A historical and epistemological assessment of Thomas Young’s Bakerian Lecture ‘On the Mechanism of the Eye’

In his Bakerian Lecture ‘On the Mechanism of the Eye’ (1801), Thomas Young provided a most accurate and complete optical description of the eye, perfected an optometer capable of measuring the amplitude of accommodation of the eye more reliably and rapidly than ever, described astigmatism for the first time, measured the chromatic dispersion of his own eye, and made use of mathematics in order to demonstrate the role of the contraction of the crystalline lens in accommodation—a contraction he attributed to its muscular nature. For the intrinsic interest of its content and for a consideration of its posterity, the present paper offers a historical and epistemological assessment of this Lecture.