Giambattista Della Porta: A Magician or an Optician?

Abstract

In Bk. 17, Ch. 4 of Magia Naturalis (1589) Giambattista Della Porta (ca. 1535–1615) reported his experiments on concave spherical mirrors arranged in various setups. Della Porta identified two critical points: (1) the point of inversion (punctum inversionis) in reference to the place where the magnified image is turned upside down and seen blurred, and (2) the point of burning (punctum incensionis) in reference to the place where the reflected rays concentrate and ignite fire. Opticians and practitioners of the time distinguished between the two points but considered them to occupy the same spatial location. Della Porta inferred from his studies of concave spherical mirrors that the position of the point of inversion and that of the point of burning occupy different spatial locations. He associated the point of inversion with a locus where the image is seen magnified, turned upside down and blurred—a matter of visual perception. He defined the point of burning as a physical, optical position associated with a geometrical point in which the converging rays ignite fire. Consequently, throughout Bk. 17, Della Porta discarded the point of inversion from his optical nomenclature and referred only to the point of burning, the real—so to speak—optical point. In so doing, Della Porta contributed fundamentally towards the technological management of sets of optical elements. In this paper we follow the experimental practice of Della Porta as presented by the optical demonstrations in Bk. 17, Ch. 4. We discuss the theoretical principles Della Porta developed to clarify whether his claim concerning concave spherical mirror is hypothetical or was it based on an inference from experience. We offer novel insights into the development of the theory of reflection in concave spherical mirrors as it was pursued by Della Porta. He eliminated perceptual considerations from his optics and considered only geometrical-physical aspects. This approach was most useful in the development of the telescope where the critical aspect is not perception but rather ratio of spatial angles.