Questions of Optical Evidence

Elsewhere within this site Christopher Tyler and David Stork stated various objections to our evidence. However, it is easy to show that all of their objections arise from their errors in logic, lack of historical knowledge, or misunderstanding of perspective.

Although Christopher Tyler lists six objections, only two address in any way our optical evidence. Below we show that these two objections are based on him having an elementary misunderstanding of optical perspective, which in turn directly resulted in his incorrect conclusions. His other four points are logical red herrings, having no bearing on either the scientific or the visual evidence.

Although David Stork's arguments against our evidence are scattered throughout his fourteen web pages, they reduce to: 1) there is no historical documentation of the existence of appropriate mirrors and lenses during the early Renaissance; 2) artists had sufficient talent that they wouldn't have needed to use lenses anyway; and 3) it would have required an impossible number of candles to provide sufficient illumination to use such lenses. We show that 1) documentation certainly does exist that demonstrates appropriate mirrors and lenses were being produced and used as imaging devices as early as the 13th century; 2) the question of whether or not artists had the talent to paint without the aid of lenses is a logical red herring, unrelated to evaluating the evidence we have presented that, irrespective of their skill level, certain of them indeed did use such lenses; and 3), as we clearly stated in New York, they didn't use candles, they used sunlight.

Since Christopher Tyler's discussion is more succinct, we deal with it first, with the remainder organized according to the fourteen web pages of David Stork's discussion. However, since many of the points Stork raises have no logical connection to our evidence for the use of lenses, we have addressed only some of his key incorrect or irrelevant points.