Criticism[edit]

Mark Smith's critical editions of De Aspectibus contain a Latin glossary with page numbers of
each occurrence of the words, to illustrate Alhazen's experimental viewpoint. Smith shows that
Alhacen was received well in the West because he reinforced the importance of the Hellenic
tradition to them.[152]

Refraction[edit]
Smith (2010) has noted that Alhazen's treatment of refraction describes an experimental setup
without publication of data.[153] Ptolemy published his experimental results for refraction, in
contrast. One generation before Alhazen, Ibn Sahl discovered his statement of the lengths of
the hypotenuse for each incident and refracted right triangle, respectively. This is equivalent to
Descartes' formulation for refraction. Alhazen's convention for describing the incident and
refracted angles is still in use.