Baroque Optics and the Disappearance of the Observer: From Kepler’s Optics to Descartes’ Doubt

Journal of the History of Ideas 71 (2):191-217 (2010)
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Abstract

Seventeenth-century optics naturalizes the eye while estranging the mind from objects. A mere screen, on which rests a blurry array of light stains, the eye no longer furnishes the observer with genuine re-presentations of visible objects. The intellect is thus compelled to decipher flat images of no inherent epistemic value, accidental effects of a purely causal process, as vague, reversed reflections of wholly independent objects. Reflecting on and trespassing the boundaries between natural and artificial, orderly and disorderly, this optical paradox is a Baroque phenomenon; and it is the origin of Descartes’ celebrated doubt---whether we know anything at all.

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