Robert Grosseteste: the geometry to solve the complexity of the world

Robert Grosseteste: the geometry to solve the complexity of the world, by Amelia Carolina Sparavigna, Politecnico di Torino, Department of Applied Science and Technology. Italy Abstract: Robert Grosseteste, an English philosopher and scientist, Bishop of Lincoln, is considered as the founder of the scientific thought in medieval Oxford. During the beginning of the XIII century he wrote several scientific papers concerning light and its propagation, where he based the discussion of some phenomena on the use of geometry. Here we will translate and discuss one of his scientific treatises concerning light, entitled De Lineis, Angulis et Figuris, seu Fractionibus et Reflexionibus Radiorum. Since to Grosseteste, the propagation of light had the main role in the creation of the world, the use of its geometry becomes a method to solve the complexity of the physical world. Here we will find an interesting text, where phenomena concerning the intensity of reflected and refracted light seem well-posed, even when compared with the Fresnel theory.