Ibn al-Haytham’s Optics and the European Perspectiva Legacies in Science and Art

This study aims at showing how the dialogical multicivilizational synergies characterized the unfolding of the history of science. This is undertaken in the context of accounting for the impact of the Arabic sciences and philosophies on the European intellectual history, while focusing on the legacy in optics of the eleventh-century Arab polymath al-Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham. A specific emphasis is placed in this regard on the adaptive assimilation of his theories of vision and light within the European perspectiva traditions in science, and subsequently in the architectural visual arts, as stretching from the High Middle Ages to the early-modern period and passing by the Italian Renaissance.