“Ptolemy left in his Optics, the earliest surviving table of angles of refraction from air to water.”

— Carl B. Boyer

Source: The Rainbow: From Myth to Mathematics (1959), p. 61
Context: Ptolemy left in his Optics, the earliest surviving table of angles of refraction from air to water. … This table, quoted and requoted until modern times, has been admired … A closer glance at it, however, suggests that there was less experimentation involved in it than originally was thought, for the values of the angles of refraction form an arithmetic progression of second order … As in other portions of Greek Science, confidence in mathematics was here greater than that in the evidence of the senses, although the value corresponding to 60° agrees remarkably well with experience.

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Carl B. Boyer 15

American mathematician 1906–1976

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“He left in his Optics, the earliest surviving table of angles of refraction from air to water. …This table, quoted and requoted until modern times, has been admired… A closer glance at it, however, suggests that there was less experimentation involved in it than originally was thought, for the values of the angles of refraction form an arithmetic progression of second order… As in other portions of Greek Science, confidence in mathematics was here greater than that in the evidence of the senses, although the value corresponding to 60° agrees remarkably well with experience.”

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