The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci — CompleteLeonardo, da Vinci
Science
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci — Complete
Leonardo, da Vinci
Leonardo, da Vinci, 1452-1519 -- Notebooks, sketchbooks, etc.
Necessity has provided that all the images of objects in front of
the eye shall intersect in two places. One of these intersections is
in the pupil, the other in the crystalline lens; and if this were
not the case the eye could not see so great a number of objects as
it does. This can be proved, since all the lines which intersect do
so in a point. Because nothing is seen of objects excepting their
surface; and their edges are lines, in contradistinction to the
definition of a surface. And each minute part of a line is equal to
a point; for _smallest_ is said of that than which nothing can be
smaller, and this definition is equivalent to the definition of the
point. Hence it is possible for the whole circumference of a circle
to transmit its image to the point of intersection, as is shown in
the 4th of this which shows: all the smallest parts of the images
cross each other without interfering with each other. These
demonstrations are to illustrate the eye. No image, even of the
smallest object, enters the eye without being turned upside down;
but as it penetrates into the crystalline lens it is once more
reversed and thus the image is restored to the same position within
the eye as that of the object outside the eye.
79.
OF THE CENTRAL LINE OF THE EYE.
Only one line of the image, of all those that reach the visual
virtue, has no intersection; and this has no sensible dimensions
because it is a mathematical line which originates from a
mathematical point, which has no dimensions.
According to my adversary, necessity requires that the central line
of every image that enters by small and narrow openings into a dark
chamber shall be turned upside down, together with the images of the
bodies that surround it.
80.
AS TO WHETHER THE CENTRAL LINE OF THE IMAGE CAN BE INTERSECTED, OR
NOT, WITHIN THE OPENING.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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