Browse Items (55 total)

A book on Johannes Kepler's cosmological theory based on the Copernican system. The full title translates to Forerunner of the Cosmological Essays, Which Contains the Secret of the Universe; on the Marvelous Proportion of the Celestial Spheres, and…

A collection of texts that describes various alchemical processes.

A painting portraying renaissance mathematician Luca Pacioli

This painting of a German writing master and his son features a dodecahedron

The title transaltes to A Physico-mathematical Treatment of Light, Colors, and the Rainbow. Grimaldi challenged the principle that the propogation of light occurs in a linear fashion. The text discusses his findings based on experiments he did with…

This is an image that shows the alchemical process of Nigredo. It is part of Mylius's emblem book called Philosophia Reformata. The skeleton, crow, and black sun refer to the ideas of putrefaction and mortification associated with the Nigredo stage…

The Optica Promota is the major contribution by James Gregory. It included details of his design of the Gregorian telescope.

It has been a debate for centuries whether or not Vermeer used optics to help create more realistic paintings. This work has clear signs of using a camera obscura. Using this device helps him to figure out the size of the people in relation to one…

Scheiner was a Jesuit mathematician working in Rome. This treatise describes how the eye sees an inverted image that it somehow is able to flip. Scheiner's descriptions played a large role in the success of Johannes Kepler's theory of vision.

This treatise discusses the physiology of vision. The work was first presented to the Royal Society in 1681. Briggs' discoveries on the anatomy of the eye are presented