Optics and Cosmology: from Euclid to Freud

Abstract

This paper explores how the scientific materialist worldview, where any inexplicable phenomenon is regarded as an artefact of incomplete understanding or error, arose from earlier models of the cosmos. In these earlier cosmologies, the mysterious remained an important component and the role of light was a key factor in expressing an ordered hierarchical ontology. Demonstrating the role of optics in the development and evolution of our understanding of the cosmos, the conception of light in the writings of Euclid, Plato and Ficino is surveyed. It is postulated that light starts off as an aspect of divine ineffability, and through the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment becomes the light of human understanding. This development in understanding is traced through an examination of the optical studies of Descartes, Kircher and Bentham, and explored through four optical technologies: the spyglass, the camera obscura, the magic lantern, and the panopticon. As Jean Gebser points out in ‘The Ever Present Origin’ darkness must necessarily accompany the light, and this paper also examines the idea that the darkness that exists as the opposite of the Enlightenment, ends up located in the mind itself. This is investigated through an examination of Freud's use of the metaphor of the optical phenomenon of projection.