The Limitations & Possibilities of Sight: Euclid’s Optics

Continuing the Conversation: a Great Books podcast by St. John’s College

What are the limitations and possibilities of perception—and what do ancient mathematics and modern literature have to say about this question? Written in 300 BC, Euclid’s Optics is a foundational work of mathematics on the geometry of vision, while Swann’s Way, the first book in Proust’s multi-volume Remembrance of Things Past, published in 1913, states: “Even with respect to the most insignificant things in life, none of us constitutes a material whole. Even the very simple act that we call ‘seeing the person we know is, in part, an intellectual one; we fill in the physical appearance of the individual we see with all the notions we have about him, and of the total picture that we form for ourselves, these notions certainly occupy the greater part.” These works are the jumping off points for a conversation between Annapolis tutor Michael Grenke and host Louis Petrich on the limitations and possibilities of perception.