Beliefs about Seeing: The Moral Technology of Optics in Early China

This illustrated lecture surveys optical theories in early Greece as well as the current neuroscience on perception, both for their intrinsic interest and for the contrasts they provide with the moral technology of optics in early China, as expressed in two canonical works, the and the . Modern neuroscience and Greek optics provide useful vocabulary, as well as a repertoire of distinctions (between sight and perception, between outside and inner vision, between commonsense perception and scientific or philosophic skepticisms, and so forth) that serve to highlight the specific contents and cultural particularity of these early Chinese texts on optics.

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• http://history.berkeley.edu/faculty/Nylan/