Vitello


Vitello was a Polish friar, theologian and natural philosopher. He is an important figure in the history of philosophy in Poland. The lunar crater Vitello is named after him.

Life

Witelo's mother was from a Polish knightly house, while his father was a German settler from Thuringia. He called himself, in Latin, "Thuringorum et Polonorum filius" — "a son of Thuringians and Poles." He studied at Padua University about 1260, then went on to Viterbo. He became friends with William of Moerbeke, the translator of Aristotle. Witelo's major surviving work on optics, Perspectiva, completed in about 1270–78, was dedicated to William. In 1284 he described the reflection and refraction of light.

''Perspectiva''

Witelo's Perspectiva was largely based on the work of the polymath Alhazen and in turn powerfully influenced later scientists, in particular Johannes Kepler. Witelo's treatise in optics was closely linked to the Latin version of Ibn al-Haytham's Arabic opus: Kitab al-manazir, and both were printed in the Friedrich Risner edition Opticae Thesaurus.
Witelo's Perspectiva, which rested on Ibn al-Haytham's research in optics, influenced also the Renaissance theories of perspective. Lorenzo Ghiberti's Commentario terzo was based on an Italian translation of Witelo's Latin tract: Perspectiva.
Witelo's treatise also contains much material in psychology, outlining views that are close to modern notions on the association of ideas and on the subconscious.
Perspectiva also includes Platonic metaphysical discussions. Witelo argues that there are intellectual and corporeal bodies, connected by causality, emanating from God in the form of Divine Light. Light itself is, for Witelo, the first of all sensible entities, and his views on light are similar to those held by Roger Bacon, though he is closer in this to Alhazen's legacy.

Other works

In Perspectiva, Witelo refers to other works that he had written. Most of these do not survive, but De Natura Daemonum and De Primaria Causa Paenitentiae have been recovered.