De aspectibus

He set up lamps and measured the rays, proving for the first time ever that light travels in straight lines.

He wrote a massive, seven-volume masterpiece called The Book of Optics.

Most importantly, he wrote that you must prove every single idea with a physical

experiment.

This exact idea changed human history forever.

Sure, what happened to his massive seven-volume book after he got out of house arrest?

The Book of Optics was translated into Latin and spread all across European universities.

Hundreds of years later, some of the most famous scientists in history, like Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton, read his book and used his exact methods of testing and experimenting to study gravity and the

In fact, it was the beginnings of a manuscript that would revolutionize optics.

And the groundbreaking book that eventually came up was Kitab al-Manazir, The Book of Optics.

And to understand why his book was so revolutionary, one needs to examine the intellectual paralysis that had gripped the study of vision previously.

For over a millennium by that time, and what was truly remarkable about Muslim scholars, and this is a commentary of what Muslim scholars were able to achieve, is that they did not simply translate manuscripts from earlier civilizations.

Yeah.

And then you have Ibn al-Haytham, who wrote Kitab al-Manazir, or The Book of Optics, and this provided a scientific explanation for how light interacts with the eye.

Brilliant.

They're so smart.