Reid’s Account of the “Geometry of Visibles”: Some Lessons from Helmholtz

Topoi 35 (2):485-510 (2016)
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Abstract

Drawing on work done by Helmholtz, I argue that Reid was in no position to infer that objects appear as if projected on the inner surface of a sphere, or that they have the geometric properties of such projections even though they do not look concave towards the eye. A careful consideration of the phenomena of visual experience, as further illuminated by the practice of visual artists, should have led him to conclude that the sides of visible appearances either look straight, in which case their angles appear to approximate Euclidean measures, or their angles do not appear to approximate Euclidean measures for straight line figures, in which case their sides do not look straight.

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10.1007/s11245-015-9337-0

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Lorne Falkenstein
University of Western Ontario

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References found in this work

Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man.Thomas Reid - 1785 - University Park, Pa.: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Derek R. Brookes & Knud Haakonssen.
Thomas Reid's theory of perception.Ryan Nichols - 2007 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Thomas Reid’s Geometry of Visibles.James Van Cleve - 2002 - Philosophical Review 111 (3):373-416.

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