Confessionalized Optics: The Society of Jesus and Early Modern Optics

Abstract

This dissertation explores the investigation and explanation of optics among prominent members of the Society of Jesus during the early modern period. In doing so it aims to explain why it was that optics became one of the more important scientific subjects among the members of the Order. In addition to this it aims to explain how it was that their identity as members of the Order shaped their explanation of optics at a time when there was no agreed upon meaning of optics. As argued, this interaction between Jesuit identity and optical theory may best be understood as an act of confessionalization. The benefit of this categorization is that it allows for a complex analysis of optics among the Society of Jesus which avoids any essential identification of the relationship between science and religion. This dissertation, then, not only addresses why optics among the Jesuits should be understood as confessionalized, but also how the category of confessionalization may provide a path through the complex dynamics of early modern science and religion.