Berkeley's Essay towards a New Theory of Vision (1709), his first substantial publication, revolutionized the theory of vision. His approach provided the framework for subsequent work in the psychology of vision and remains influential to this day. Among philosophers, however, the New Theory has not always been read as a landmark in the history of scientific thought, but instead as a halfway house to Berkeley's later metaphysics. In this book, Margaret Atherton seeks to redress the balance through a commentary on and a reinterpretation of Berkeley's New Theory.
The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars. Medical theory and practice of the 1700s developed rapidly, as is evidenced by the extensive collection, which includes descriptions of diseases, their conditions, and treatments. Books on science and technology, agriculture, military technology, natural philosophy, even cookbooks, are all contained here. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++ British Library T077990 Dublin: printed by Aaron Rhames, for Jeremy Pepyat, 1709. xiv, [10],187, [1]p.: ill.; 8°
Excerpt from Berkeley's Theory of Vision This essay is a critical examination of Berkeley's Essay towards a New Theory of Vision. In section 2 Berkeley says that 'distance, of itself and immediately, cannot be seen', and this premiss is the basis of his conclusions. The most important of these are, firstly, that whatever is immediately seen has no existence outside the mind; and, secondly, that visible and tangible objects have no manner of spatial connection. The contributions to the psychology of vision, which the Essay also contains, are subsidiary to these two main themes. However, it will be argued that the first conclusion does not follow validly from Berkeley's premiss, and hence that the Essay really does nothing to support Berkeleyan Immaterialism. This means that, whatever Berkeley's confusions on the matter, we ought to abandon the tradition of interpretation that sees the Essay as a half-way house to the Principles of Human Knowledge. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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