How can we improve business ethics education for the twenty first century? This study evaluates the effectiveness of a visual case exercise in the form of a 3D immersive game given to undergraduate students at two UK Universities as part of a mandatory business ethics module. We propose that due to evolving learning styles, the immersive nature of interactive games lends itself as a vehicle to make the learning of ethics more ‘concrete’ and ‘personal’ and therefore more engaging. To achieve (...) this, we designed and built an immersive 3D simulation game in the style of a visual case. The effectiveness of the game was evaluated using a mixed methods approach measuring recognised and adapted constructs from the technology acceptance model. Results demonstrate that students found the game beneficial to their learning of ethics with the development of knowledge and skills applicable to the real world and that they engaged with the process due to game elements. Findings demonstrate the potential for the development of simulated games to teach ethics at all levels and modes of delivery and the contribution of this type of visual case model as a pedagogic method. (shrink)

Can we find different means of communicative visual solutions to aid societies in the development of multicultural global communities? This means not revolving only around a particular language or even human language, but rather the concept and structure of communication. This transforms any kind of sign, body gesture or visual element into a method of communication, not simple phenomena. The aim of the research is to use media art and new technology to establish a better (wide) visual communicative language in (...) multicultural societies and provide a solid bridge between east and west, through in-depth visual/technological experimentation, seeking a transcultural visual solution to the problem of visual integration. Can any perceivable phenomenon become a conveyor of meaning? While language is based very much on common agreements, the way each of us responds to a message can be entirely different. Communication therefore creates diversity from uniformity: the idea of mixing setups of humans and machines (robots, computers, etc.) that are somehow able to communicate. The communication would give rise to some sort of choreography of movements that is synchronized because of the communication but diverse because of different responses to the communication. (shrink)

In today’s world, there are more than 5000 languages and dialects in use, of which only 100 may be considered of major importance. As Dreyfuss (1972) states, inter-communication amongst them has proved not just difficult but impossible. Because a universal language would be the solution to this problem, over 800 attempts have in fact been made in the last 1000 years to develop an official second language that in time could be adopted by all major countries. Some of the most (...) recognized examples are Esperanto, Interlingua, Ido and Volapuk. However, all of them combine elements of existing languages and rely on the Roman alphabet, which reduces their applicability to certain regions of the world. The aim of this project is to explore the world of pictographic communication and develop an effective system for conveying information/knowledge on a universal scale. This would potentially bridge linguistic and cultural gaps, transcending boundaries, and thereby creating a broader vision of multiculturalism. In this sense, we find useful the notion of ‘semantography’, from the Greek word semanticos, significant meaning, and graphin, to write. The term was coined by Charles K. Bliss in 1947 to define his development of a non-alphabetical symbol writing system, based on the principles of ideographic writing and chemical symbolism. Semantography was the name of Charles K. Bliss’ proposed book for the Blissymbolic communication system. (shrink)

The complex relationship between the current advancement of technology, including the wide scope of settings at which machinery plays substantial roles, and the cultural, historical, and political realities that have long existed across the history of mankind, is one that deserves absolute attention and exploration. This interconnection has been investigated in light of bread, and the meaning it signifies to people from all over the world. Drawing on the commonly unnoticed value of bread, and the everlasting impregnable imprint it has (...) always had on revolutions throughout history, “Collective Bread Diaries” came to being as an interactive art project, employing the artificial intelligence of the MTurk platform in its investigation of “bread” as one’s peculiar voice and political statement. The author amongst other participants was granted the opportunity to draw and share personal visual representations of bread, eventually forming an array of visual diaries, each peculiar to its creator and each reflecting the cultural significance of the place from which it originated. The results are exceptionally reproduced drawings by a machine, with no apparent threads to culture, tradition, or history, emphasizes the conscious perception of one’s distinct identity. A number of 100 distinct drawings were machine-generated featuring various bread types. The process eventually investigates one’s perception of cultural identity, by exploring the cultural, socio-political, and religious threads that have long been weaved into the definition of “bread” across history. (shrink)

This article studies Ibn al-Haytham’s treatment of the common notions from Euclid’s Elements (usually referred to today as the axioms). We argue that Ibn al-Haytham initiated a new approach with regard to these foundational statements, rejecting their qualification as innate, self-evident, or primary. We suggest that Ibn al-Haytham’s engagement with experimental science, especially optics, led him to revise the framing of Euclidean common notions in a way that would fit his experimental approach.

RésuméDans l’Almageste, Ptolémée a proposé le concept du mouvement d'enroulement pour expliquer notamment les latitudes planétaires. Ibn al-Haytham a rédigé un traité intitulé Fī ḥarakat al-iltifāf, « Surle mouvement d'enroulement ». Un anonyme a écrit une critique de ce traité. Les deux mémoires sont perdus; mais heureusement a survécu la réponse d'Ibn al-Haytham, intitulée Fī ḥall šukūk ḥarakat al-iltifāf, « La résolution des doutes sur le mouvement d'enroulement ». Il y rappelle le modèle élaboré et en détaille encore (...) l'explication. Nous donnons ici édition critique, traduction et commentaire de cette réponse, ainsi qu'une édition et traduction de passages apparentés des Hypothèses planétaires de Ptolémée et de la Nihāyat al-idrāk de Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī. (shrink)

L'optique physiologique moderne introduit les notions relatives aux conditions de fusion des images binoculaires par le concept de correspondance, prêté à Christiaan Huygens (1704), et par une expérience attribuée à Christoph Scheiner (1619). L'article montre que la conceptualisation de l'expérience remonte en fait à Ptolémée (90-168) et à Ibn al-Haytham (m. ap. 1040), et précise les connaissances que ce dernier avait des mécanismes de la vision binoculaire. Il est ensuite expliqué pourquoi Ibn al-Haytham, mathématicien mais ici expérimentateur, ne (...) donne pas la forme circulaire de l'horoptère théorique, dont la construction revient à Gerhard Vieth (1818) et Johannes Müller (1826). En revanche, l'étude expérimentale d'Ibn al-Haytham met en place la notion de points correspondants, les cas de diplopie homonyme et croisée et prépare même la découverte de l'aire fusionnelle de Panum. (shrink)

RésuméÀ plusieurs reprises et poursuivant des buts distincts, Ibn al-Haytham a déterminé les variations d'une fonction bien connue aujourd'hui. Le contexte de ces applications révèle certaines caractéristiques de la pensée mathématique et physique de ce savant. Une étude précise de ses démonstrations mathématiques de monotonie suggère combien il a pu approcher d'un concept élaboré du continu.

RésuméLes mathématiciens et les philosophes arabophones, comme leurs prédécesseurs grecs, ont soulevé plusieurs questions épistémologiques fondamentales. Parmi ces questions figure celle qui porte sur le concept d’égalité et sur celui de congruence des grandeurs géométriques. Mais qu'entendait-on par de tels concepts? quelle était leur relation à l'idée de mouvement? Comme les réponses à ces questions combinaient souvent des éléments métriques et d'autres, philosophiques, j'ai choisi d’étudier celles d'un mathématicien, d'un philosophe et d'un mathématicien-philosophe.

In general, in order to gain a more comprehensive view of something it is quite profitable to approach a philosophical concept through its correlation, differentiation, and even opposition to another related concept. 'Place' and 'space,' philosophical terms, constitute an ideal case in which to apply this method.These concepts are so closely related that they may be interdependent, because both of them mean an environment that encompasses, surrounds, or contains objects, things, bodies, entities, events, occurrences, and processes. Thus, G. W. Leibniz, (...) who searched for the rational foundation of Christianity as well as of mathematics and physics, wrote in the second passage of his Monadology: "a... (shrink)

The "Text" and the "Commentary" mentioned in the title of this essay are, respectively, the "Kitāb al-Manāẓir", or "Optics", of al-Ḥasan ibn al-Haytham, composed in the first half of the fifth/eleventh century, and the "Tanqīḥ al-Manāẓir li-dhawī l-abṣār wa l-baṣā'ir", written by Abū l-Ḥasan (or al-Ḥasan) Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī in the second half of the seventh/thirteenth century. It is known that, so far, only the first five of the seven "maqālāt"/Books that make up the Arabic text of IH's "Optics" (...) have been published, and that the "Tanqīḥ" was published in two volumes. I shall be concerned with certain episodes in the lives of these two works, my aim being to shed light on their transmission within the Islamic Arabic and Persian worlds. -/- . (shrink)

The concept of aerial perspective has been used for the first time by Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). This article studies its dependence on Ptolemy’s Optica and overall on the optical tradition inaugurated by Ibn al-Haytham’s Kitâb al-Manâzir (d. after 1040). This treatise, that was accessible through several Latin and Italian manuscripts, and was the source of many Medieval commentaries, offers a general theory of visual perception emancipated from the case of the moon illusion, in which physical and psychological factors (...) are closely combined. Atmospheric extinction (not refraction, which it is sometimes confused with) affects the conjectured size of remote objects. This phenomenon is also the core source for a pictorial rendering of depth, that is based onto a principle different from the diminution of size. (shrink)

Quand on compare l' Optique d'Ibn al-Haytham à celle de Ptolémée, on rencontre des innovations à coup sûr capitales, et qui chacune mériterait une analyse particulière: étude expérimentale de la propagation rectiligne de la lumière, nouvelle théorie de la vision fondée sur la réception dans l'œil de rayons lumineux, recherche du lien entre l'anatomie de 1'œil et sa fonction optique, preuve expérimentale que la réfraction joue un rôle important dans la vision, et j'en passe: les dimensions d'un article de (...) revue n'y suffiraient pas. Aussi bien mon but est-il plus global et plus synthétique. Il consiste à tenter de faire le point sur ce qu'est devenue, après Ibn al-Haytham, l'insertion de l'optique dans le système des savoirs qui lui sont connectès, en comparant cette insertion à ce qu'elle était au temps de Ptolémée, c'est-à-dire dans l'œuvre de référence reçae et travaillée par lui. (shrink)

This paper investigates the objections that were raised by the philosopher ‘Abd al-La&tdotu;īf al-Baghdādī against al-&Hdotu;asan ibn al-Haytham’s geometrisation of place. In this line of enquiry, I contrast the philosophical propositions that were advanced by al-Baghdādī in his tract: Fī al-Radd ‘alā Ibn al-Haytham fī al-makān, with the geometrical demonstrations that Ibn al-Haytham presented in his groundbreaking treatise: Qawl fī al-Makān. In examining the particulars of al-Baghdādī’s fragile defence of Aristotle’s definition of topos as delineated in Book (...) IV of the Physics, which was rejected on mathematical grounds by Ibn al-Haytham, a special attention is also given to highlighting the systemic distinctions between the entities that are studied within the speculative physical doctrines of common sense and immediate experience, and the postulated ‘objects’ of scientific and mathematical research. (shrink)

RésuméAu tout début du dernier millénaire, Ibn al-Haytham contribua de façon importante à la recherche sur la Voie lactée. Les seuls trois témoins actuellement connus de son traité sur la localisation de la Voie lactée seront ici comparés et discutés. La comparaison entre ces témoins, d'une part et la traduction allemande de ce traité, faite en 1906 par E. Wiedemann, d'autre part, révèle plusieurs différences, ce qui nous a incité à proposer une nouvelle traduction critique du texte transmis. Nous (...) donnons ici un commentaire détaillé de ce traité et nous testons la validité des arguments d'Ibn al-Haytham. Nous discutons aussi ce traité dans le cadre du ‘Grand Débat’ concernant la Voie lactée qui eut lieu autour de 1920, plus d'une décennie après la traduction de Wiedemann. Il nous est apparu que le travail d'Ibn al-Haytham se situe à coup sûr au faîte de la période d'observation, à l’œil nu, de la Voie lactée. S'appuyant sur sa propre argumentation et sur les observations de Ptolémée, Ibn al-Haytham identifie clairement la galaxie comme un corps extra-terrestre, qui n'est pas une partie de l'atmosphère mais qui se situe plus loin que la lune. De plus, à l'occasion des jugements qu'il porte sur les positions stellaires transmises par Ptolémée, Ibn al-Haytham anticipe le concept de mouvements stellaires propres. (shrink)

After his refutation of the doubts concerning Proposition I.7, Ibn al-Haytham mentions three possible ways in which circles may intersect, submitting them to the following “intuitive” argument: one part of one of the two circles is situated inside of the other circle, and its other part is situated outside of it. One is therefore tempted to believe that the commentator accepts the principle of continuity in the case of circles, since his argument has the following meaning: if a circle (...) is divisible into two parts, one of which is situated inside the other circle, and the other outside of it, then the two circles cut one another. The author of this article proposes to establish the limits of this belief, on the basis of the following reflections: 1). It will be noted first of all that what could be called the ‘principle of the intersection of circles’ does not constitute ipso facto a principle in the mind of Ibn al-Haytham: no allusion is made to it in the commentary on Proposition I.1, among others. 2) It will be established later on that if one accepts that a line is the result of the movement of a point, the principle of continuity should be considered by him as something which is obvious by itself, without being stated. This conclusion will be based on an analysis of the notion of continuity in its classical meaning, and on Ibn al-Haytham’s commentary on Proposition X.1. 3) On the other hand, we should note the presence of a ‘sketch’ of topological language, which Ibn al-Haytham develops for the notion of a circle : one could say in this context that his reflection constitutes an important, if not principal, stage in the process which was to lead to the explicit formulation of the principle of continuity. (shrink)

In order to get rid of the contradictions he had identified in Ptolemy’s Astronomy, Ibn al-Haytham abandons cosmology and develops a purely kinematic description of the movement of the wandering stars. This description culminates with the proof that such a star, during its daily movement, reaches exactly one time a maximum height above the horizon and that any inferior height is reached exactly twice. The proofs of these facts necessitates new mathematical tools and Ibn al-Haytham is led to (...) establish very sophisticated statements concerning the variation of certain ratios of arcs of circles on the sphere. He also introduces the fruitful idea of assimilating a very small spherical triangle to a plane triangle. (shrink)

Review essay: Les mathématiques infinitésimales du IXe au XIe siècle. Volume 4: Ibn al-Hatham, méthodes géométriques, transformations ponctuelles, et philosophie des mathématiques (London: Al-Furq¸n Islamic Heritage Foundation, 2002), pp. xiii+1064+vi ¤ 106.71 ISBN 1 87399 260 2.

This article seeks the origin, in the theories of Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), Descartes, and Berkeley, of two-stage theories of spatial perception, which hold that visual perception involves both an immediate representation of the proximal stimulus in a two-dimensional ‘‘sensory core’’ and also a subsequent perception of the three dimensional world. The works of Ibn al-Haytham, Descartes, and Berkeley already frame the major theoretical options that guided visual theory into the twentieth century. The field of visual perception was the (...) first area of what we now call psychology to apply mathematics, through geometrical models as used by Euclid, Ptolemy, Ibn al-Haytham, and Descartes (among others). The article shows that Kepler’s discovery of the retinal image, which revolutionized visual anatomy and entailed fundamental changes in visual physiology, did not alter the basic structure of theories of spatial vision. These changes in visual physiology are advanced especially in Descartes' Dioptrics and his L'Homme. Berkeley develops a radically empirist theory vision, according to which visual perception of depth is learned through associative processes that rely on the sense of touch. But Descartes and Berkeley share the assertion that there is a two-dimensional sensory core that is in principle available to consciousness. They also share the observation that we don't usually perceived this core, but find depth and distance to be phenomenally immediate, a point they struggle to accommodate theoretically. If our interpretation is correct, it was not a change in the theory of the psychology of vision that engendered the idea of a sensory core, but rather the introduction of the theory into a new metaphysical context. (shrink)

As the word “optics” was understood from antiquity into and beyond the early modern period, it did not mean simply the physics and geometry of light, but meant the “theory of vision” and included what we should now call physiological and psychological aspects. From antiquity, these aspects were subject to geometrical analysis. Accordingly, the geometry of visual experience has long been an object of investigation. This chapter examines accounts of size and distance perception in antiquity (Euclid and Ptolemy) and the (...) Middle Ages (Ibn al-Haytham), before turning to "natural geometry" in Kepler and Descartes. It finds a purely mechanical realization of natural geometry in Descartes (primarily in his L'Homme, 1664), in which he conceives states of the visual system as varying in accordance with distance, much as his geometrical compasses vary their spatial relations in accordance with geometrical proportions. This reading challenges the notion that a two-dimensional sensation (without three-dimensional phenomenality) was universally accepted prior to the nineteenth century by positing a direct psychophysiological account of the experience of distance in Descartes. It thereby challenges the interpretations of Descartes on natural geometry of George Berkeley, Nancy Maull, Margaret Wilson, Erwin Panofsky, and Jonathan Crary. (shrink)

In the early modern period, many authors held that sensation or sensory reception is in some way passive and that perception is in some way active. The notion of a more passive and a more active aspect of perception is already present in Aristotle: the senses receive forms without matter more or less passively, but the “primary sense” also recognizes the salience of present objects. Ibn al-Haytham distinguished “pure sensation” from other aspects of sense perception, achieved by “discernment, inference (...) and recognition,” which included perception of properties such as size and distance as well as similarity, difference, and beauty. Descartes regarded light and color as experiences passively caused in the mind by bodily processes, but he also included distance, perceived through accommodation and convergence, as an immediately caused sensory idea. On the perception side, most theorists held that size and distance perception occurs through unnoticed psychological operations, whether mediated by judgment or associative processes. Association is, in a sense, passive, as it occurs through nonreflective habit formation. But such habits mark a contribution of the subject to perception and are in that way active. The decision of whether sensation and perception are active or passive is highly sensitive to what counts as activity and to what is included as sensation or perception. There is no simple formula, but the generalization that sensation is for the most part passive and perception for the most part active may stand as an imprecise summary of early modern thought on the topic. (shrink)

Representation and content in some (actual) theories of perception -- Representation in perception and cognition : task analysis, psychological functions, and rule instantiation -- Perception as unconscious inference -- Representation and constraints : the inverse problem and the structure of visual space -- On perceptual constancy -- Getting objects for free (or not) : the philosophy and psychology of object perception -- Color perception and neural encoding : does metameric matching entail a loss of information? -- Objectivity and subjectivity revisited (...) : color as a psychobiological property -- Sense data and the mind body problem -- The reality of qualia -- The sensory core and the medieval foundations of early modern perceptual theory -- Postscript (2008) on Ibn al-Haytham's (Alhacen's) theory of vision -- Attention in early scientific psychology -- Psychology, philosophy, and cognitive science : reflections on the history and philosophy of experimental psychology -- What can the mind tell us about the brain? : psychology, neurophysiology, and constraint -- Introspective evidence in psychology. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the methodological issues related to the obstacles and potential horizons of approaching the philosophical traditions in Islam from the standpoint of comparative studies in philosophy, while also presenting selected case-studies that may potentially illustrate some of the possibilities of renewing the impetus of a philosophical thought that is inspired by Islamic intellectual history. This line of inquiry is divided into two parts: the first deals with questions of methodology, and the second focuses on ontology and phenomenology (...) of perception, by way of offering pathways in investigating the history of philosophical and scientific ideas in Islam from the viewpoint of contemporary debates in philosophy. A special emphasis will be placed on: (a) interpreting the ontology of the eleventh century metaphysician Ibn Sīnā (known in Latin as: Avicenna; d. 1037 CE) in terms of rethinking Heidegger’s critique of the history of metaphysics, and (b) analyzing the philosophical implications of the theory of vision of the eleventh century polymath Ibn al-Haytham (known in Latin as Alhazen; d. ca. 1041 CE) in terms of reflecting on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception. (shrink)

Theorists, historians, and artists address the precarious futurity of the notion of the future. Not long ago, a melancholic left and a manic neoliberalism seemed to arrive at an awkward consensus: the foreclosure of futurity. Whereas the former mourned the failure of its utopian project, the latter celebrated the triumph of a global marketplace. The radical hope of realizing a singularly different, more equitable future displaced by a belief that the future had already come to pass, limiting post-historical society to (...) an uneventful life of endless accumulation. Today, amidst an abundance of neofuturisms, posthumanisms, futurologies, speculative philosophies and accelerationist scenarios, there is as well an expanding awareness of a looming planetary catastrophe driven by the extractionist logic of capitalism. Despite this return to the future, the temporal horizon of our present moment is perhaps more aptly characterized by the “shrinking future” of just-in-time production, risk management, high-frequency trading, and the futures market. In Futurity Report, theorists, historians, and artists address the precarious futurity of the notion of the future itself. Contributors McKenzie Wark, China Miéville, Kerstin Stakemeier, Diedrich Diederichsen, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Marina Vishmidt, Johannes Paul Raether, Felicity D. Scott, Silvia Maglioni, Graeme Thomson, Doreen Mende, Pedro Neves Marques, Achille Mbembe, Kodwo Eshun, Haytham El-Wardany, T. J. Demos, Ana Teixeira Pinto. (shrink)

Cette édition numérique a été réalisée à partir d'un support physique, parfois ancien, conservé au sein du dépôt légal de la Bibliothèque nationale de France, conformément à la loi n° 2012-287 du 1er mars 2012 relative à l'exploitation des Livres indisponibles du XXe siècle. Pages de début Préface La section de la ligne dans la République Le problème de la mesure dans la perspective de l'Être et du non-Être Sur les principes des mathématiques chez Aristote et Euclide Sur la définition (...) euclidienne de la droite L'analyse et la synthèse selon Ibn al-Haytham Histoire de la théorie des parallèles Implicit versus explicit geometrical methodologies: The case of construction Descartes and Galileo: The quantification of time and force L'analogie et la pensée mathématique La naissance du projectif L'usage philosophique des mathématiques au XVIIesiècle Pages de fin. (shrink)

The view that Islamicate science went into decline while European science was getting started is still commonly held among historians of science and almost universal in general history and popular presentations. Different versions of the decline thesis make it start in the 11 th century with the work of Ibn al-Haytham and al-Ghaz ā l ī ; in the 13 th century with the sack of Baghdad, or at latest with the beginning of the “Scientific Revolution” in Europe. However, (...) it is now increasingly apparent that Islamicate science was healthy well into the period of the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals. There are many reasons for the continued attraction of the decline theses. In addition to the inaccessibility of sources, these include mistaking the nature of credentialing in Islamicate science, and mistaking the nature of the sources in which original science was appearing. In this paper, I will sketch a more appropriate social structure for understanding Islamicate science by describing the institutional structures for training scientists and awarding credentials, and the practices of recording and transmitting research in writing. Taking the Safavid scholar Bahā ʾ al-D ī n al- ʿ Ā mil ī as an example, I will suggest that these structures supported an active research community well into the early modern period, further undermining the decline thesis. (shrink)

Earlier than the Arabic-Latin transfer of Ptolemaic astronomy via the Iberian peninsula, a serious occupation with Arabic astronomy by Latin scholars took place in crusader Antioch in the first half of the twelfth century. One of the translators of Arabic science in the East was Stephen of Pisa, who produced a commented Latin version, entitled Liber Mamonis, of Ibn al-Haytham’s cosmography, On the Configuration of the World. Stephen’s considerations about the physical universe in relation to the doctrines of Ptolemaic (...) astronomy have hitherto received but little attention. The present paper discusses Stephen of Pisa’s treatment of the planetary spheres in regard to Ptolemy’s theory of oscillating deferents. Emphasis is given to geometric arguments in Stephen’s criticism of Ibn al-Haytham’s spherical model of the inner planets and to Stephen’s own attempt at an improved theory based on additional spheres. The paper argues that astronomical studies in Antioch were of an advanced level, involving independent judgement as well as an influence of contemporary trends in Arabic astronomy. (shrink)

Representations of the heavens in various levels of detail can be found in a number of branches of Arabic literature. One particular genre, the hay'a texts, has as its purpose a full though non-mathematical discussion of the arrangement of the celestial orbs; hay'a writers are particularly sensitive to the philosophical requirements which all systems must meet. The pivotal work in this genre, On the Configuration, was written by Ibn al-Haytham. Later writers continued to produce works in the spirit of (...) On the Configuration. In the east, al-Tusi and his followers developed new models; in the west, a group of thinkers tried to rediscover the models which, so they thought, were the ones endorsed by Aristotle himself. (shrink)