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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, people and events that have shaped our world.

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Melvyn Bragg

Patricia Fara

William Ayliffe

Robert Iliffe

Thomas Morris

In Our Time: The Eye

The Eye

27/02/2014

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, The Eye

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of ideas about the eye and how it works.

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the eye. Humans have been attempting to understand the workings and significance of the organ for at least 2500 years. Some ancient philosophers believed that the eye enabled creatures to see by emitting its own light. The function and structures of the eye became an area of particular interest to doctors in the Islamic Golden Age. In Renaissance Europe the work of thinkers including Kepler and Descartes revolutionised thinking about how the organ worked, but it took several hundred years for the eye to be thoroughly understood. Eyes have long attracted more than purely scientific interest, known even today as the 'windows on the soul'.

With:

Patricia Fara
Senior Tutor of Clare College, University of Cambridge

William Ayliffe
Gresham Professor of Physic at Gresham College

Robert Iliffe
Professor of Intellectual History and History of Science at the University of Sussex

Producer: Thomas Morris.

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