http://blog.thecanvasgallery.com Just another WordPress weblog Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:26:30 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 http://blog.thecanvasgallery.com/2008/10/11/the-beauty-of-photography/#comment-76 Bradley Steffens Thu, 16 Oct 2008 04:27:42 +0000 http://blog.thecanvasgallery.com/?p=57#comment-76 I enjoyed your post about photography. I was happy to see your mention of Ibn al-Haytham's contributions to optics. What I think is interesting about his work with the camera obscura is that he did not devise it as some kind of novelty, but as an apparatus to test his hypothesis that "lights and colors do not blend in the air." Using pinhole technology, he "forced" light rays to intersect at an aperture and recorded the results in his massive study of light and vision, <i>Kitāb al-Manāzir</i> (<i>Book of Optics</i>). As the first person to systematically test hypotheses with experiments, Ibn al-Haytham deserves recognition not only as the “father of optics” but also as the first scientist. If you or your readers would like to know more about him, I would like to recommend my new book, <i>Ibn al-Haytham: First Scientist</i>. Written for young adults, it is the world's first full biography of the eleventh-century Muslim scholar known in the West as Alhazen or Alhacen. I enjoyed your post about photography. I was happy to see your mention of Ibn al-Haytham’s contributions to optics. What I think is interesting about his work with the camera obscura is that he did not devise it as some kind of novelty, but as an apparatus to test his hypothesis that “lights and colors do not blend in the air.” Using pinhole technology, he “forced” light rays to intersect at an aperture and recorded the results in his massive study of light and vision, Kitāb al-Manāzir (Book of Optics). As the first person to systematically test hypotheses with experiments, Ibn al-Haytham deserves recognition not only as the “father of optics” but also as the first scientist. If you or your readers would like to know more about him, I would like to recommend my new book, Ibn al-Haytham: First Scientist. Written for young adults, it is the world’s first full biography of the eleventh-century Muslim scholar known in the West as Alhazen or Alhacen.

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