Florian Cajori, A History of Physics in its Elementary Branches (1899)
“
The Greeks elaborated several theories of vision. According to the Pythagoreans, Democritus, and others vision is caused by the projection of particles from the object seen, into the pupil of the eye. On the other hand Empedocles, the Platonists, and Euclid held the strange doctrine of ocular beams, according to which the eye itself sends out something which causes sight as soon as it meets something else emanated by the object.
— Florian Cajori
What It Means
This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The Greeks elaborated several theories of vision. According to the Pythagoreans, Democritus, and others vision is caused by the projection of particles from the object seen, into the pupil of the eye. On the other hand Empedocles, the Platonists, and Euclid held the strange doctrine of ocular beams, according to which the eye itself sends out something which causes sight as soon as it meets something else emanated by the object." in the context of "Florian Cajori, A History of Physics in its Elementary Branches (1899)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.
Source: Wikiquote: "Empedocles" (Quotes about Empedocles)
The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Tags
About Empedocles
Empedocles (c. 490 BC – c. 430 BC) was a poet, statesman, and pre-Socratic philosopher from the Greek colony of Agrigentum in Sicily. Two of his philosophical verse texts, On Nature and Purifications, survived antiquity in fragmentary form; these fragments comprise the only works considered to be of genuine Empedoclean authorship.Leonard, William E. (1908). The Fragments of Empedocles. The Open Court Publishing Company. p. 3.
About Empedocles
Empedocles (c. 490 BC – c. 430 BC) was a poet, statesman, and pre-Socratic philosopher from the Greek colony of Agrigentum in Sicily. Two of his philosophical verse texts, On Nature and Purifications, survived antiquity in fragmentary form; these fragments comprise the only works considered to be of genuine Empedoclean authorship.Leonard, William E. (1908). The Fragments of Empedocles. The Open Court Publishing Company. p. 3.
View all quotes →