Doctoral Dissertation Research in History &amp; Philosophy of   Science
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Elaheh Kheirandish, dissertation student; Dissertation,  "The                   Arabic Tradition of Euclid's Optics"                                                                                                                            On the first day, according to the traditional story of creation,               "God said, Let there be light: and there was light.  And God saw                the light, that it was good, and God divided the light from the                 darkness."  This passage from Genesis demonstrates the importance               which light has traditionally held for our understanding of the                 world.  Even in the modern world, optics, the scientific study of               light, has played a central role in the development of science:                 from Kepler, Huygens and Newton in the 17th century who argued                  over the nature of light, to Maxwell and Faraday in the 19th                    century who showed that light is an electro-magnetic phenomenon,                to the founders of quantum theory in the early 20th century who                 argued that light is both a wave and a particle, to current                     workers in unified field theories who try to account for the                    behavior of light photons.                                                                                                                                      Given the centrality of the study of light in the history of                    science, it is important to have an understanding of the way it                 has been treated by science throughout history.  Such studies not               only show how science developed but also provides insights into a               culture as it shows how these cultures which examined light                     treated this central phenomenon.  A major lacuna in the history                 of the study of light, however, is in the transition from ancient               Greek optics to the medieval world view.  Ms. Kheirandish's                     dissertation promises to fill this void and to provide the kind                 of insights which we need to understand how the scientists in the               Arabic world thought of light.  Specifically, Mr. Kheirandish is                looking at the Arabic treatment of the foremost text in the                     science of light, Euclid's Optics.   Euclid's work used a                       geometrical approach to the study of vision and was first                       translated into Arabic in the 9th century.  Ms. Kheirandish will                examine this early version and examine how this optical tradition               developed up to the 13th century.  This study requires travel to                archives in Europe and the Orient in order to examine the                       remaining copies of these Arabic treatments of optics.  This                    grant provides Ms. Kheirandish with the travel support to these                 archives.
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{'Code': '1353', 'Text': 'Hist & Philosophy of SET'}
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