Se defiende que el conflicto que advierte Panofsky entre la proposición 8 de la Óptica de Euclides y la Perspectiva Lineal carece de fundamento. Se mostrará que las reglas de construcción perspectiva sugeridas por Piero della Francesca usan las definiciones de Euclides y armonizan sin dificultad la proyección perspectiva y la proposición 8. Si el surgimiento del espacio moderno exige una ruptura con el espacio psicofisiológico, como advierte Panofsky, esta ruptura se debe defender con argumentos distintos al de esgrimir el (...) conflicto aludido. (shrink)

According to the received view, the first spyglass was assembled without any theory of how the instrument magnifies. Galileo, who was the first to use the device as a scientific instrument, improved the power of magnification up to 30 times. How did he accomplish this feat? Galileo does not tell us what he did. We hold that such improvement of magnification is too intricate a problem to be solved by trial and error, accidentally stumbling upon a complex procedure. We construct (...) a plausibility argument and submit that Galileo had a theory of the telescope. He could develop it by analogical reasoning based on the phenomenon of reflection in mirrors—as it was put to use in surveying instruments—and applied to refraction in sets of lenses. Galileo could appeal to this analogy and assume Della Porta’s theory of refraction. He could thus turn the spyglass into a revolutionary scientific instrument—the telescope. (shrink)