Lenses in Renaissance Science

Lenses – curved pieces of glass that can focus light to create magnified images of objects – must be included among those essential and irreplaceable instruments whose use helped to view reality in an unprecedented way. For example, lenticular artifacts such as telescopes, microscopes, and eyeglasses, literally allowed to focus a new image of the world, up to persuade mankind on an optical basis that – as Shakespeare’s Hamlet said – “there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”