ABSTRACT
If the Scientific Revolution represents a historical shift in knowledge about the natural world, how we “see” assumes a central place. Regardless of one’s understanding of “science,” claims to “visual knowledge” represent a relation (or set of relations) between the world seen and the world we see. Throughout the Scientific Revolution, these relations-among the observer, the medium, and the visible object-were renegotiated. Some things did not change. Old problems persisted (binocular vision; judging size, distance, and shape), and rival theories continued to include conflicting aims and assumptions (mathematical, physical, psychological). But where early theorists tended to emphasize geometrical and formal accounts of vision, new efforts focused on the visual effects of material theories of light. This shift “from sight to light” was accompanied by a “constant urge,” as historians of science have put it, to explain sensation, perception, imagination, memory, and cognition by means of invisible mechanisms.
