Читать книгу Magic Shadows. The Story of the Origin of Motion Pictures онлайн

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But, perhaps of most importance, Alhazen was the first to note in some detail the workings of the human eye. Alhazen discussed how we see but one picture even though we have two eyes, both functioning at the same time. He is also one of the authorities who made it possible for later scholars to know that the Greeks and Phoenicians knew and understood the simpler optical phenomena.

It would be expecting too much to hope that Alhazen’s work would be unmixed with error. At his time and for centuries later, on account of the lack of suitable instruments and knowledge of what was being sought, the imagination was relied on more than it should have been in an exact science.

In early days much of the advance in learning had to be reasoned out and then verified, if possible, by experiments. Now we reverse the process. Our scientists experiment first by observing phenomena under all sorts of conditions and then later try to reason to a satisfactory explanation which, even with all our learning, cannot always be found. In fact, the underlying explanation of many of the commonest things in life escape us. For example, we do not know a great deal more than the ancients about the ultimate constituents of matter, the nature of light or how our senses really work.