Critiques and Contentions

Chasing the Light: What Happened

to the Ancient Theories?
Isidoros Katsos, Cambridge University

Abstract: In the course of contemporary investigations into the history of optics, it is

claimed that the study of light in antiquity was subordinated to the study of sight.
Though previous scholarship allowed some conceptual space for an autonomous study
of light, such an approach remains a largely unexplored possibility. This essay investi-
gates further the possibility of a luminocentric as opposed to the oculocentric approach
to ancient optics. On the basis of evidence from the Platonic Timaeus, it argues for
the existence of a proper physics of light in the ancient world. If the argument is correct,
the ancient physics of light ought to be part of a comprehensive and systematic history of
optics.

L ight has captivated the human imagination since the dawn of civilization. Its nature and its
properties have captured the interest of scientists, philosophers, theologians, and poets of
old. In celebrated lines from his Farbenlehre, Goethe echoes something of the perennial hu-
man fascination with light and its sight:

Were not our eye another sun,

How could we contemplate the light?
Did God’s own power not within us run,
How could we share in God’s delight?1

Rev. Dr. Isidoros Katsos holds a Ph.D. in law from the Freie University, Berlin, and recently completed a second Ph.D. on the
intersection of late antique physics and hermeneutics. Pembroke College, Cambridge CB2 1RF, United Kingdom; cik22@cam
.ac.uk.
Acknowledgments. This essay was stimulated by a Ph.D. research project on the metaphysics of light in the Hexaemeron, supported by
the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the George and Marie Vergottis Foundation, the Leventis Foundation, and the Faculty of
Divinity, University of Cambridge. I am particularly grateful for comments offered at various stages by Rowan Williams, David Sedley,
Catherine Rowett, Katerina Ierodiakonou, Barrie Fleet, Christian Hengstermann, the Editor of this journal, and two anonymous ref-
erees. Though I have profited enormously from them, I remain solely responsible for all shortcomings.

1
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Farbenlehre, quoted in Paul Kalligas, The “Enneads” of Plotinus: A Commentary, trans. Eliz-
abeth Key Fowden and Nicolas Pilavachi, 3 vols., Vol. 1 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 2014), p. 217. Fowden and
Pilavachi’s translation of the poem is notable for its sensitivity to the philosophical and metaphysical connotations.

Isis, volume 110, number 2. © 2019 by The History of Science Society.

All rights reserved. 0021-1753/2019/0110-0004$10.00.
270

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 CRITIQUES AND CONTENTIONS
ISIS —Volume 110, Number 2, June 2019 271

The luminocentrism of Western culture did not escape the attention of twentieth-century
historians. In the words of David Lindberg, premodern thinkers

regarded light as a central feature of the world—at once a transcendental reality and a
physical agent, one of the fundamental principles of cosmogony and epistemology,
the source of life and movement, and a powerful theological symbol. This tradition goes
back to antiquity, particularly to Plato, who made heavy use of light symbolism in his
theory of knowledge and other aspects of his philosophy. Light metaphors also pervade
the Bible and patristic literature, largely through Platonic influence.2

This fundamental role of light as a key element in deciphering the nature of the world
might provoke a feeling of accord among some in the world of quantum and relativity physics.
In his Light: A Very Short Introduction Ian Walmsley does indeed suggest some kind of famil-
iarity—if not affinity—between pre- and postmodern concepts of light. Today we understand
light in post-Einsteinian terms:

Einstein, by contrast [to Newton], places light at the centre of space. For him, it defines
space and time by virtue of setting the speed limit for signals sent from one part of the
universe to another. The fact that there is a finite maximum speed turns out to make
space and time inseparable. Einstein’s theory of relativity teaches us that we cannot think
of the one without the other.3

But for medieval thinkers, too, understanding the nature of light was critical to understand-
ing the world. A remarkable example is Robert Grosseteste’s special treatise called De luce,
which understands light as the limit of the physical world and defines it, famously, as “the first
corporeal form”:

For Grosseteste, light defines space by its propagation instantly throughout the universe.
Without light, there is no space, and therefore no forum in which events can take place.
Matter, and thus the spatial extension of objects, are coupled to light, but cannot be sep-
arately defined. This intimate connection between light, space, and matter—in Gros-
seteste’s hands amenable to quantifiable description—informed the development of ideas
regarding cosmology in the subsequent centuries.4

Walmsley is not the first to notice the striking resemblance between Grosseteste’s and
Einstein’s notions of light as limit. Scholars of Grosseteste have made similar observations.5
One may here prudently remark that we should not be too eager to stress similarities. But we
cannot deny that Grosseteste’s concept of light as a definiens of space is much closer to the
post-Einsteinian view of light than, for example, Newton’s was. And this is enough to open a
bridge between pre- and postmodern physics—or, as regards light in particular, between pre-
Keplerian and post-Einsteinian optics. For some of the best Grosseteste scholars have stressed that
the core idea of the De luce—light as the first and most refined corporeal form, coextensive

2
David Lindberg, “The Genesis of Kepler’s Theory of Light: Light Metaphysics from Plotinus to Kepler,” Osiris, 1986, N.S.,
2:4–42, on p. 9.
3
Ian Walmsley, Light: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2015), p. 84.
4
Ibid., p. 83.
5
See Iain MacKenzie, The Obscurism of Light: A Theological Study into the Nature of Light (Norwich: Canterbury, 1996), pp. 1, 4.

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272 Isidoros Katsos Chasing the Light

with matter—has immediate roots in Arabic and Jewish thought, echoing the thought of Plotinus
and Proclus. Others have highlighted the patristic context of Grosseteste’s thought-world, laying
particular emphasis on the hermeneutical tradition of the book of Genesis, especially Basil’s
Hexaemeron.6 If we look briefly into Basil’s Hexaemeron and its immediate context, we will find
clear antecedents of Grosseteste’s fundamental insight about light as the first sensible form and as
coextential with matter.7 But the Jewish-Christian exegesis of the Genesis six-day Creation narra-
tive, the so-called hexaemeral literature, of which Basil’s work is but one celebrated example, did
not emerge in a vacuum. It took up themes, ideas, and—crucially—the key cosmological and
physical theories of the Greeks, which Christian thinkers grafted onto a biblical context.8 In
an epoch-making study, David Runia showed how the beginnings of the hexaemeral tradition,
as we know it through Philo’s De opificio, received and transformed the physical and metaphys-
ical insights of the Platonic Timaeus, mediated through Stoic, Aristotelian, and Neo-Pythagorean
influences.9 Other seminal studies have shown how the ancient physics of light survived in late
antiquity and was transformed by later Christian thinkers such as Philoponus, whose genius until
recently was largely unrecognized.10 Their work was then transmitted to the Middle Ages through
the Arab and Byzantine world.11 Thus, for the contemporary thinker Grosseteste’s De luce opens
a window with a view to the premodern physical world. It is a view reaching back to early Greek
speculation and fascination with light, but also one that offers a look at the first systematic at-
tempts to give rational answers to one of the most fundamental questions of human civilization
and culture: What is light?

II
The question of the nature of light takes center stage in contemporary history of science. Two
significant milestones of twentieth-century historiography are the groundbreaking, but contested,
work of Vasco Ronchi, Storia della luce, and David Lindberg’s authoritative Theories of Vision
from Al-Kindi to Kepler.12 These works established the contours of the field that is now recognized
as “history of optics.” Both bequeathed to younger generations of scholars a hidden tension: on
the one hand, they recognized the centrality of the question of light; on the other hand, they

6
For the idea that the De luce has roots in Arabic and Jewish thought see James McEvoy, Robert Grosseteste (Oxford: Oxford
Univ. Press, 2000), p. 90. For emphasis on the patristic context see Clare Riedl, Robert Grosseteste: On Light (De luce) (Milwau-
kee: Marquette Univ. Press, 1942), p. 5; and MacKenzie, Obscurism of Light, pp. 7–24.
7
See Karl Gronau, Poseidonios und die jü disch-christliche Genesisexegese (Berlin: Teubner, 1914), pp. 22–24; and Gregory of
Nyssa, Apologia in Hexaemeron §10 (GNO IV 1 p. 20 = PG 44, 72C–73A).
8
See the comparative study of Charlotte Köckert, Christliche Kosmologie und kaiserzeitliche Philosophie: Die Auslegung des
Schöpfungsberichtes bei Origenes, Basilius und Gregor von Nyssa vor dem Hintergrund kaiserzeitlicher Timaeus-Interpretationen
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009).
9
See David Runia, Philo of Alexandria and the “Timaeus” of Plato (Leiden: Brill, 1986); and, more recently, Runia, On the
Creation of the Cosmos According to Moses (Leiden: Brill, 2001).
10
Regarding the survival of the ancient physics of light in late antiquity and its transformation at the hands of later Christian think-
ers see Werner Beierwaltes, Lux intelligibilis: Untersuchung zur Lichtmetaphysik der Griechen (Munich: Novotny & Sölner, 1957);
John Dillon, “Looking on the Light: Some Remarks on the Imagery of Light in the First Chapter of Origen’s Peri Archôn,” in Or-
igen of Alexandria: His World and His Legacy, ed. Charles Kannengieser and William Petersen (Notre Dame, Ind.: Univ. Notre
Dame Press, 1988), pp. 215–230; and Valentin Nikiprowetzky, “Thèmes et traditions de la lumière chez Philon d’Alexandrie,”
Studia Philonica Annual, 1989, 1:6–33. The assessment of Philoponus has changed since the landmark studies of Jean De Groot,
Aristotle and Philoponus on Light (New York: Garland, 1991; rpt., Routledge, 2017); and Richard Sorabji, Philoponus and the Re-
jection of Aristotelian Science, 2nd ed. (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 2010).
11
See Peter Adamson, “Vision, Light, and Color in al-Kindi, Ptolemy, and the Ancient Commentators,” Arabic Sciences and
Philosophy, 2006, 16:207–236; and David Whidden, Christ the Light: The Theology of Light and Illumination in Thomas Aqui-
nas (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), pp. 47–68.
12
Vasco Ronchi, Storia della luce (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1939), trans. into English by V. Barocas as The Nature of Light: An
Historical Survey (London: Heinemann, 1970) (all citations are from the English translation); and David Lindberg, Theories
of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1976).

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 CRITIQUES AND CONTENTIONS
ISIS —Volume 110, Number 2, June 2019 273

skewed the question by shifting the focus from light to sight. It is still instructive to recall how this
shift occurred.
Ronchi began his historical survey with the biblical account of the creation of light (Genesis 1.3:
“Let there be light”). Though he did not mention the great Jewish-Christian hexaemeral tradi-
tion, of which Philo, Basil, and Grosseteste are part, he came very close to its basic insight.
The first verses of Genesis entail, for Ronchi, “a theory on the nature of light,” according to which
light has “an existence of its own, independent of its source and of its receiver.” But the
hexaemeral tradition remained elusive—indeed, likely unknown—to Ronchi, and he did not
follow the Genesis lead further. In trying to unfold the story of light, Ronchi thus had only an-
cient Greek theories of light to work with. These prompted the following astonishing remark:

The Greek philosophers do not appear to have taken upon themselves the task of deter-
mining the nature of light. What interested them most was to explain the mechanism of
vision. In those days the main goal of thinkers was to learn to understand man, his func-
tions and his faculties. Vision was one of the important faculties of man, and hence the
answer to the question “how do we see?” became fundamental. Every physical entity ex-
ists because it produces effects. At that time the only known effect of light was vision, and
it was natural therefore, that the study of light should begin from this point.13

In Ronchi’s understanding—which has been influential for all subsequent discussions—

Greek thought did not ask the question: What is light? Instead, it asked the question: What
is sight? He held that this shift in the object of inquiry—sight instead of light—was empirically
attested: that is what we get from the known sources. One may wonder whether Ronchi would
have been willing to reconsider if he were shown different textual evidence. Be that as it may,
he is the starting point in a process of assimilation between the history of light and of sight in
modern historiography, a process through which the story of light became an integral part of
the story of vision down to the seventeenth century.
Lindberg was one of Ronchi’s severest critics. He bemoaned, among other things, the fact
that Ronchi emphasized light over sight. Given that, in the end, Ronchi did not follow the path
of an independent inquiry into the nature of light but subordinated it to the study of visual
theories, Lindberg’s critique might appear a bit overzealous. After all, he too acknowledged
light as a possible field of independent historical study but ultimately followed, instead, the vi-
sual path inaugurated by Ronchi:

Before 1600 the science of optics tended to coalesce around two interrelated, yet distin-
guishable, problems—the nature and propagation of light, and the process of visual per-
ception. Either problem could serve as an effective starting point for an investigation of
early optics, but the second is clearly the broader and more representative. The problem
of vision not only embraces the anatomy and physiology of the visual system, the math-
ematical principles of perspective, and the psychology of visual perception, but it also
requires us at least to touch upon the nature of light and the mathematics and physics
of its propagation.14

Ronchi and Lindberg understood the historian’s task of investigating light to be part of the
history of vision. But that was the result of a choice or preference between two possible alter-

13
Ronchi, Nature of Light, trans. Barocas, pp. 2, 4.
14
See David Lindberg, “New Light on an Old Story” [rev. of Ronchi, The Nature of Light: An Historical Survey], Isis, 1971,
62:522–524, esp. p. 522 (criticizing the emphasis on light over sight); and Lindberg, Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler
(cit. n. 12), p. x (quotation).

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274 Isidoros Katsos Chasing the Light

natives, the way of light and the way of sight. If they opted for the way of sight, it was because
they thought it fit better with how the source material treated the subject matter. An indepen-
dent inquiry into the nature of light in the premodern world was still a viable option, at least
theoretically. But it was left for others to undertake. Today we know that volunteers have been
scarce. A survey of the existing literature betrays a steady preference for the visual approach.15

III
For Ronchi, Lindberg, and many other historians of optics, the inquiry into the nature of light
was a theoretically valid enterprise, though not one that they could—or chose to—pursue in
practice. That was not the case for another group of scholars, who contested the very possibility
of a genuine inquiry into the nature of light in premodern thought. The new thesis was first
argued by one of the most influential voices in Continental scholarship, that of Gérard Simon.
Simon accused Ronchi and Lindberg of assimilating light (the light ray) to sight (the visual
ray). He thereupon completely rejected their approach, dedicating a whole book to showing
that “the center of the preoccupations of the Ancients is in no way the propagation of a ray
but the positioning of an image, on account of the fact that they treat of vision and not like
us of light.”16
Simon’s concern was that contemporary scholars, like Ronchi and Lindberg, read the
sources anachronistically, probably without being aware of it (“victimes d’une illusion retro-
spective”): they force the ancient texts by unduly modernizing their meaning, assuming that
premodern thinkers had the same interests as we do (“fausser indûment des centres d’intérêt
qui ne sont plus les nôtres”), not realizing that ancient sources were asking radically different
questions than ours (“questions radicalement différentes”).17 The reason is that there was no
physics of light in the ancient world, only a concept of sight of which light was an auxiliary
part: for the ancients, “it was impossible to pose the question of the physical nature of light
independently of sensation, since the proprium of light was to stimulate the senses, whether
by dazzling the eye or by making the blue, the red or the green visible.”18 Simon, therefore,
firmly argued that the history of optics was not the history of light but, rather, the history of
the transformation of a discipline and its subject matter: from sight to light (“du visible à la
lumière”).19 In drawing the epistemological consequences of his position, Simon went perhaps
a bit too far in contesting the intelligibility of ancient theories altogether: “we do not understand
the purpose, nor the interests, nor the intrinsic limits of ancient optics. This is at least what this

15
See, from recent literature, Gábor Zemplén, The History of Vision, Colour, and Light Theories: Introductions, Texts, Problems
(Bern: Bern Studies in the History of Science, 2005); Olivier Darrigol, A History of Optics: From Greek Antiquity to the Nine-
teenth Century (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2012); and Harald Siebert, “Transformation of Euclid’s Optics in Late Antiquity,”
Nuncius, 2014, 29:88–126. But see the suggestions of Sylvia Berryman, “Euclid and the Sceptic: A Paper on Vision, Doubt,
Geometry, Light, and Drunkenness,” Phronesis, 1998, 43:176–196, esp. pp. 194–196, that Euclid’s visual ray model is dependent
on its underlying theory of light; and Colin Webster, “Euclid’s Optics and Geometrical Astronomy,” Apeiron, 2014, 47:526–551,
that the Euclidean Optics is dependent on propositions and proofs from the astronomical tradition (celestial illumination).
16
See Gérard Simon, Le regard, l’être et l’apparence dans l’Optique de l’antiquité (Paris: Seuil, 1988), pp. 23–24, 25 (quotation)
(all translations from Simon’s works are my own).
17
Ibid., pp. 23, 25. See also Gérard Simon, “De la reconstitution du passé scientifique,” rpt. in Sciences et savoirs aux XVIe et
XVIIe siècles (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Septentrion, 1996), pp. 11–29; the charge against Ronchi and Lindberg is on p. 16.
18
Simon, Le regard, l’être et l’apparence dans l’optique de l’antiquité, p. 14. See also Simon, “De la reconstitution du passé
scientifique,” pp. 20–21: whichever ancient theory of light we take, “light always plays an auxiliary role [un role d’adjuvent],
never that of a protagonist.”
19
Simon, Le regard, l’être et l’apparence dans l’optique de l’antiquité, pp. 11–20; see also p. 89 for the transformation thesis in the
context of Simon’s work.

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 CRITIQUES AND CONTENTIONS
ISIS —Volume 110, Number 2, June 2019 275

book aims to establish.” But this was consistent with his broader view on the archetypical function
of vision in the ancient world.20 For Simon, no transformation of optics was epistemologically
innocuous; it was a transformation of our theory of knowledge (“transformation de la théorie
de la connaissance”). In the end, the passage from sight to light signified not merely a change
in the subject matter of a scientific discipline but a broader change in the way we understand
the objects of knowledge (“objets du savoir”).21
Simon’s view gained currency in Continental scholarship, and the passage “from sight to
light” became the quasi-motto of a certain way of understanding the history of optics: as a dis-
continuous narrative of the transformation of the concept of light, from an intrinsic feature of
the mechanism of vision to an independent object of scientific inquiry.22 This view also found
notable defenders in the English-speaking world. Perhaps the most eloquent example comes
from a leading voice in Ptolemaic and Arabic optics, that of A. Mark Smith, who expounded
the thesis in a series of publications. Smith famously contested Lindberg’s view that the medieval
Perspectivist optical tradition was primarily concerned with the physics of light. Contrary to Kep-
ler and his seventeenth-century successors, medieval Arabic and Latin thinkers “were far more
concerned with making sense of sight than with understanding light.” “The proper and primary
end of Perspectivist optics,” he repeatedly argued, pace Lindberg, “was to make full and coherent
sense not of light but of sight.” Smith then generalized the thesis. In a recently published mon-
umental monograph, he sought to capture the whole history of optics through the prism of a par-
adigm shift—namely, as the transition from the premodern to the modern optical paradigm: the
celebrated passage “from sight to light.” In the opening paragraph of his book he summarizes his
thesis as follows:

As currently understood, the science of optics is about light, about its fundamental prop-
erties and how they determine such physical behavior as reflection, refraction, and dif-
fraction. But this understanding of optics and its appropriate purview is relatively new.
For the vast majority of its history, the science of optics was aimed primarily at explaining
not light and its physical manifestations, but sight in all its aspects from physical and
physiological causes to perceptual and cognitive effects. Consequently, light theory was
not only regarded as subsidiary to sight theory but was actually accommodated to it.
And so it remained until the seventeenth century, when the analytic focus of optics shifted
rather suddenly, and definitively, from sight to light. Marking the turn from ancient toward
modern optics, this shift of focus evoked an equivalent shift in the order of analytic priority.
Henceforth, sight theory would become increasingly subsidiary to light theory, the former
now accommodated to the latter.23

20
Ibid., pp. 11 (quotation), 16–17.
21
Ibid., p. 17. See also Simon, “De la reconstitution du passé scientifique” (cit. n. 17), pp. 21–27. For ancient optics as part of
Simon’s broader epistemological agenda see Maurice Caveing, “Savoirs et sciences selon Gérard Simon,” Revue d’Histoire des
Sciences, 2007, 60:203–216, also available as “Knowledge and Science According to Gérard Simon,” https://www.cairn-int.info
/article-E_RHS_601_0203–.htm (accessed Feb. 2018).
22
Simon is a standard reference point in French literature. See, e.g., Anca Vasiliu, “La parabole platoniciene du regard,” in
Lumière et vision dans les sciences et dans les arts: De l’antiquité au XVIIe siècle, ed. Michel Hochmann and Danielle Jacquart
(Geneva: Droz, 2010), pp. 1–44, esp. p. 6; and Muriel Pardon-Labonnelie, “Isis ‘Pupille de l’univers’: L’emprise de l’oculistique
égyptienne sur l’oculistique gallo-romaine,” ibid., pp. 45–64, esp. p. 45.
23
A. Mark Smith, “What Is the History of Medieval Optics Really About?” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society,
2004, 148:180–194, on p. 181 (“far more concerned”); Smith, “Bringing the Scientific Revolution into Focus: The Case of Op-
tics,” in Lumière et vision dans les sciences et dans les arts, ed. Hochmann and Jacquart, pp. 163–186, on p. 165 (“proper and
primary end”); and Smith, From Sight to Light: The Passage from Ancient to Modern Optics (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press,
2015), p. ix.

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276 Isidoros Katsos Chasing the Light

It is not difficult to perceive that Smith comes close to the school of thought of Simon and
the Continental agenda. For him, too, there is a discontinuity between premodern and mod-
ern optics.24 According to the premodern optical paradigm, light was not the primary object of
scientific inquiry. That role was reserved for sight, of which light was an enabler or a mediating
factor. Only in that subsidiary sense was there conceptual space for an inquiry into light. To be
clear, Smith does not go so far as to challenge the intelligibility of the ancient sources. But he
does recognize the archetypical function of optics, acknowledging that the transformation of
the visual model had “ramifications that extended well beyond its ostensibly narrow subject
matter in light and sight.” Thus, for Smith, the passage from sight to light caused a tremendous
shift in the way people conceived the world, signifying not a mere transformation of a scientific
discipline (optics) but a real paradigm shift in the Kuhnian sense (a “Keplerian turn”). It was a
change in worldview, with “ramifications in such apparently disparate fields as theology, liter-
ature, and art.”25
To this point, I have sketched the contours of the modern historiography of light, following
the narrative that was first laid out in the works of Ronchi and Lindberg and noting a subtle but
crucial turn in this narrative suggested by Simon and recently exemplified by Smith. If I am right,
there seems to be considerable agreement: the passage “from sight to light” becomes the signpost
of a certain approach to the history of optics that studies light as part of sight in the ancient
sources. Beyond this, there is room for dissent: according to some, a vision-independent inquiry
into the nature of light in ancient sources is—theoretically, at least—a viable possibility (Ronchi
and Lindberg); according to others, the “oculocentric” nature of ancient optics denies such a
possibility. In its softer version (Smith), this latter view inquires into the nature of light in the pre-
modern world as an integral, auxiliary part of the study of sight; the genuine inquiry into light as
an “objective,” physical agent in the world will have to wait for the paradigm shift that occurred in
the seventeenth century.26 In its stronger version (Simon), the oculocentric narrative precludes
all possibility of light being knowable as such in the ancient world; the ancients simply lacked any
independent notion of light.27
In the remainder of this essay, I want to pursue the insight of Ronchi and Lindberg that a
vision-independent inquiry into physical light and its nature was possible in the ancient world.
To do so, I want to focus on evidence that Ronchi and Lindberg did not take into account. My
aim here is not to offer a comprehensive study of ancient theories of light. If, however, I suc-
ceed in showing that there was at least some inquiry into the nature of physical light indepen-
dent of vision, I will have shown that a genuine physics of light was already accessible to the
ancient world. My argument, then, has a programmatic character. In advancing the hypothesis
of Ronchi and Lindberg, it aims to invite further research into ancient theories of light as such.
In legitimizing the inquiry into the ancient physics of light, my argument also seeks to put the
oculocentric narrative in the history of optics under deeper scrutiny.

24
See also Smith, “What Is the History of Medieval Optics Really About?” pp. 180, 193–194; and Smith, “Bringing the Scien-
tific Revolution into Focus,” p. 166.
25
Smith, From Sight to Light (cit. n. 23), pp. x, 2, 277.
26
According to Smith, “What Is the History of Medieval Optics Really About?” (cit. n. 23), p. 183, in the premodern optical
paradigm of Alhacen and his Latin followers “pure light is a mere theoretical abstraction.” In a pre-Keplerian context, “the sci-
ence of optics is not about light-radiation, reflection, or refraction, as we understand them in the modern, objective sense, but
about how we perceive things directly or by mediation of reflective or refractive surfaces” (p. 191).
27
See Jacques Blamont, “Du regard à la lumière,” in Du visible à l’intelligible: Lumière et ténèbres de l’antiquité à la renaissance,
ed. Christian Trottmann and Anca Vasiliu (Paris: Champion, 2004), pp. 195–223, on p. 199: “We should not search in ancient
science for anything of what we nowadays call the explanation of the phenomenon of light. In fact, as Gérard Simon writes,
ancient optics is in the first place an analytics of vision. None of our concepts (ray, image, visible, visual field, binocular vision,
object, subject, etc.) are transposable as they are into ancient and medieval texts” (my translation; italics in the original).

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 CRITIQUES AND CONTENTIONS
ISIS —Volume 110, Number 2, June 2019 277

IV
The Platonic Timaeus has traditionally been studied by philosophers and theologians. Recently,
a new group has been added to its readership. Historians of optics have discovered in it a valuable
source of information for one of the most influential and long-standing ancient theories of vision
and light. The optical discussion has mainly focused on the passage relevant to the eye and the
mechanism of vision (45b–46a), to which is usually added the passage relevant to sensible qual-
ities and colors (67c–68d).28 But the Timaeus has much more to offer. For example, the theory of
vision is followed by a short disquisition on catoptrics, discussing mirror images and reflection
(46a–c), which, curiously, has escaped the attention of most textbooks on the history of optics.
Even less noticed are several passages treating of elemental properties and particles (55d–
58d), with direct relevance to Plato’s notion of light. After a brief reminder of the Platonic theory
of vision, I shall return to these passages.
The Timaean theory of vision is well known.29 It is based on the coalescence of two lights as
an instance of the principle of like to like (ὅlοiοm pqὸς ὅlοiοm). When the internal light of the
eyes (i.e., the visual ray) meets the external light of the Sun (i.e., the daylight), the two lights,
being akin (a ̓ dekuόm, rtγγemοt̃ ς), form a single homogeneous body. As this body of light
comes into contact with the surface of external objects it creates an affection, which is trans-
mitted back to the soul, producing the sensation of vision (45b–46a). There are several such
affections (pahήlaτa) as a further application of the principle of likeness. When the visual
ray comes into contact with the surface of objects it encounters various streams of fire particles
commensurate with it. The interaction produces the sensation of colors (67c–68d). Clearly,
light is the key element in the Platonic theory of vision. Daylight, the visual current, and, even-
tually, colors are all described as different kinds of light. Francis Cornford provides the follow-
ing taxonomy:

The mechanism of vision involves three kinds of “fire” or light. (Several varieties of fire
will be enumerated at 58c.) These are: (1) Daylight, a body of pure fire diffused in the air
by the Sun. This (like [2]) is “pure,” not admixed with other primary bodies. At 58c it is
contrasted with flame (ukόn) as “that which flows off from flame, and does not burn but
gives light to the eyes.” (2) The visual current, a pure fire of the same kind as daylight,
contained in the eyeball and capable of issuing out in a stream directed towards the ob-
ject seen. At 67d it appears that the visual current or ray is not composed of the very
smallest grade of fire. (3) The colour of the external object, defined at 67c as “a flame
(ukόn) streaming off from every body, having particles proportioned to those of the vi-
sual current, so as to yield sensation.”30

Now, the question that both Ronchi and Lindberg encouraged us to ask—but that Simon
insisted was not a valid question—was: What is the nature of light? Hence the challenge: if the
Timaeus is able to provide an answer to this question, Ronchi and Lindberg will be justified.
Moreover, if that answer is gained independently of the theory of vision, Simon’s view will be
under considerable pressure. With this challenge in mind, let us go back to Cornford’s re-

28
See Lindberg, Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler (cit. n. 12), pp. 5–6; Darrigol, History of Optics (cit. n. 15), pp. 5–6;
and Smith, From Sight to Light (cit. n. 23), pp. 29–30, 44–45.
29
For a state-of-the-art discussion see Thomas Johansen, Plato’s Natural Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004),
pp. 110–114; and Andrea Nightingale, “Sight and the Philosophy of Vision in Classical Greece: Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle,”
in Sight and the Ancient Senses, ed. Michael Squire (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 54–67, esp. pp. 57–62.
30
Francis Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology: The “Timaeus” of Plato (London: Routledge, 1937; rpt., Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997),
p. 152.

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278 Isidoros Katsos Chasing the Light

marks. We find there two insightful leads: that light and colors are kinds of fire and that the
particular details of the relation between fire, light, and colors are dealt with in the second part
of the treatise—namely, at 58c for light and at 67c for colors. Let us turn to the part of the
Timaeus that explains further the relation between fire and light (58c), keeping colors (67c)
in the background for the time being.
The theory of vision belongs to the first part of the Timaean main discourse, the so-called
“craftsmanship of intellect” (29d7–47e2). But 58c belongs to a different context: it is integrated
in the second part of the main discourse dealing with mechanical causation, the so-called “ef-
fects of necessity” (47e3–69a5), and, more specifically, the part that describes the constitution,
properties, and behavior of the four elemental bodies (fire, air, water, and earth). In 58c–60e
the varieties of the four elemental bodies are defined and described, fire being treated first. Let
me here briefly reproduce and compare two accounts of the relevant passage (58c). In A. E.
Taylor’s interpretation:

Of fire Timaeus distinguishes three chief varieties (though he is careful to say that there
are many others, γέmg pοkkά), (1) ukόn, flame, (2) light, which he regards as an em-
anation from flame, which does not “burn” (τὸ a ̓ pὸ τg̃ ς ukογὸς a
̓ piὸm, ὅ jάei lè m
οὔ, ux̃ ς dè τοiς̃ ὅllari paqέvei), (3) the red glow left behind in embers and red-
hot bodies generally. The one point to be noted is that, like all the early utrijοί, he
regards light as a kind of body, just as they all regarded fire as a special kind of body.

Cornford writes the following:

Light, which Plato regards as a body given off by flame, has already been described at
45b. It is similar to the visual current of “pure fire” which is so fine that it alone can filter
through the close texture of the eyeball. We may infer that it consists of particles of smaller
grades than flame or glowing heat. It has the quality or “power” of brightness, but not that
of heat, possessed by the other two varieties. We do not feel light as hot, presumably be-
cause of the extreme fineness of the pyramids; the pricking of their points would not dis-
turb the coarser fabric of flesh. In the later account of colour (67d ff.), at least three grades
of fire are invoked, corresponding to differences of colour.31

Taylor and Cornford, admittedly, did not read the Timaeus in the same way. As regards the
relevant passage, however, they seemed to agree on two points at least: that light is the second
species of fire; and that, because it is so, light shares all the characteristics of fire, like its bodily
nature. In identifying the second species of fire with light, Taylor and Cornford stand in a long
interpretative tradition.32 This identification is extremely important. It shows that, according to
the Timaeus, light is simply a special case of fire. As such it shares in fire’s nature. If we now ask
what kind of nature that is, the text gives us very specific answers: it is a body (53c) composed of
particles with a certain (pyramidal) structure (56b) and with specific properties, like mobility,
sharpness, acuteness, lightness (56a–b), and so forth. The Timaeus then does give us all the
answers we need to the question: What is the nature of light? It is the nature of fire, which

31
A. E. Taylor, A Commentary on Plato’s “Timaeus” (Oxford: Clarendon, 1928), p. 410; and Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology,
p. 247.
32
For ancient readers see Aristotle, Topica 134a26–135a8; Theophrastus, De igne 3.3–5; Philo, De aeternitate mundi §86; Ga-
len, In Timaeum, fr. 18 (Larrain); Galen, On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato VII.6.2 (= 629.2 de Lacy); Plotinus, Enneads
II.1.7.20–30; and Proclus, In Timaeum II.8.22–25, 9.3–4, 9.15–20. For modern readers see R. D. Archer-Hind, The “Timaeus” of
Plato (London: Macmillan, 1888), p. 211, who sets the tone for everybody else.

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 CRITIQUES AND CONTENTIONS
ISIS —Volume 110, Number 2, June 2019 279

together with air, water, and earth is one of the constituent elements of Plato’s physical world.
Ronchi and Lindberg were right to suggest the possibility of a proper inquiry into the nature of
light in the ancient world. At least as far as the Timaeus is concerned, the physics of light is a
special case of the physics of fire. In the Timaean context, the agnostic epistemology of the
(strong) oculocentric thesis is very difficult to uphold. The Timaeus thinks of light as a stream
of the finest particles of fire—and hence the finest particles of Plato’s universe. If we want to
translate this into modern terms, we can say that we have here an early intimation of the par-
ticle theory of light. In a loose analogy, one may even suggest that Plato’s light particles fulfill a
function similar to our light quanta or photons. They mark the limits of the sensible, corporeal
dimension.33

V
If my analysis is right, the Timaeus confirms the hypothesis of Ronchi and Lindberg and puts
pressure on the oculocentric thesis. First, it proves that the study of light as such was possible in
the ancient world, against the opposite claim of strong oculocentrism. Second, it presents us
with a luminocentric theory of vision, against the opposite suggestion of the soft oculocentric
thesis. The latter’s claim that light is “subordinated” to sight seems a bit out of tune with the
vision-independent context of the Timaean physics of fire/light. And it seems to neglect the
explanatory power of the physics of fire/light for the theory of vision. In the words of Sarah
Broadie: “It is because of what fire contributes to vision that vision is possible. In general,
we need to study the nature of fire, water, air, and earth to see what they in themselves contribute
to the production of animals (including, of course, the cosmic animal) and their parts.”34
Indeed, the physics of fire/light refers to the theory of vision (ux̃ ς dè τοiς̃ ὅllari paqέvei
[58c]) precisely because fire functions as an explanans of sight: all the elements of vision (day-
light, the visual current, and colors) and the processes that bring them together (their coales-
cence according to the principle of “like to like”) are explained as interactions of different
streams of particles of fire. In fact, one could see the Timaean theory of vision as a disquisition
on the particle mechanics of fire, especially as suggested in 57c–d: vision is an exemplification
of the mixture of different varieties of particles of the same primary body. If indeed the
Timaean theory of vision can be seen as a special case of application of the Timaean physics
of light, this is very difficult to reconcile with the oculocentric thesis, even in its soft version.
At least as far as the Timaeus is concerned, it becomes clear that it is not light that is subordi-
nated to sight, but sight that is subordinated to light. The mechanism of vision is entirely de-
pendent on the physics of fire/light.35
One must be aware, however, that mechanical causation—namely, the physics of light—is
not the only explanans of vision. The Timaeus argues, against the materialist physicists, for a
teleological rather than a purely mechanical explanation of the world.36 In the words of Broadie
again:

33
So at least was Timaean light understood in the later tradition. See Proclus, In Timaeum II.8.23–25, 9.3–4, 9.12–16; and John
Finnamore, “Iamblichus on Light and the Transparent,” in The Divine Iamblichus: Philosopher and Man of Gods, ed. Henry
Blumenthal and Gillian Clark (Bristol: Classical, 1993), pp. 55–64, esp. pp. 57–59.
34
Sarah Broadie, Nature and Divinity in Plato’s “Timaeus” (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2012), p. 181 (italics in original).
35
Galen, e.g., saw the Timaean theory of vision in this way; see Carlos Larrain, Galens Kommentar zu Platons “Timaios” (Stutt-
gart: Teubner, 1992), fr. 18, p. 134 (with references).
36
Mechanical causation is auxiliary causation: rtmaίτia (46d1), rtlleτaίτia (46e6). On the relation with primary, teleological
causation see Johansen, Plato’s Natural Philosophy (cit. n. 29), pp. 106–116; and David Sedley, Creationism and Its Critics in
Antiquity (Berkeley: Univ. California Press, 2007), pp. 113–127.

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280 Isidoros Katsos Chasing the Light

Most thinkers, he [Timaeus] says, make the mistake of attributing causal status in the fullest
sense to fire and air etc., factors that work by cooling and heating, condensing, dissolving,
and so on. The fire that makes seeing possible is just such a factor. . . . Causes that come
under the category of intelligence are the ones to be treated as primary, he states, whereas
those that belong in the class of things “moved by other things and movers by yet others
by necessity,” must be considered secondary. Both kinds must be discussed, but the distinc-
tion between the types of causality must be observed as fundamental (46c7–e6).37

This is crucial. The oculocentric thesis, though difficult to maintain as such, contributes a
valuable insight: there has been a paradigm shift (in the Kuhnian sense). Modern science grad-
ually but decidedly downgraded teleological causation as a method of explaining the world.
Moreover, there has been a subordination of the Timaean theory of light: not to sight (hence
no oculocentrism) but, rather, to divine intelligence, which was the ultimate explanans of the
world, the regular properties of fire and light included (hence subordination indeed). Thus
the underlying premises of the ocularist thesis (paradigm change and subordination) point
in the right direction, though, in my view, with a different conclusion. If I am right, the crucial
point of divergence between the Timaean and the modern scientific paradigm is the emanci-
pation of mechanical causality, including the physics of light, from Plato’s theistic teleology.
This is not to deny other significant differences between modern and Timaean optics, like the ex-
istence of the visual flux and its coalescence with external light. But these are all cases of pure,
elemental, physical light. That means that, within the different scientific framework of Timaean
teleology, the proper inquiry into the physics of light was as indispensable for the ancient scientist
as it is for the modern. With Broadie again: “on their own they [the elements] would still behave
in quite determinate and possibly even predictable ways such as we often observe today, and
would be in possession of their own definite natures. Only because they have their own natures
are they able to make their important causal contribution to the cosmos, one requiring a distinct
scientific study.”38
In the Timaean context it could not be otherwise. Even the explanation of perceptual ex-
perience requires the existence of objective properties that a thing has independently of any
observer. This is, for example, the case for colors, which exist independently of vision. In
the words of Katerina Ierodiakonou: “colours, according to Plato, are properties which bodies
do actually have independently of the sentient beings which perceive them. Or, to be more
precise, and to conclude, that bodies, according to Plato, have colours insofar as they emit ef-
fluences of a certain kind quite independently of the sentient beings which perceive them.”39
But colors, as effluences of flame, belong to the same species of fire as light—that is, they
are streams of fire particles commensurate with light. What is true for Timaean colors must
then also be true for Timaean light. If so, light exists independently of vision and as such re-
quires a distinct scientific study. It is this study of physical light and its properties that we find in
the Timaeus.

VI
Modern optics, we are told, is the study of light and its properties. Ancient optics, we are also
told, is the study of sight, as the etymology betrays (from ὄψiς: view, sight, vision, aspect).40 The

37
Broadie, Nature and Divinity in Plato’s “Timaeus” (cit. n. 34), p. 174.
38
Ibid., pp. 182–183.
39
Katerina Ierodiakonou, “Plato’s Theory of Colours in the Timaeus,” Rhizai, 2005, 2:219–233, on p. 232.
40
See Smith, From Sight to Light (cit. n. 23), pp. ix, 25.

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 CRITIQUES AND CONTENTIONS
ISIS —Volume 110, Number 2, June 2019 281

change in perspective creates a tension between modern and ancient optics in the sense that
the same name denotes two different fields of scientific inquiry: now light, then sight. This raises
a methodological question: What is the history of optics really about, the history of a name (“op-
tics”) or the history of the inquiry into a specific subject matter (light)?
The oculocentric view understands optics as the history of a name and its definition. Since
the definition changed, so too did the object of study. The history of optics aims to explain why
and how the subject matter of optics “was transformed, as its definition was refined and mod-
ified over the course of some two millennia.”41 It is the history of the passage “from sight to
light.” But perhaps there is room for a different approach. If modern optics is the study of light
and its properties, it is legitimate, if not imperative, for a historian to inquire also into the past of
the subject matter itself: the history of the physics of light. In this essay I have argued that such
an inquiry is possible, and I have indicated a way of doing it. At least as far as the Platonic
Timaeus is concerned, it is possible to reconstruct a proper theory of the nature of physical light
and its fundamental properties. The question is: Should this be part of the curriculum of his-
tory of optics? My answer is affirmative. First, because if there were an ancient physics of light,
as the Timaeus suggests, then we have clear antecedents of the subject matter of modern optics
in the ancient world. Second, because even if ancient optics was (merely) about vision, we can-
not properly understand the nature of vision, as far as the Timaeus is concerned, if we do not
study the physics of light that underpins it. We thus have two possible approaches to the history
of optics, an oculocentric approach that follows the path of sight and a luminocentric approach
that follows the path of light. It is not clear why the history of optics should prioritize one ap-
proach (sight) over the other (light).
But perhaps we are confronting an artificial dichotomy. We have seen that in the Timaeus the
visual current is conceived as a ray of light. What the oculocentric approach calls “sight” is not a
different subject matter from modern optics but, instead, a different source of emanation of the
same subject matter—namely, of the ray of light. The Timaean theory of vision requires three
sources of light (an internal, an external, and the surface of the thing seen), three streams of light
(the visual current, the external light, and colors, as streams of fire particles commensurate with
light), and their coalescence.42 That means that the subject matter of the Timaean theory of vi-
sion is, strictly speaking, light. Thus, even if we follow the oculocentric approach to optics, the
Timaeus leads us to a very “modern” outcome: the study of sight becomes unintelligible without
the study of physical light, its nature and its properties. That is why, I suggest, a comprehensive
and systematic history of optics needs to include the ancient physics of light in its scope.
I have focused on the Platonic Timaeus in order to support my argument. Though pre-
sented in isolation here, its evidence is not insignificant: it is well bolstered by the tradition
in which it stands. The Timaean theory of light, vision, and colors has, famously, important
antecedents: it modifies and further develops basic insights of Empedocles, the Pythagoreans,
and the Atomists.43 It also has had a lasting influence in Western culture, echoing even as far as
Goethe’s celebrated poem from the Farbenlehre.44 The prehistory and the aftermath of the Pla-

41
Ibid., p. 25.
42
So, too, Proclus, In Timaeum II.8.1–7; and Calcidius, In Timaeum §§244–245.
43
See Kelli Rudolph, “Sight and the Presocratics: Approaches to Visual Perception in Early Greek Philosophy,” in Sight and the
Ancient Senses, ed. Squire (cit. n. 29), pp. 36–53 (with references); and Nightingale, “Sight and the Philosophy of Vision in
Classical Greece” (cit. n. 29) (with references).
44
For the continuing echo of the Timaean theory of vision in later theories see David Hahm, “Early Hellenistic Theories of
Vision and the Perception of Color,” in Studies in Perception: Interrelations in the History of Philosophy and Science, ed. Peter
Machamer and Robert Turnbull (Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press, 1978), pp. 60–95; Robert Nelson, “To Say and to See:
Ekphrasis and Vision in Byzantium,” in Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance: Seeing as Others Saw, ed. Nelson (Cam-

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282 Isidoros Katsos Chasing the Light

tonic theory of light suggest a wider presence of similar theories in the ancient world and invite
further research. The aim of this essay has been to raise awareness of the existence of such the-
ories and to give an indication of where and how to find them. If the ancient physics of light
has not yet been the object of systematic study, this does not have to do with the fragmentary
nature of the extant sources, which is a problem already known to the historian of optics. It has
much more to do with a certain way of reading the sources—“from sight to light”—which has
led historians to look aside or even look away from ancient theories of light. This essay is a call
to look back and to look again.

bridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000), pp. 143–168; and Roland Betancourt, “Why Sight Is Not Touch: Reconsidering the Tac-
tility of Vision in Byzantium,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 2016, 70:1–23.

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