Our eyes are the windows to our Soul - Happy Valentine’s Day

I was always of the belief that Leonardo da Vinci could be credited for the phrase,

The eye is the window of the soul…
Now do you not see that the eye embraces the beauty of the whole world?
… It counsels and corrects all the arts of mankind…
It has measured the distances and sizes of the stars;
it has discovered the elements and their location…

Back in the 15th Century, the science of light and sight were still largely unexplored.  Despite his extensive work on human dissection, Leonardo found the eye difficult to study.  He apparently tried boiling specimens but this distorted the shape of the lens and detached it from the retina.  His final conclusions were based upon logic rather that physical evidence.  Despite this, the conclusions that he made were quite accurate; he believed that the eye was a geometrical body, comprised of two concentric spheres.  The outer he referred to as the “albugineous sphereâ€? and the inner as the “vitreousâ€? or “crystalline sphereâ€?. At the back of the eye opposite the pupil is an opening into the optic nerve by which images were sent to the “imprensiva” in the brain, where all sensory information was collated.

However, it would appear that the origin of the phrase, ‘the eye is the window to the soul’ can be traced back to the times of Aristotle or Plato (around 300-400 BC).  In fact it was quite possibly attributed to a number of well known philosophers.

 

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