of al-Kindī, also to appear with Oxford University Press. This will include translations of the works on color discussed in the present article.
13. The most useful list of works by al-Kindī is in P. Travaglia's recent book Magic, Causality, and Intentionality. The Doctrine of Rays in al-Kindī (Turnhout, 1999), which has an appendix listing all of his extant works with manuscripts, editions, translations and secondary literature.
14. De Aspectibus is a Latin translation by Gerard of Cremona, probably of the no longer extant Kitāb fī 'Ilal ikhtilāf al-manāzir mentioned in Ibn al-Nadīm's Fihrist: see R. Rashed, Œuvres philosophiques et scientifiques d'al-Kindī, vol. 1: L'optique et la catoptrique (Leiden, 1997), p. 67. I will quote from the Latin text in Rashed's edition. All translations of this and other works are my own unless otherwise noted.
15. On the transmission of the Optika see E. Kheirandish, The Arabic Version of Euclid's Optics, 2 vols. (New York, 1999);
16. and also her "The Arabic 'version' of Euclidean optics: Transformations as linguistic problems in transmission," in F. J. Ragep and S. P. Ragep (eds.), Tradition, Transmission, Transformation (Leiden, 1996), pp. 227-43.
17. See I. Avotins, "Alexander of Aphrodisias on vision in the atomists," Classical Quarterly, 30 (1980): 429-54. For Alexander's In de Sensu, see further below.
18. See Rashed, Œuvres philosophiques, pp. 45-52, providing parallels between Theon and al-Kindī.
19. An earlier study of De Aspectibus by D. C. Lindberg, "Alkindi's critique of Euclid's theory of vision," Isis, 62 (1971): 469-89, also notes the dependence of al-Kindī on Theon: see p. 474, n. 23.
20. The "Theon" recension is edited in I. L. Heiberg, Euclidis Opera Omnia (Leipzig, 1945), vol. VII: Euclidis optica, opticorum recensio Theonis, catoptrica, cum scholiis antiquis, pp. 144ff.
21. Han Baltussen has brought to my attention that this taxonomy of visual theories has echoes as far back as Theophrastus, who calls Plato's theory a "middle" view. See H. Diels, Doxographi Graeci (Berlin, 1879), p. 500.
22. On these two accounts see Lindberg, "Alkindi's critique," pp. 481-3.
23. M. Meyerhof, The Book of Ten Treatises on the Eye Ascribed to Hunain Ibn Is-Hāq (Cairo, 1928), in the third treatise ("On the Subject of Vision"), pp. 20-39.
24. AR 167.9-17. For the question of the authenticity of On Definitions see P. Adamson, "Al-Kindī and the Mu'tazila: Divine attributes, creation and freedom," Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 13 (2003): 45-77, at pp. 75-6, n. 87.
25. See A. Jones, "Peripatetic and Euclidean theories of the visual ray," Physis, 31 (1994): 47-76. As we will see below there is evidence that al-Kindī knew the Meteorology.
26. I would like to thank Stephen Menn for encouraging me to pay more attention to Ptolemy as a source for al-Kindī's ideas. Latin edition and French translation in A. Lejeune, L'optique de Claude Ptolémée (Leiden, 1989)
27. which reprints the Latin from A. Lejeune, L'optique de Claude Ptolémée (Louvain, 1956).
28. English translation in A. M. Smith, Ptolemy's Theory of Visual Perception: an English Translation of the Optics with Introduction and Commentary (Philadelphia, 1996). I will quote the Optics using Smith's translation.
29. Joannes Philoponus, In Aristotelis De Anima libros, edited by M. Hayduck, CAG XV (Berlin, 1897).
30. The section on vision in the commentary has been translated as an appendix to J. de Groot, Aristotle and Philoponus on Light (New York, 1991).
31. A German translation of the relevant sections can be found in Walter Böhm, Johannes Philoponus: ausgewählte Schriften (Munich, 1967), pp. 174-207.
32. For the reception of Ptolemy's Optics in Arabic see Sabra, The Optics of Ibn al-Haytham, vol. 2, pp. lviii ff.
33. A. A. Björnbo and S. Vogl, "Alkindi, Tideus und Pseudo-Euclid. Drei optische Werke," Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der mathematischen Wissenschaften, 26.3 (1912).
34. This view is followed by Lejeune in his edition of the Optics, at Lejeune, L'optique de Claude Ptolémée (1989), p. 29.
35. R. Sorabji, "John Philoponus," in R. Sorabji (ed.), Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science (London, 1987), pp. 26-30.
36. See also R. Sambursky, " Philoponus' interpretation of Aristotle's theory of light," Osiris, 13 (1958): 114-26
37. and J. de Groot, "Philoponus on De Anima II.5, Physics III.3, and the propagation of light," Phronesis, 28 (1983): 177-96.
38. See further her book on the topic, de Groot, Aristotle and Philoponus on Light.
39. For the views of Philoponus and other commentators on vision see now R. Sorabji, The Philosophy of the Commentators: 200-600 AD, 3 vols. (London, 2004), vol. 1, §l(f)-(g).
40. (For De Radiis see M.-T. d'Alverny and F. Hudry, "Al-Kindī, De Radiis," Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge, 41 [1974]: 215-59.) Al-Kindī believes that there are many different sorts of rays that exercise different sorts of causality. In De Radiis he uses them to explain a variety of magical and astrological phenomena, for example. But this does not rule out that all rays are propagated according to the same laws. If this is so, then De Aspectibus 15 represents his fullest discussion of those laws.
41. Fī anna al-daw' laysa bi-jism (That Light is Not a Body). The Arabic text was edited by P. Cheikho, in al-Machriq: Revue catholique orientale bimensuelle, 2 (1899): 1105-15.
42. For a German translation, see C. Prüfer and M. Meyerhof, "Die aristotelische Lehre vom Licht bei Hunain b. Ish{dot below}āq," Der Islam, 2 (1911): 117-28. I will give page and line numbers to Cheikho's text when quoting directly, but otherwise give the section numbers, which are identical in the Arabic text and German translation.
43. The parallel is much closer than that adduced by Prüfer and Meyerhof, who refer us to Aristotle, DA 418b21ff. Compare also Themistius, In De Anima, edited by R. Heinze, CAG 5.3 (Berlin, 1900), p. 60.25-27.
44. English translation: Themistius, On Aristotle on the Soul, translated by R. B. Todd (London, 1996).
45. The absurd consequence of fitting the heavens into a mote, or a grain of millet, is in fact a commonplace of later Greek philosophy in discussions of the interpenetration of bodies. But its appearance here in On Light certainly comes from Philoponus, given the identical context. It appears elsewhere early in the Arabic milieu: see H. Daiber, Das theologisch-philosophische System des Mu'ammar Ibn 'Abbād as-Sulamī, Beiruter Texte und Studien 19 (Beirut, 1975), pp. 124-5, on the view that if God can do the impossible He could fit the entire world into an egg.
46. The Mu'tazilite al-Nazzām argued against the interpenetration view of Dirār b. 'Amr that a mountain could be made to fit into a grain of mustard: J. van Ess, "Dirār b. 'Amr und die 'Caymiyya': Biographie einer vergessener Schule," Der Islam, 43 (1967): 241-79, and 44 (1968): 1-70, at p. 261.
47. For example, the argument in On Light 6 that if light were fiery it would be extinguished by water appears already in Alexander of Aphrodisias, In Librum De Sensu Commentarium, edited by P. Wendland, CAG 3,1 (Berlin, 1901), p. 31.2-3.
48. R. Arnzen, Aristoteles' De Anima, eine verlorene spätantike Paraphrase in arabischer und persischer Überlieferung (Leiden, 1998).
49. Arnzen, Aristoteles' De Anima, pp. 257-65, with accompanying notes.
50. As Arnzen, Aristotles' De Anima, p. 400, points out, what Philoponus is ruling out here is a simple rectilinear motion in a single direction, like that of fire: light does move in straight lines, but in all directions, and no body does this. He goes on to approve of the view that light moves in straight lines, as proven in optics, at In DA 327.15-16.
51. For the status quaestionis on a possible Arabic version of Philoponus in DA see D. Gutas, "Avicenna's marginal glosses on De Anima and the Greek commentatorial tradition," in P. Adamson, H. Baltussen, and M. W. F. Stone (eds.), Philosophy, Science and Exegesis in Greek, Arabic and Latin Commentaries, 2 vols. (London, 2004), vol. 2, pp. 75-85, at p. 81.
52. Gutas believes that Avicenna may have known the commentary, and reminds us that J. Jolivet, in his L'intellect selon Kindī (Leiden, 1971), sees influence from Philoponus' commentary on al-Kindī's theory of intellect.
53. A further question raised by al-Kindī's dependence on the ArDA passage is whether al-Kindī followed Philoponus and ArDA in holding that light is not a body. Though he does not emphasize the point, as ArDA and On Light do, I suspect that he did accept the incorporeality of light. Nowhere, that I have found, does he say that light is a body, and he seems to be careful to use terms to describe light in De Aspectibus that would avoid suggesting light is a body: for example impressio (e.g. in Prop. 11, presumably translating athar) and virtus (e.g. in Props. 7, 22, presumably translating quwwa). On light as virtus see Travaglia, Magic, Causality and Intentionality, p. 62.
54. A not entirely reliable English translation has been published in O. Spies, "Al-Kindī's treatise on the cause of the blue colour of the sky," Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 13 (1937): 7-19.
55. Ishāq (d. ca. 299/911) belongs to the generation after al-Kindī, and outlived him by about forty years, so it is doubtful whether al-Kindī could have read this translation. The Arabic text can be found in M. C. Lyons, An Arabic Translation of Themistius' Commentary on Aristotle's De Anima (Oxford, 1973). The passage cited here is based on Themistius In DA 60.36-38.
56. For extensive discussion of the notions of actuality in Aristotle's theory of light, see de Groot, Aristotle and Philoponus on Light.
57. See also Alexander of Aphrodisias, Scripta Minora, edited by I. Bruns, Supplementum Aristotelicum II.1 (Berlin, 1887), pp. 5.1-7.19, which deals with the topic of color.
58. The Arabic version has been edited and translated into German in H. Gätje, "Die arabische Übersetzung der Schrift des Alexander von Aphrodisias über die Farbe," Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaft in Göttingen, philologisch-historische Klasse, 10 (1967): 343-82.
59. Citations are to line numbers of this Arabic text. One manuscript of the Arabic version claims that the translation was by Ishāq ibn Hunayn and by Abū 'Uthmān al-Dimashqī (fl. about A.D. 900), either of which would suggest that the text could well have been translated after al-Kindī's death. But an analysis by Gätje has shown that the translation probably dates from before the school of Hunayn ibn Ishāq, which would rule out both his son Ishāq and his disciple al-Dimashqī as translators, and put the text back into al-Kindī's period (see Gätje, "Die arabische Übersetzung," p. 355).
60. Cf. Alexander In De Sensu, 47.18-19.
61. English translation: Priscian, On Theophrastus on Sense-Perception, translated by P. Huby (London, 1997).
62. Cf. Ptolemy, Optics §19, 6-8
63. and Smith, Ptolemy's Theory, ad loc.
64. As Gätje has shown in "Zur Farbenlehre in der muslimschen Philosophie," Der Islam, 43 (1967): 280-301, one of the controversial questions about color in Arabic philosophy was whether color exists in the dark actually or only potentially. Al-Kindī seems to anticipate the widespread view that color is actual only when illuminated.
65. For the former version, see C. Petraitis, The Arabic Version of Aristotle's Meteorology (Beyrouth, 1967)
66. reviewed by G. Endress in Oriens, 23-24 (1974): 497-509.
67. For Hunayn's briefer summary paraphrase, see H. Daiber, Ein Kompendium der aristotelischen Meteorologie (Oxford, 1975).
68. Petraitis gives two parallels that may show al-Kindī was familiar with the Meteorology in the version of al-Bitrīq: Petraitis, The Arabic Version, p. 15 n. 1, 35 n. 2.
69. But see Rashed, Œuvres philosophiques, p. 454, n. 16 for a different explanation of the Latin here.
70. Cf. Daiber, Ein Kompendium, p. 59.7-10.
71. I am very grateful to Charles Burnett, Elaheh Kheirandish, Stephen Menn, Peter Pormann and two anonymous referees from this journal for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.