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Alhacen on the Principles of Reflection: A Critical Edition, with English Translation and Commentary, of the First Three Books of Alhacen's De Aspectibus, the Medieval Latin Version of Ibn-al-Haytham's Kitab al-Manazir
Alhacen on the Principles of A Critical Edition, with English Tra...
697 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2006
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February 20, 2019
This took a little while. I’ve been searching around for a new job. So this is officially the first book completed this year so far. What do I think? A very complicated affair to be sure. I will remember this book as a fine example of why mathematics is superior to language. All of the issues Alhazen was trying to explain in Book four with image locations and types of reflections, were explained much easier through diagrams with the theorematical/problematical explanations of the fifth book. Whereas I read MOST of the other books at normal reading speed, if propositional mathematics is involved, it usually means quite a long time of analyzing. I didn’t have nothing to show for my labors though.
There was a reward, besides understanding the text very well. A. Mark Smith did a terrible job of editing this. I repeat: this is very poorly edited. The diagrams especially. Sometimes I could not exactly tell if A Mark Smith was mistranslating the text or if it was an error by Alhazen (as Alhazen has made errors before, albeit none this glaring), but the main issues were as follows. 1) Some diagrams are entirely missing from my book. It actually hindered my comprehension of his main points a significant amount. 2) Entire lines of reasoning were incorrect (I attribute these to have been errors in translation, because the conclusion and starting points were correct). 3) Some diagrams are incorrectly made, look strange, and quite frankly, were just poorly done (non connected lines, circles that are supposed to be tangent have a space between them, or missing lines or letters). Like they were done in MSPaint.
But, beggars can’t be choosers as this is the only translation available. So, because of Alhazen’s genius, and none of A. Mark Smith’s editing skills, I’m giving this a 5/5
There was a reward, besides understanding the text very well. A. Mark Smith did a terrible job of editing this. I repeat: this is very poorly edited. The diagrams especially. Sometimes I could not exactly tell if A Mark Smith was mistranslating the text or if it was an error by Alhazen (as Alhazen has made errors before, albeit none this glaring), but the main issues were as follows. 1) Some diagrams are entirely missing from my book. It actually hindered my comprehension of his main points a significant amount. 2) Entire lines of reasoning were incorrect (I attribute these to have been errors in translation, because the conclusion and starting points were correct). 3) Some diagrams are incorrectly made, look strange, and quite frankly, were just poorly done (non connected lines, circles that are supposed to be tangent have a space between them, or missing lines or letters). Like they were done in MSPaint.
But, beggars can’t be choosers as this is the only translation available. So, because of Alhazen’s genius, and none of A. Mark Smith’s editing skills, I’m giving this a 5/5
Displaying 1 of 1 review