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Concept
Emission theory (vision)
Summary
Emission theory or extramission theory (variants: extromission) or extromissionism is the proposal that visual perception is accomplished by eye beams emitted by the eyes. This theory has been replaced by intromission theory (or intromissionism), which is that visual perception comes from something representative of the object (later established to be rays of light reflected from it) entering the eyes. Modern physics has confirmed that light is physically transmitted by photons from a light source, such as the sun, to visible objects, and finishing with the detector, such as a human eye or camera.
In the fifth century BC, Empedocles postulated that everything was composed of four elements; fire, air, earth, and water. He believed that Aphrodite made the human eye out of the four elements and that she lit the fire in the eye which shone out from the eye, making sight possible. If this were true, then one could see during the night just as well as during the day, so Empedocles postulated that there were two different types of emanations that interacted in some way: one that emanated from an object to the eye, and another that emanated from the eye to an object. He compared these outward-flowing emanations to the emission of light from a lantern.
Around 400 BC, emission theory was held by Plato.
Around 300 BC, Euclid wrote Optics and Catoptrics, in which he studied the properties of sight. Euclid postulated that the visual ray emitted from the eye travelled in straight lines, described the laws of reflection, and mathematically studied the appearance of objects by direct vision and by reflection.
Ptolemy (c. 2nd century) wrote Optics, a work marking the culmination of the ancient Greek optics, in which he developed theories of direct vision (optics proper), vision by reflection (catoptics), and, notably, vision by refraction (dioptrics).
Galen, also in the 2nd century, likewise endorsed the extramission theory (De Usu Partium Corporis Humani). His theory contained anatomical and physiological details which could not be found in the works of mathematicians and philosophers.
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