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SUMMARY:Pierre Gassendi and monocular vision - Guillermo Willis (Warburg I
 nstitute)
DTSTART:20240122T130000Z
DTEND:20240122T140000Z
UID:TALK210688@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Tom Banbury
DESCRIPTION:In 1637\, the French philosopher Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655)
  sought to console Galileo Galilei\, who had recently lost sight in one ey
 e\, by proposing an unconventional idea: that distinct visual perception a
 rises solely from the retinal image of a single eye. Between the 1630s and
  1650s\, Gassendi drew upon Epicurus's theory of matter to erect a natural
  philosophical framework that explained sensorial qualities only in terms 
 of atoms and the void. This presentation delves into Gassendi's account of
  the causes of our perception of two visual qualities\, magnitude and dist
 ance\, as affected by monocular vision. I examine two of his propositions:
  first\, that the left and right eyes possess dissimilar powers in the app
 rehension of visual species\; and second\, contrary to conventional knowle
 dge\, that the visual axes of both eyes run parallel through the visual fi
 eld rather than converging at a focal point.\n\nBy analysing Gassendi's co
 rrespondence with Galileo Galilei and Fortunio Liceti\, along with the por
 trayal of visual qualities that the French philosopher delivered in his la
 ter works\, this talk explores the humanistic foundations of these stances
  on monocular vision and explains their significance towards validating vi
 sual perception in the seventeenth century\, amidst the epistemological ch
 allenges resulting from the contemporary astronomical advances and the eme
 rgence of Cartesian optics.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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