Hobbes and optics

Resumen

This article offers a brief account of the theoretical path taken by Thomas Hobbes in connection with his theories of light and visual perception. It is intended to show that the succession of optical theories elaborated by Hobbes, during the period 1630 to 1658, moves in the direction of a growing mechanization and articulation of the “external” and “internal” aspects that come together for the production of sensation. The Hobbesian doctrine of vision seems to have been the only theory available in the first half of the seventeenth century sought to formulate a complete and unified explanation of the mechanism of sensory perception, or to reduce it entirely to the effects of “local movement”