Book of Optics
Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) wrote the "Book of Optics" (1021), in which he developed a theory of vision and light which built on the work of the Roman writer Ptolemy (but which rejected Ptolemy's theory that light was emitted by the eye, insisting instead that light rays entered the eye), and was the most significant advance in this field until Kepler. The "Book of Optics" was an important stepping stone in the history of the scientific method and history of optics. The Latin translation of the "Book of Optics" influenced the works of many later European scientists, including Roger Bacon and Johannes Kepler. The book also influenced other aspects of European culture. In religion, for example, John Wycliffe, the intellectual progenitor of the Protestant Reformation, referred to Alhazen in discussing the seven deadly sins in terms of the distortions in the seven types of mirrors analyzed in "De aspectibus". In literature, Alhazen's "Book of Optics" is praised in Guillaume de Lorris' "Roman de la Rose". In art, the "Book of Optics" laid the foundations for the linear perspective technique and may have influenced the use of optical aids in Renaissance art (see Hockney-Falco thesis). These same techniques were later employed in the maps made by European cartographers such as Paolo Toscanelli during the Age of Exploration.