The Book of Optics (Arabic: Kitāb al-Manāẓir (كتاب المناظر); Latin: De Aspectibus or Opticae Thesaurus: Alhazeni Arabis; Italian: Deli Aspecti) is a seven-volume treatise on optics and other fields of study composed by the medieval Muslim scholar Ibn al-Haytham, known in the West as Alhazen (965– c. 1040 AD).
The Book of Optics presented experimentally founded arguments against the widely held extramission theory of vision (as held by Euclid in his Optica) and in favor of intromission theory, as supported by thinkers such as Aristotle, the now accepted model that vision takes place by light entering the eye. Alhazen's work transformed the way in which light and vision was understood, earning him the title the "father of modern optics"
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