Grosseteste’s Meteorological Optics: Explications of the Phenomenon of the Rainbow After Ibn al-Haytham

Abstract

This chapter examines the meteorological optics of Robert Grosseteste (c. 1170–1253 ce) by way of critically analysing his explication of the phenomenon of the rainbow in the context of his reflections on the nature of light, the generation of colour, and the underpinning of his thought in onto-theological terms. This study aims at placing the meteorological optical oeuvre of Grosseteste in mediaeval European science against the background of the Greco-Arabic science of optics. This course of inquiry situates Grosseteste’s meteorology and his explication of the phenomenon of the rainbow in a comparative context that is set in-between the pioneering experimental research in optics of the Arab polymath Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen; eleventh century ce), as it was established in the Kitāb al-manāẓir (Book of Optics; De aspectibus; Perspectiva), and the refined reforming of the latter’s thesis on the rainbow through the Tanqīḥ al-manāẓir (Revision of The Optics) by the Persian optician Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī (thirteenth century ce).