[Buddha-l] bodhi

[Dan Lusthaus]

> At the risk of wandering too far off the topic, how did that model account
> for the coming and going of daylight with the coming and going of the sun,
> or for the light from flames?
> Alex Wilding

Good question. That's a different light.

There is always a temptation to visualize an unfamiliar model by painting it 
in the most literalistic, simplistic light. Note how "visualize" and "light" 
were used -- in what seems a natural way -- in the previous sentence. When 
we visualize something we illuminate it for our inner eye. Similarly, in the 
old days they thought we illuminated objects in the same way -- not that we 
had flashlights in our heads, but that an intellective light was a necessary 
component of perception. It was by asking questions like Alex's and, more 
importantly conducting scientific experiments that Ibn al-Haytham (11th 
century) proved the praka"sa or beacon theory -- call it what you will --  
was false.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Optics

pdf that discusses the debunking of what it calls the "extramission theory" 
by Ibn al-Haytham.
http://www.ishim.net/ishimj/4/10.pdf

There are profound and wide-reaching philosophical as well as scientific 
issues at stake. For those, see Colin Turbayne's _The Myth of Metaphor) 
which examines how optics has become THE paradigm for science and philosophy 
(Descartes, Berkeley, et al. all wrote works on optics; it undergirds 
western theories of realism, how we envision reality). In ancient days 
Indians also valued sound/acoustic models, as did Plato (in the Republic, 
recently mentioned by Eric, Plato says that harmonics and astronomy are "the 
Prelude to the Nomos ["Law", but also "relgious song"] itself," and 
constructs his education models on that basis, i.e., reality as conceived 
through the ear and the eye. Aristotle preferred the eye over the ear, and 
the West has been following him ever since.

Dan