Natural Geometry in Descartes and Kepler

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Natural Geometry in Descartes

and Kepler
Article in Res Philosophica · January 2015

DOI: 10.11612/resphil.2015.92.1.6
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NATURAL GEOMETRY IN DESCARTES AND
KEPLER
Gary Hatfield
Abstract: According to Kepler and Descartes, the geome-

try of the triangle formed by the two eyes when focused
on a single point affords perception of the distance to
that point. Kepler characterized the processes involved as
associative learning. Descartes described the processes as
a “natural geometry.” Many interpreters have Descartes
holding that perceivers calculate the distance to the fo-
cal point using angle-side-angle, calculations that are re-
duced to unnoticed mental habits in adult vision. This ar-
ticle offers a purely psychophysiological interpretation of
Descartes’s natural geometry. In his account of perceived
limb position from the Treatise on Man, he envisioned a
central brain state that controls ocular convergence (and
accommodation) and thereby co-varies with the distance
from observer to object. A psychophysiological law re-
lates the visual perception of distance to this brain state.
Descartes also invokes more traditional theories of dis-
tance and size perception based on unnoticed judgments,
yielding a hybrid account.
1 As If by a Natural Geometry
Scholars have long puzzled over Descartes’s notion of natural geometry,

which arises in his account of the perception of distance by means of
vision (and touch). In both the Dioptrics and the posthumously published
Treatise on Man, Descartes speaks of knowing or becoming acquainted
with direction and distance through the triangle formed by the two eyes as
they focus on a point some distance in front of them. Allowing for a fixed
distance between the two eyes, combined with the angle that each eye turns
in fixating a common point (Figure 1), a unique direction and distance to
that point is established. In both works, Descartes speaks of the perceiver
as being aware of the direction and distance “as if by a natural geometry”
(O 106, AT 6:137; H 62*, AT 7:160).1
1
I use the following abbreviations for Descartes’s texts: “AT” for Descartes 1996b; “CSM”
for Descartes 1984–1985; “CSMK” for Descartes 1991; “H” for Descartes 1972; “O” for
Res Philosophica, Vol. 92, No. 1, January 2015, pp. 117–148

http://dx.doi.org/10.11612/resphil.2015.92.1.6
c 2015 Gary Hatfield • c 2015 Res Philosophica
118 Gary Hatfield
FIGURE 1. The triangle of convergence. The converging

eyes fixate point N. Interocular line segment LM, together
with the angles of rotation for the eyes in a given fixation,
form a specific triangle. Because segments LN and MN
are intended to touch the focal points of the eyes, the
lines should be straight, not broken as in the diagram,
and eye M should be rotated slightly left. This drawing
was created more than a decade after Descartes’s death,
originally appearing in the 1664 Treatise. Reproduced
from Descartes’s Treatise (1677, 46), author’s collection.
In Kepler’s earlier invocation of “the geometry of the triangle,” there is

precedent for Descartes’s appeal to the geometrical situation of the eyes as
an explanation for distance perception. A popular reading of the passages
in Descartes, which might also fit Kepler, is that distance is perceived by
means of cognitive processes that compute or otherwise mentally take into
account the relation of angle-side-angle in what we may call “the triangle of
convergence.” Accordingly, the perception of distance would be explained
through psychological operations in which the distance between the eyes
is combined with an awareness of the rotation of the eyes to yield the
direction and distance of the point of fixation.
In the larger interpretive scheme, this cognitive explanation of distance
perception has been connected with a reading of Descartes’s philosophy
emphasizing his geometricization of nature and his rationalistic philosophy.
The attribution of implicit geometrical reasoning to human perceivers is, on
Descartes 1965. I follow the cited translations when possible; emended passages are marked
with an asterisk (*).
Natural Geometry in Descartes and Kepler 119
some views, part of Descartes’s larger program of proposing and supporting

a view of the human mind as naturally and rightly disposed toward regard-
ing nature geometrically (Turbayne 1970; Maull 1980; Schuster 1980). In
the words of the eminent art historian Erwin Panofsky, Descartes’s geomet-
rical account of vision was an instance of his endeavor to “objectify” and
“rationalize” visual space (Panofsky 1991, 66).
It is of course true that Descartes had a geometric conception of matter.
It is also true that geometrical structures were fundamental in his analysis
of spatial perception. These two aspects of his thought are no-doubt related,
but exactly how has been a matter of controversy.2 After briefly situating the
optical work of Kepler and Descartes, this article presents their discussions
of the triangle of convergence and surveys some prominent interpretations
of Descartes’s natural geometry. Subsequently, it develops an alternative
reading of Descartes’s account of the triangle of convergence, according to
which brain mechanisms carry out any “computations” or responses to the
physiology of optical convergence and then cause a perception of direction
and distance in the mind, without any underlying mental computations or
other cognitive processes. I support this account through an analysis of
Descartes’s physiological theory of proprioception as applied to eye position.
In a final section, I scout some implications for re-reading Descartes on the
role of the brain in the psychology of vision and other areas of psychological
theorizing.
2 Commonalities and Differences in Optics before and after Kepler3
Kepler’s discovery that an optical image is formed on the retina and serves
as a basis for vision required a new physiology of vision. Prior to Kepler,
the dominant theory of optical physiology stemmed from the work of Ibn
2
Wolf-Devine (1993, 77) and Wilson (1993, 163–165) resist Maull-like connections between
Descartes’s geometricized conception of matter and his geometrical models of visual perception,
and rightly so. Geometrical models were deeply embedded in perspectivist visual theory
(Lindberg 1976), including theories of spatial perception that crossed the Keplerian divide
(Hatfield and Epstein 1979). In my view (Hatfield 1985, 1986), Descartes understood his
strongest justification of the geometrical view of matter to derive from a purely intellectual
perception that the essence of matter is extension. Still, he also offered an empirical justification
of his mechanical philosophy, with the theory of the senses as one among many instances of
(alleged) empirical success for his approach. Descartes rightly understood that an argument
from the applicability of geometry in visual theory to a geometrical view of matter would be
weak, since authors in the Aristotelian tradition could also accept the application of geometry
to nature in the “mixed mathematical sciences” (on which, see Kheirandish 2013, 99–102; and
Lindberg and Tachau 2013), without accepting Descartes’s geometrical conception of matter
as pure extension. Nonetheless, his conclusion that geometrical concepts are innate in the
human mind offered special grounds for imputing geometrical structure to spatial perception.
The justification is again metaphysical. See also Simmons 2003a,b.
3
From antiquity to the seventeenth century, the field of “optics” concerned how vision works
(Lindberg 1976; Hatfield and Epstein 1979; Smith 1981; Simon 1988). Discussions of the role
of light in vision and of the properties of light itself were secondary to this aim.
120 Gary Hatfield
al-Haytham, an eleventh-century Islamic philosopher. For our purposes, we

simply note some commonalities and differences between the two theories,
grouping Descartes’s position with Kepler’s for this comparison.4
Both theories held that light as a physical process, and vision more gener-
ally, may be modeled geometrically using straight lines. More particularly,
they accepted that objects in the field of view are seen under various visual
angles, depending on the distance to the object (Figure 2). A “visual angle”
has its apex in the eye and its base on an object in the field of view. Ibn
al-Haytham, Kepler, and Descartes all accepted that the size of objects is
perceived not by visual angle alone but by combining this angle with the
perceived distance to the object.5 Al-Haytham and Descartes also accepted
that the distance to an object of known size may be ascertained by reversing
this relation, working backward from known size and perceived visual
angle to yield a distance. In both Ibn al-Haytham and Descartes, this way
of ascertaining size or distance would involve mental operations. Ibn al-
Haytham compared these operations to acts of reasoning that have become
habitual and are carried out rapidly (Sabra 1978, Hatfield 2002). In some
of their explanations, Kepler and Descartes also appealed to unnoticed
mental operations.
This brief comparison reveals that some aspects of optical theory, in-
cluding accounts involving visual angles, perceived distance, perceived
size, and unnoticed acts of reasoning, passed across the theoretical divide
entailed by Kepler’s discoveries. However, we are particularly interested
in Kepler’s discussion of the triangle of convergence. There is no reason
that al-Haytham couldn’t have included this triangle among the means for
perceiving distance. But he did not. Besides reasoning based on known size,
the only other means for perceiving distance mentioned by al-Haytham
involves becoming aware, as a result of past experience of moving over
the ground, of the number of equal portions of the ground plane between
observer and object; for moderate distances, these portions are summed to
yield a perception of the distance to the object. As far as is known, Kepler
was the first to invoke the triangle of convergence as a means for perceiving
distance.
4
I of course do not equate Kepler’s and Descartes’s theories in all respects. Kepler’s ontology
of sight retained ties with the perspectivist tradition, including “visual spirit” as a sentient
effusion in the nerves (Lindberg 1976, 202–205; Simon 1997, 109–111), whereas Descartes’s
mechanistic physiology was a new departure. But there are commonalities in their geometrical
models of vision and their general conception of retinal function: the retina receives an image
that is formed on it by light.
5
On al-Haytham and Descartes, see Hatfield and Epstein 1979. Kepler covers this point in
Paralipomena, chap. 3, prop. 15. I use these abbreviations for Kepler’s texts: “Dioptrice” for
Kepler 1611; “Paralipomena” for Kepler 2000.
(a) (b)
P A
P A B
P B
FIGURE 2. Visual angle, size, and distance illustrated in

the visual pyramid. Part (a) illustrates the relation between
a common visual angle and objects A and B at different
distances for perceiver P. Since A occludes B, one should
think of the objects as seen one at a time. Part (b) shows
the relation between visual angle and objects A and B of
different sizes but at the same distance.
3 Kepler on the Triangle of Convergence
Kepler published two books on optics, both in the service of astronomy.

The first book, Paralipomena to Witelo, contains a chapter “On the Means
of Vision” (chap. 5), focusing on the functioning of the crystalline humor
as a lens that produces an optical image on the retina. In a chapter on
mirror images, it discusses the means of perceiving direction, distance, and
size (chap. 3), and in a chapter on astronomical parallax it reviews the
main account of distance perception (chap. 9). The second work, the
Dioptrics, primarily concerns lenses for telescopes. Although it mentions
the accommodation of the eye for differing distances as a requirement
for clear vision, it does not treat it as a means for distance perception
(Dioptrice, prop. 64).
Kepler’s account of distance perception in the Paralipomena invokes
“the geometry of the triangle”:
since to each animal a pair of eyes is given by nature, with
a certain distance between them, by this support the sense
of vision is most rightly used to judge [adiudicandus] the
distances of Visibles, provided that that distance have a
122 Gary Hatfield
perceptible ratio to the distance of the eyes. . . . For here

it is simply the geometry of the triangle. . . . For, given
two angles of a triangle, with the side between them, the
remaining sides are given. (chap. 3, prop. 8)
Thus far, Kepler simply observes that the eyes are, in a given animal, a
certain distance apart, and that, in focusing on a common point (as in
Figure 1), they form a triangle with the visible object. As he later explains
(chap. 9, sec. 2), this triangle is smaller for focal points closer to the eyes
and larger for points farther away. The present passage indicates that this
arrangement allows “the sense of vision” to “judge” the distances of things,
but it doesn’t say how.
Proceeding further, Kepler specifies that the faculty of the “common
sense” responds to the distance between the eyes and the angles of rotation
of the eyes to “estimate” or “judge” the distance.6 How does it do so?
Kepler emphasizes that the common sense makes these judgments on the
basis of prior and current experience:
In vision, the sensus communis grasps the distance of
its eyes through becoming accustomed [assuefacere] to
it, while it takes note of [notare] the angles at that distance
from the perception of the turning of the eyes towards
each other. Now when an object is so far removed that the
distance between the two eyes vanishes in comparison with
it, the axes of the eyes have a nearly parallel direction. But
to the extent that the object is closer, the eyes will be more
turned towards each other. (Paralipomena, chap. 3, prop.
8)
Kepler does not say how the common sense joins its grasp of interocular
distance with its notice of the eyes’ turnings so as to yield a perception of
distance. In particular, he does not attribute geometrical or trigonometric
calculation to the common sense. Indeed, when he briefly returns to this
topic in chapter 9, specifically invoking objects closer and farther away and
the differing angles of rotation assumed by the eyes, he writes that “by the
use and perception of this motion or animate action, the animal becomes
accustomed to distinguishing the longer and shorter distances of visible
objects from itself” (chap. 9, sec. 2). The account reads as if the perceiver
becomes aware, through learning (custom and habit), of the distances that
go with various convergences without the benefit of calculation or explicit
reasoning.
6
The sensus communis or “common sense” is one of the Aristotelian internal senses, sometimes
described as the “primary” sense (Hatfield 2012, 160–164). The common sense was assigned
a variety of roles (Wolfson 1935). Typically, it perceives that sense perception by the five
external senses has occurred and compares the objects (perceiving that the red, round object of
vision has tasted sweet). The role that Kepler here assigns to the common sense was frequently
ascribed in the optical tradition to the ultimum sentiens (Lindberg 1976, passim; Hatfield and
Epstein 1979).
This reading is confirmed by the continuing discussion in chapter 3. Kep-

ler conjectures that distance can be perceived using only one eye, through a
triangle with its apex at a point on the object and its base as a diameter of
the pupil, a means of discerning distance that he considered to be only one
tenth as powerful as convergence of the two eyes (Paralipomena, chap. 3,
prop. 9). He joins this monocular triangle with an awareness of the depth
of the eye itself, thereby providing a means of solving for the proportional
size of the triangle, by comparing the size of the retinal image with the
width of the pupil and extending lines from each edge of the image through
the edges of the pupil to a point in space. The details of the geometry are for
our purposes less important than how Kepler describes the learning process.
He indicates that the single eye will learn to perceive these triangles “with
the assistance of higher faculties”; it does so “not, indeed, by reckoning
[numerare], but by comparing the distances of the object through this habit,
as it were, with the powers of the body, and extension of hands and paces”
(chap. 3, prop. 14*). Similar to al-Haytham’s notion that we become aware
of distance along the ground plane by moving over it, Kepler suggests that
we learn the distances that accompany various optical triangles through
awareness of our bodily extension and our motion over the ground. We
may assume that this account holds both for the single eye and the triangle
of convergence, and indeed Kepler remarks that we learn the case of the
single eye from our experience with two eyes (chap. 3, prop. 9).
Kepler’s account, whether it involves “reckoning” (as seems unlikely)
or merely a kind of associative motor learning, is a cognitive account.
That is, the common sense (aided perhaps by a higher faculty) learns to
perceive distance as a result of experiences that pair distances with binocular
eye turnings (the triangle of convergence) or with the monocular triangle.
Kepler calls the operation by which distance is perceived a “judgment” or
“estimate.” He does not directly say that the result is an experience of an
object at a distance. But the surrounding discussion of mirror images gives
the impression that Kepler is talking about the phenomenal locations of
objects, which suggests that objects judged at a distance in this manner (by
custom and habit) are seen (visually experienced) as being at a distance.
4 Descartes and the Triangle of Convergence
Descartes was well-acquainted with Kepler’s optical works, describing

Kepler as his “first master” in optics (AT 2:86). He was also familiar with
the Latin optical tradition, including Roger Bacon and Witelo (CSMK 103,
130, AT 2:142, 447).
Descartes’s discussion of vision elaborates a mechanistic physiology for
the transmission of the retinal image, point for point, into the brain. It also
discusses various means for “seeing” or perceiving distance. These include
the triangle of convergence and also the fact that the eye must accommodate
for different distances (H 61, AT 11:159; O 105–106, AT 6:137). Descartes
124 Gary Hatfield
discussed other means of “seeing,” “judging,” or “imagining” distance by

sight (O 106–107, AT 6:138–140), but we are focusing on his account of
the triangle of convergence.7
Descartes described the triangle of convergence in both the Treatise
on Man and the Dioptrics. He started writing the latter work first (by
1630), then incorporated it into his World, and by 1635 had extracted it
for publication with the Discourse, which appeared in 1637 (CSMK 28,
49, AT 1:178–179, 322).8 The Treatise was first written in 1630–1633
and subsequently revised (the precise extent of revision is unknown). The
Treatise provides much more detail regarding the physiological mechanisms
underlying convergence, and in this regard is the more authoritative work.
In fact, the Treatise contains two discussions of convergence: an initial
discussion of the effectiveness of convergence for perceiving distance, in
which the phrase “natural geometry” occurs and which remains close
to the Dioptrics, and a subsequent detailed analysis of the physiological
changes that accompany differing convergences and the attendant changes
in perceived distance. We consider the natural-geometry passages first and
then the fuller account of the underlying mechanisms.
The passage on “natural geometry” in the Treatise describes a blind man
with sticks (Figure 3) and then compares this case to the positioning of the
two eyes (Figure 1):
Notice also that if the two hands f and g each hold a stick,
i and h, with which they touch the object K, although
the soul is otherwise ignorant of the length of these sticks,
nevertheless because it is aware of [sçavoir] the distance
between the two points f and g and the size of the angles
fgh and gfi, it will be able to be acquainted with [connoitre],
as if by a natural geometry, where object K is. And quite in
the same way, if the two eyes L and M are turned toward
the object N, the magnitude of line LM and of the two
angles LMN and MLN will make it aware of [connoitre]
where point N is. (H 62–63*, AT 11:160)9
7
We return to these other means in the penultimate section.
8
The World originally was to contain three parts, on light (including other aspects of physics),
on man, and on the soul. Only the first two are extant. The first was published in 1664 as The
World, or Treatise on Light and the second as the Treatise on Man. On the intertwined history
of these works and the Dioptrics and Meteorology, see Mahoney 1979 and Bitbol-Hespériès’s
introduction to Descartes 1996a. The Treatise on Man was first published in an incomplete
Latin translation in 1662. The original French appeared in 1664, edited by Claude Clerselier.
The illustrations were by Gérard van Gutschoven and Louis de la Forge; Clerselier asked for a
full set of illustrations from each man, but used more of Gutschoven’s in the published work.
9
Standard translations of this passage in the Treatise and of the corresponding passage in
the Dioptrics (O 106, AT 6:137) offer “know” for both savoir and connaître (shown now
in modern orthography). Some authors (e.g., Wolf-Devine 2000, 512–513) feel a need to
explain away the fact that Descartes uses the two words interchangeably. In recent French
usage, these words have, respectively, the sense of “an intellectual kind of knowledge” and “a
In the Dioptrics, the discussion of natural geometry is similar, but the

account of the blind man and the sticks is initially given in greater detail.
Both passages invoke a “natural geometry,” but neither tells us directly
what this is and how it works psychologically or cognitively.
FIGURE 3. The blind man with crossed sticks from the

Treatise. Hands f and g together with sticks i and h
form a triangle with apex K. This image is similar to the
corresponding one in the Dioptrics (AT 6:135), but here
a tree trunk has been added to match the mention in the
text of “object K” (H 62, AT 11:160). Reproduced from
Descartes 1692b, 68, author’s collection.
The surrounding passages in both works help, by discussing the percep-

tion of position of the eyes and limbs (including sticks held by the hands).
In the Dioptrics, Descartes defines position as “the direction in which each
part of the object lies with respect to our body” (O 104, AT 6:134).10 In the
being acquainted with.” This may be a case of improperly projecting recent usage onto earlier
prose. Historically, savoir (and cognates) could have the meaning of “being acquainted with,”
“having consciousness of,” or simply “perceiving,” and, conversely, connaître (and cognates)
could have these meanings but also could carry the modern sense of savoir as intellectual
knowledge, especially in regard to concrete objects (Rey 1992, 475, 1887). Accordingly, I
have chosen not to treat savoir as here meaning an intellectual kind of knowledge, and I
propose that Descartes uses the terms interchangeably because, in this context, they both had
the sense of “being acquainted with” or indeed “perceiving.”
10
Descartes defines position (French situation) as direction. Position/direction together with
distance yield “location,” a definite location in space (French lieu). He does not suggest that
we experience direction and distance apart from one another, but the two factors involve
different physiological mechanisms, drawing on different muscle operations; together, they
yield a location in a direction at a distance.
126 Gary Hatfield
Treatise, passing from the blind man to the visual perception of position,
he recounts that when an eye is directed toward an object “the soul will be
able to tell the position of this object, inasmuch as the nerves of this eye are
differently disposed than if it were turned toward some other object” (H
60*, AT 11:159). The corresponding portion of the Dioptrics offers more
detail.11 Awareness of the position of the parts of our bodies arises from
“the position of the small points of the brain whence the nerves originate”:
For this position, changing ever so little each time that
of the members where the nerves are inserted changes, is
instituted by nature not only in order that the mind may
be aware of how each part of the body which it animates
is placed with respect to all the others, but also so that it
may transfer its attention from there to any of the locations
contained in straight lines that we can imagine to be drawn
from the extremity of those parts and prolonged to infinity.
(O 104*, AT 6:134–135)
This passage is illustrated with a blind man with crossed sticks, who can
attend to any point along the direction of the stick or beyond it. As the
result of an “institution of nature,” changes in the states of the nerves are
correlated with the perception of position or direction. We are not yet told
how this works.
The passage continues: “when our eye or head turns in some particular
direction, our mind is informed of this by the change which the nerves,
inserted in the muscles that serve these movements, cause in our brain”
(O 105*, AT 6:135). Thus, Descartes explains, in the eye RST (Figure 4),
a part of the brain 7, 8, and 9 “enables the mind to be aware of all the
locations along the line RV, or SX, or TY” (O 105*, AT 6:135). Here,
the nerves from the eye clearly play the role of sensory nerves, conveying
stimulation from retinal locations RST to brain locations 7, 8, and 9; but
in order to specify directions from the body, the changes in the nerves must
also include information about the situation of the eye.
These passages and diagrams (Figure 3, Figure 4) have suggested a cer-
tain picture of how perception of direction works for Descartes and, in
consequence, how natural geometry works. The wording is (at least appar-
ently) consistent with the notion that in describing the “small parts of the
brain where the nerves originate,” Descartes is speaking of proprioceptive
nerves (afferent nerve filaments) that report the state of the muscles and
hence the position of the eyes (or hands). Indeed, the corresponding passage
11
The Dioptrics offers more detail only in comparison with the initial natural-geometry
passage in the Treatise; the later Treatise passage (H 92–108, AT 11:180–197) on limb
perception introduces the mechanisms of limb control involving the pineal gland, a structure
that has been indicated only indirectly thus far (in the mention of “a certain small gland” [H
19*, AT 11:129]). The Dioptrics never names the pineal directly, speaking only of “a certain
small gland” (O 100, AT 6:129) and does not provide details of the relation between muscle
control and limb perception.
FIGURE 4. The binocular visual system from the Dioptrics.

The portrayal of visual physiology is incomplete by com-
parison with the Treatise, as the role of the pineal gland
is not shown. Reproduced from Descartes 1692a, 65, au-
thor’s collection. (The letters Y, X, V have been inserted
at the top, as in the original diagram of 1637.)
from the Treatise speaks of the “filaments” in the nerves as allowing the
mind to perceive the shape and size of small object with the hand (H 59, AT
11:159). The nerves would produce a feeling of how the eyes are rotated
in the triangle of convergence, or of the positions of the head, limb, or
hand.12 This account of the perception of eye or hand position might then
12
In the Treatise, Descartes distinguishes the functions of the nerves related to the external
senses from the motor functions. Filaments from the external sense organs convey afferent
nerve activity to the brain. These filaments are located inside nerve tubules that serve
motor function (H 21–24, AT 11:130–134; O 87–89, AT 6:109–112). In the first passage
from the Treatise on natural geometry, Descartes allows that sensory “filaments” mediate
proprioception; these filaments are described as producing perceptions not of the state of the
128 Gary Hatfield
be joined, in accordance with Figure 4, to perception of visual direction.

Following this line of interpretation, we feel the place in the eye where light
impinges and then project back along the lines of sight, that is, along lines
RV, SX, or TY. If X is the focal point of convergence, we perceive it at the
place where the lines sX and SX meet, as projected back from s and S on
the retinas (forming the triangle of convergence). The “natural geometry”
would then arise if the mind took account of the distance sS and the angles
XSs and XsS and calculated the lengths of lines sX and SX to find location
X. The locations of V or Y would similarly be obtained by projecting back
from retinal locations r and R or t and T.13
This “projectivist” account of natural geometry—and of visual direction
and distance more generally—has been endorsed by Maull, Wolf-Devine,
and Atherton. According to Maull (1980), the geometrical reasoning
that underlies Descartes’s geometry of vision draws on the same reason-
ing processes as underlie his rationalist vision of a geometrized nature.
Descartes was well aware of the geometry of perspective projection, of
which the retinal image is an instance: the three-dimensional world is pro-
jected into a two-dimensional image. Maull proposes that for Descartes
the immediate object of vision, the primitive visual sensation, is always
two dimensional. Accordingly, the “apprehension of distance and all the
correlates of magnitude is always judgemental” (33)—that is, is always
a matter of reasoning. With the triangle of convergence and the atten-
dant perception of three-dimensional structure, the reasoning is based on
a two-dimensional sensation together with “kinesthetic” responses to the
rotation of the eyes (23, 30). In Maull’s interpretation, “the apprehension
of distance is characterized in the physiological and optical works as based
on a ‘natural geometry’ or very rapid geometrical reasoning which can
easily be mistaken for mere sensation” (33).
We return to the topic of natural geometry and reasoning anon. For
now, it is important to understand the specific form of reasoning that Maull
proposes: it utilizes the triangle of convergence and a two-dimensional
muscles but of the position of the hand as it touches a small object. For vision, the ensuing
passage does not explicitly say that the sensory filaments mediate perception of eye position,
but it does not rule out that view. This ensuing discussion does not directly support the
“ray projection” view discussed in the rest of this paragraph, but again it does not rule it
out. Below, I argue that, in the more extensive discussion of the perception of limb and eye
position later in the Treatise, Descartes does not explain proprioception with afferent nerve
filaments but instead holds a central brain state “ouflow” theory, which avoids any notion
that kinesthetic muscle feelings are involved in sensing eye position.
13
The precise location of points R and T is available via projection if we assume that r/R and
t/T are “corresponding” points on the two retinas, that is, are located at the same coordinates
relative to the foveal point (which defines the central axis). Differences between what the two
eyes see when viewing, e.g., a column had long been noted in the optical tradition (Lejeune
1948, 130), but the role of binocular disparity in depth perception (and hence in the perceived
distance of points off the central axes) was not fully secured until the nineteenth century
through the work of Charles Wheatstone and others.
sensation that accords with the retinal image to project a three-dimensional

world. Maull observes:
Upon reflection, we even find ourselves in possession of
rules (actually the rules of perspective) for the projection
of three-dimensional figures onto a two-dimensional plane.
We need only “reverse” these rules to apply a natural
geometry and to form perceptual judgements about three-
dimensional objects. (36)
Maull is not explicit about projection back from retinal locations, but she is
clear that the visual perception of distance and spatial structure is a matter
of projecting from two dimensions to three. At least for moderate distances,
the distance value for the focal point in the three-dimensional scene (as
projected) arises with the triangle of convergence, which relies on Maull’s
kinesthetic sensations.
Atherton (1997) and Wolf-Devine (1993) each articulate the notion of
retinal projection. In Atherton’s words:
Descartes had offered a whole slew of ways in which retinal
information is enriched, some of which, those that fit into
his intellectualist account, imagine that in seeing, we con-
struct a visual picture by reasoning from the information
contained on the retina. Descartes’s account of situation
perception is like this. The visual system is assumed to be
working out the orientation of the objects it sees by tracing
them back from the images that appear upside down on
the retina. (1997, 152)
Wolf-Devine (1993) is equally explicit in formulating a ray-tracing account
for visual direction, which she describes as part of Descartes’s “mechanical
model” of vision. However, she is not completely sanguine about attributing
the position to Descartes. Because it suggests the ability of the soul “to
be present in the hands or eyes and to direct its attention out from them
in straight lines,” she finds it to be in “tension” with Descartes’s explicit
teaching that the seat of mind-body interaction is found in the middle of
the brain (1993, 72).
Descartes’s triangle of convergence is part of a larger account of tactual
and visual perception that uses geometrical constructions with straight lines
to model the direction and distance of visual objects or objects touched with
sticks held in each hand. His use of geometrical description is undeniable.
But did he also hold that geometrical reasoning is the sole or the primary
basis for such perception? Or does Descartes’s triangle of convergence
operate in some other way, not involving reasoning or even mental habit?
130 Gary Hatfield
5 Natural Geometry as Reasoning or as Psychophysiology
It is generally recognized by Descartes’s philosophical interpreters that his

was an embodied theory of vision: in his account of human vision,14 he
gave a role to physiological and mental processes both. The finer questions
concern which aspects of his account of vision rely on mental operations
and which on physiological or psychophysiological mechanisms (the latter
type of mechanism depends on the lawful effect on the mind of brain states).
Descartes’s interpreters typically recognize that his account of the triangle
of convergence and related phenomena involves some psychophysiological
mechanisms. In the reading given above, the feeling of the rotation of
the eyes is caused by nerve states that affect the mind through an “insti-
tution of nature,” that is, by an innate connection between brain states
and experiences. In Figure 4, the visual directions are established by an
innate response to orderly processes set up in the brain, which correspond
topographically to the retinal image.
Those who interpret Descartes’s natural geometry as relying on rea-
soning or mental habits accept that a two-dimensional sensation is given
psychophysiologically, as is a feeling of eye turnings. Some do so with
greater fanfare than others. Maull describes Descartes’s “natural geometry”
as processing “the data of sensation so as to produce a judgement about
natural spatial relationships” (1980, 23). In the triangle of convergence, “a
percipient would be able to determine visual angles” from “the muscular
responses that direct the eyes toward an object” (23). Accordingly, these
muscle responses are part of sensation and they, like the two-dimensional
pattern derived from the retinal image, inform the geometrical reasoning
that underlies natural geometry—reasoning that we have undertaken from
infancy but that now goes unnoticed because it is so rapid (23, 33).
Wilson, too, includes “the eyes’ position” in a prejudgmental sen-
sory given that forms the basis for the judgments of natural geometry—
judgments that “must be ascribed to the realm of mind, not body” (1993,
170–171). Atherton has Descartes combining a physiologically based per-
ception of the direction of the eyes with geometrical calculation to yield
perceived distance (1990, 24, 32). Wolf-Devine offers a similar account, in
which natural geometry involves “at least implicitly mathematical” inputs
that must be combined “by an act of reasoning” (1993, 73–76).
This reading fits the passages to some extent. But I believe the fit is only
apparent, because it rests on a misunderstanding of Descartes’s considered
theory of muscle function, awareness of limb position, and psychophysiolog-
ical correspondence. In some versions, it posits a psychological projection
along lines of sight. True, Descartes says that we are able to “be aware
of all the locations along the line RV, or SX, or TY.” But there are other
14
Regarding nonhuman animals, I hold that Descartes did not attribute mental processes
to them but sought to mechanize their sensory functions, including, presumably, distance
perception. See Hatfield 2012.
conceptions of what is going on with brain, muscles, and eyes that can
account for this.
A problem for the projectivist account arises from the fact that, with
the blind man and sticks, Descartes says that in order to be aware of the
positions of points along the sticks and extending in the same direction, “he
does not need to be aware of or to think at all of the locations of his two
hands” (O 105*, AT 6:135). One would expect that, in order to project
away along a direction from the hands, one would need at least to be
aware of where the hands are. But Descartes says that no such awareness is
needed. What could he have in mind?
The answer lies in the fuller account of the operation of the brain, eyes,
muscles, and limbs found later in the Treatise, after Descartes has intro-
duced a role for the pineal gland in controlling and perceiving limb position.
This fuller account clears up matters left ambiguous or unexplained in the
Dioptrics and the earlier sections of the Treatise and provides the basis for
a fully psychophysiological account of distance as perceived through the
triangle of convergence. The upshot is not that Descartes never invoked
unnoticed reasoning in his account of distance perception. But as regards
natural geometry, his pineal physiology favors a purely psychophysiological
reading.
6 Limb Position Later in the Treatise
The Treatise is Descartes’s most complete account of his machine psychol-

ogy.15 He writes it as a “fable,” in which God creates a hydraulic machine
that looks like a human being and acts in some ways like one, without
the benefit of a soul or mind. Descartes clearly intended that we evaluate
his descriptions as proposals for how the human body actually works,
including how various behaviors are produced by the body alone, even
in actually ensouled humans. He also describes how, in an actual human
being, some states of the brain might interact with the mind to produce
perceptions, including the perception of distance.
Descartes conceived the human body as a hydraulic machine empowered
by a “fire without light” in the heart (H 9, AT 11:123), which heats the
blood, enlivening its motion. Some of this blood takes a direct arterial path
to the brain, where the livelier particles are filtered out as (purely material)
“animal spirits.” These animal spirits flow outward from the pineal gland,
situated in a central cavity of the brain. The surface of this cavity is formed
by the endings of myriad nerve tubules. The tubules consist in an outer
sheath surrounding an inner filament, and they form nerve bundles that go
to the muscles and the sense organs. The filaments serve the function of
sensory nerves. When their endings in the skin, eye, ear, nose, or mouth
are affected, they affect the opening of the tubule-end in the brain cavity.
15
On the notion of machine psychology in Descartes, see Hatfield 2012.
132 Gary Hatfield
The animal spirits then flow rectilinearly from positions on the surface of
the pineal gland to these openings. The spirits that flow into the tubes
are directed toward the muscles, which are like balloons filled with spirits,
which the new spirits may cause to inflate and contract. With opposed
muscle pairs, this occurs because the balance between levels of inflation is
tipped toward the muscle that is to contract.
In an ensouled machine, sensations arise from the five senses according
to how the nerve filaments affect the flow of spirits to the tube openings
(Figure 5). The character of the outflowing spirits causes one or another
sensation in the mind. The regularities governing the relation between brain
states (pineal outflowings and pineal position) and the resulting sensory
states may be deemed psychophysiological laws (Hatfield 2000).
In his full account of the perception of eye and limb position from
later in the Treatise, Descartes does not account for perception of the
location of our limbs via sensory fibers from the muscles that inform us
either of their state of contraction or directly of the position of the limb.
Rather, he constructs what in present-day terminology is called an “outflow”
theory of proprioception, or perception of the locations of bodily parts (and
sometimes effort of motion). In an outflow theory, the brain (or mind-brain)
does not determine the location of bodily parts by information coming in
from the muscles but rather utilizes the fact that a central brain state has
directed the limb to move to a certain location.16 The central brain states
that cause limb motion allow the perception of limb location. Descartes
calls these central brain states “ideas.” In the Treatise, Descartes uses “idea”
to mean what interpreters call “corporeal ideas,” which comprise both
“figures” formed by spirits leaving the pineal gland and other aspects of the
gland itself, including its position (as it happens, degree of lean) in the brain
cavity. There is no implication that these corporeal ideas are mental; rather,
in an ensouled being they are the cause of corresponding mental ideas.17
As regards the perception of limb position, Descartes says that “if we
have an idea about moving a member, that idea—consisting of nothing but
the way in which spirits flow from the gland—is the cause of the movement
16
For an introductory exposition of twentieth-century outflow theory applied to eye position,
see Gregory 1997, 101–105. Recent consensus on limb and eye proprioception favors a hybrid
account involving both afferent information from muscle or joint receptors and “corollary
discharge” or “efference copy” (outflow) factors stemming from motor commands; see
Desmurget and Grafton 2000, Donaldson 2000, and Proske and Gandevia 2012.
17
On corporeal ideas in Descartes and after, see Michael and Michael (1989). In the Treatise
on Man Descartes invokes only corporeal ideas, but in The World from the same period he
speaks of “ideas . . . in our mind” (CSM 1:81, AT 11:3); he also speaks of mental ideas in the
Discourse (AT 6:34) and Dioptrics (O 68, AT 6:85). In the Meditations, Descartes restricts
the term “idea” exclusively to mental ideas by explicit contrast with corporeal ideas (AT
7:160–161). In his commentary to L’Homme, La Forge (1677, 237–238) notes that Descartes
used the term “idea” in two senses, for the “internal form of our conceptions” and for “the
particular manner in which the spirits exit the gland,” and indicates that in the Treatise he
used the word in the latter sense.
FIGURE 5. Binocular eyes interacting with a pointing arm,

illustrating embodied vision in Descartes, from the Treatise.
Reproduced from Descartes 1677, 74, author’s collection.
itself” (H 92, AT 11:181). This account of limb proprioception is illustrated

by the woman’s arm in Figure 5. Her eyes are focused on an arrow. At
first, her arm points toward B, under the control of spirits issuing from
b on the pineal gland, which also sends spirits to the optic nerve tubes
opened by light reflected from B that affects optic nerve filaments 3-4 and
3-4. Descartes says:
one can suppose that what makes tube 8 turn toward point
b rather than toward some other point is merely that the
spirits leaving point b tend with greater force toward 8
than do any other spirits. The same thing will cause the
soul to sense [sentir] that the arm is turned toward object
B provided the soul is already in this machine. (H 92–93,
AT 11:181)
134 Gary Hatfield
If the spirits come from c, they cause the arm to move and point toward C;
the flowing spirits constitute a corporeal “idea” that yields a sensing in the
mind of the arm movement. Descartes offers a general principle concerning
limb locations and the ideas of those locations:
in general one must suppose that each tubule in the in-
ternal surface of the brain corresponds to a member, and
that each point of the surface of gland H corresponds to
a direction toward which these members can be turned:
whence the movements of these members, and the ideas
thereof, can be reciprocally caused, the one by the other.18
(H 94, AT 11:182)
The outflowing spirits that cause the muscle states that place the limb in a
certain location at the same time cause the mind to become aware of that
disposition of the limb. Descartes does not mention feeling the muscles and
their state of contraction; he says simply that, as a result of spirit flow, we
“sense” the location of the arm or other limb.
7 The Triangle of Convergence and the Physiology of Distance Per-

ception
Thus far, we have Descartes’s account of the perception of limb location

in the later passage of the Treatise. As the passage continues, Descartes
extends this account to the triangle of convergence and the accommodation
of the lens.
Descartes now explains that the convergence of the eyes is controlled by
the flow of the spirits. He might have held that we sense the rotation of
each eye by the outflow theory, and that we use this awareness to calculate
distance by angle-side-angle. But that isn’t his account. He does not speak
of feeling where each eyes is, or even of where the two eyes are. Instead,
he imagines a mechanism in which the eyes form a single system, which
causes a certain state in the pineal gland, which directly causes the idea of
the location (position and distance) of the object of fixation of the eyes.
18
Although Descartes speaks of (corporeal) “ideas” as “figures . . . traced in spirits on
the surface” of the pineal gland which the soul “considers” in imagining or sensing (H 86,
AT 11:176), suggesting a homuncular attitude toward mind–body interaction, I resist this
interpretation in favor of psychophysiological regularities (Hatfield 1992, 353–357; 2000;
Forthcoming). In any event, here Descartes speaks of what allows “the soul to sense” arm
location, which is not mere physiology, nor an instance of the soul “considering” brain states,
but of an apparently direct relation between central brain states controlling limb position and
the feeling of that position. La Forge (1677, 302), glossing the passage (at H 86, AT 11:176)
on ideas and the pineal gland, notes that in an ensouled human, the soul’s “perceptions will be
immediately united” to the movements that constitute a corporeal idea. He also explains that
the same motions of the spirits (the corporeal ideas) that cause the woman’s arm to move “give
occasion to the soul to perceive” the arm’s motion, because the soul’s thoughts are “united to
the movements of the spirits” (319).
The eyes can function as a single system because from a single location
on the pineal gland animal spirits can flow simultaneously in two directions,
into nerve tubules containing filaments that derive from corresponding
locations on the retinas. For the focal point, these locations are at the
center of each eye. Referring to Figure 5, the pointing woman, Descartes
explains:
when the two eyes of this machine (and the organs of the
several other senses) are, on occasion, directed toward one
and the same object, there are formed not several ideas of
it in the brain, but only one. To understand this, one must
suppose that it is spirits always leaving from single points
on the surface of gland H which, tending toward different
tubes, are able to turn different members toward the same
objects. Thus spirits leaving the same point b, by tending
toward tubes 4, 4, and 8, simultaneously turn the two eyes
and right arm toward object B. (H 94*, AT 11:182–183)
Spirits flowing in different directions from a single point b constitute the
motor command for pointing and for converging the eyes and (he soon
says) the idea of the distance to the object.19
Still referring to Figure 5, Descartes continues the passage by describing
the idea of distance as regards B and other locations:
This you will easily believe if, in order to understand what
the idea of the distance of objects consists in, you assume
that, as that surface [of the gland] changes position, the
closer the points on its surface are to the center of the brain
o the more distant are the places corresponding to them,
and that the farther the points are from it the closer the
corresponding places are. Here, for example, one assumes
that should point b be pulled somewhat farther to the rear
than it is, it would correspond to a place more distant than
19
In this example, Descartes does not separate the phenomenology of arm location and eye
position. Although not normally aware of eye position, we can easily notice arm locations.
The present example assumes an individual who focuses on the distal object of both vision and
arm-pointing, not on arm location itself. Still, Descartes’s scheme has theoretical resources for
separating visual phenomenology from the phenomenology of arm gesture; for, even though
the spirits all flow from point b, they flow in different directions. The fact that some flow
in one direction, some in another, would allow for different psychophysiological responses
depending on the direction of flow, thereby permitting a distinction between visual and haptic
experiences of focal object and pointing arm. Note that although Descartes here uses an
example in which someone looks at and points to a single location (thereby mechanizing the
role of the “common sense” in uniting the various senses, as Mattia Mantovani has suggested
to me), the joint arm and eye activity is not essential to my argument about natural geometry
and the outflow analysis. Finally, the illustrators of the Treatise did not explicitly depict the
tubes leading to the extraocular eye muscles that control convergence (nor indeed the tubes
leading to the intraocular muscle controlling accommodation).
136 Gary Hatfield
B; and if it were made to lean a little farther forward, it

would correspond to a place that was nearer. (H 94*, AT
11:183)
The “idea” of distance mentioned here is a corporeal idea. Nonetheless,
this corporeal state “will permit the soul, when there will be one in this
machine, to sense [sentir] different objects” at various distances according
to the position of the pineal gland (H 95, AT 11:183).
As for the triangle of convergence, Descartes now offers a further elab-
oration of its mechanism. He explains that mechanical processes in the
nerves and brain are themselves sufficient to cause the eyes to re-converge
after a change in the field of view. Thus, if the eyes were first converged for
an object farther away, as in part (a) of Figure 6, and then were presented
with a closer object, as in part (b) of Figure 6, several changes in the eyes
and brain would take place as a result of the presence of the closer object.
Among these would be the accommodation of the lens and the convergence
of the eyes to a nearer point, which occurs as the pineal gland changes the
flow of spirits by leaning forward.20 The tubes that control accommodation
and convergence are governed by outflowing spirits that are directed by the
lean of the gland: “the movements of gland H are sufficient in themselves
to change the position of these tubes and as a result the disposition of the
eye” (H 99, AT 11:187).
The triangle of convergence is yoked to the lean of the gland. Compare
parts (a) and (b) of Figure 6. For an object farther away, there is a larger
triangle, which is controlled by the flow of spirits from an upright gland.
With a closer object and a smaller triangle, the gland leans forward. These
corporeal alterations should then, in accordance with the scheme just
outlined, cause the mind to sense or experience the focal point as being at
a farther or nearer distance.21 In Descartes’s scheme, such acts of sensing
arise through an “institution of nature”—that is, by an innate regularity
governing the relation between brain states and sensory products.22
20
Descartes describes a feedback loop that operates when a near object is presented to eyes that
are focused for distance. The near object induces a stronger spirit flow when accommodation
and convergence match its distance and it becomes clearly imaged; the gland moves about
(and accommodation and convergence change) until it is captured by this stronger spirit flow
(H 99–100, AT 11:187–188).
21
The diagrams in the Dioptrics (Figure 4) and in the Treatise (Figure 5, Figure 6) show the
triangle of convergence as isosceles (or only nearly so, in Figure 1). Presumably, the pineal
mechanism might also include fixations not in the medial sagittal plane, but Descartes does
not address this point specifically.
22
This interpretation understands the “innateness” of natural geometry differently from
mentalistic views. For such views, an innate understanding of geometry is applied to felt
eye rotations, together perhaps with an innate idea of how far apart the eyes are (the latter
actually is too specific to be a good candidate for Cartesian innateness; see CSM 1:303–304,
AT 8B:357–359). On the present view, the innateness consists in the anatomical structures
underlying pineal lean and in the psychophysiological law linking leans to perceived distances,
severing any relation between natural geometry and geometrical reasoning or conceptions
of matter as pure extension. Note that the Latin Dioptrics translates “par une Geometrie
(a)
(b)
FIGURE 6. The visual system in the Treatise, showing

pineal physiology. Diagrams (a) and (b) exhibit differences
in pineal lean when the eyes are directed toward objects
at different distances. Reproduced from Descartes 1692b,
106, 120, author’s collection.
The envisioned mechanism is a psychophysiological correspondence and

does not require that the mind calculate, judge, or rely on ingrained habit.23
When the eyes are converged on an object at a certain distance, a brain
state occurs that causes a sense perception of an object at that distance.
Various brain states (leanings of the gland) are so ordered as to co-vary
with distance. The institution of nature is such that objects are accordingly
sensed (experienced) as being at different distances. The perceiver does
not project back along the lines of sight from each eye. Rather, by means
of a unified mechanism involving both eyes, the perceiver experiences a
single object located in relation to his or her body and head. The lines
drawn from the object to the two eyes allow the theorist to determine where
the object is perceived (if distance and direction are veridically perceived).
But these lines are not represented by the observer or the observer’s visual
naturelle” as “ex Geometria quadam omnibus innata” (AT 6:609); in such contexts, Descartes
treated “natural” and “innate” as equivalent (CSM 1:303, AT 8B:357).
23
Which is not to say that Descartes rejects all influence of ingrained habit. He has a hybrid
account, in which some aspects of perception rely on cognitive factors. See section 9.
138 Gary Hatfield
system. Rather, there is a mechanical yoking of the size of the triangle of

convergence to pineal lean, and a psychophysiological yoking of various
leans to the sensing of distance.24
This reading of the Treatise promotes an interpretation of Descartes’s
natural geometry that does not invoke reasoning or mental habit. It goes
against a long line of interpreters (some of whom are mentioned above)
who hold that, for Descartes, the sensory given in vision, or the immediate
effect of the brain on the mind, is always two dimensional.25 If the triangle
of convergence yields a perceptual experience of a point as at a distance,
then the third dimension is, at least sometimes, an immediate product of
psychophysiological correspondences.
The plausibility of this reading is confirmed by Descartes’s claim that
the accommodation of the lens, which is controlled by similar brain mecha-
nisms, allows us to “see” or “perceive” distance (O 105–106, AT 6:137).
The Dioptrics explains how changes in the brain corresponding to accom-
modation allow the mind to see things as being at various distances:
as we change [the shape of the body of the eye] in order
to adjust the eye to the distance of objects, we also change
a certain part of our brain, in a way that is instituted
by nature to allow our soul to perceive [apercevoir] that
distance. And this we ordinarily do without reflecting on
it, just as when we squeeze some body with our hand, we
adjust our hand to the size and shape of the body, and thus
feel it by means of the hand without having to think of
these movements. (O 105–106*, AT 6:137)
The Treatise explains that each state of accommodation is produced by a
degree of lean in the pineal gland (H 98–99, AT 11:186–187). Psychophysi-
ological laws relate those leans to a perception (an immediate experience)
of the focal object as being at a certain distance.
8 Natural Geometry and Proportional Compasses
According to the above interpretation of Descartes’s natural geometry, he

imagined the convergence mechanism as doing the equivalent of geometri-
cal evaluation, without any mental involvement. That is, the mechanism
24
One might extend this mechanism of leans/experienced distances to account for the ability
to imagine various points along the crossed sticks and their extension as shown in Figure 3;
Descartes himself offers a mechanism by which this might occur (H 95–96, AT 11:183–184).
25
In Hatfield and Epstein 1979, we attribute a two-dimensional sensory core to Descartes,
largely on the basis of the passage from the Sixth Replies (CSM 2:295, AT 7:437–438) to
be discussed in section 9. But we also acknowledge the direct psychophysiological produc-
tion of the experience of distance (three-dimensionality). I might now interpret the second
grade of sense from the Sixth Replies as specifying that directions are primitively given in
sensation, to which a distance may be assigned either by unnoticed cognitive operations or by
psychophysiological mechanisms, as in the hybrid account of section 9.
controlling the triangle of convergence performs a mechanical operation

that, through a psychophysiological institution of nature which pairs leans
with experienced distances, yields ordered phenomenal locations as point
N varies in distance (Figure 1). The physiological triangle of convergence
incorporates angle-side-angle relations that are reflected in the pineal state.
The mind need not represent these lines; the distance between the eyes and
the correlation with eye-turning is built into the mechanism. Accordingly,
geometrical relations are mechanistically incorporated into optical conver-
gence. The mechanism only need be approximative in relation to actual
distance, since Descartes acknowledges that we may get distance wrong
and that accommodation and convergence are of limited sensitivity (O 107,
110, AT 11:140, 144). Nonetheless, this mechanism may be considered a
material realization for making a brain state co-vary with the location of
the apex of a triangle.
Descartes was well acquainted with the notion of effecting geometrical
proportions mechanically. The sixteenth century saw the development of
various proportional compasses that included trigonometric computations
among their functions. One such compass was designed and sold by Galileo
(1978). Descartes himself invented mechanical devices to solve problems
of geometrical proportion. In 1619, he invented a geometrical compass
that could find two or more mean proportionals—a more difficult problem
than locating the apex of a triangle in relation to a base line. He designed a
second device to trisect angles.26 He thus offered mechanical solutions to
two classical problems in mathematics that could not be solved by ruler and
compass: trisection and the “Delic problem” of doubling the volume of a
cube, which is solved by finding two mean proportionals. (As mechanisms,
the devices yield only approximate solutions; they must be considered as
ideal devices to yield precise solutions.)
Descartes’s natural geometry as interpreted herein treats the binocular
eye system as a unit and does not require a psychological projection back
from retinal locations. A mental idea of the distance to the focal object is
produced directly and immediately by the pineal lean. Accordingly, there
is no need to suppose that the subject feels the state of rotation of the
eyes, the tenseness of the muscles, or specific retinal locations. The muscles
operate as part of a mechanical system that produces a degree of lean in
the pineal gland. The triangle of convergence can yield an experience of
distance without the observer being cognizant of the rotation of the eyes or
the distance between them. Our visual systems, by means of a mechanically
realized natural geometry, make us see and be aware of distance in a direct
and immediate fashion.
26
On Descartes’s compasses, see Shea 1991, chap. 3, and Bos 2001, chap. 16.4; on their
application to natural geometry, see also Hatfield Forthcoming.
140 Gary Hatfield
9 Descartes’s Hybrid Psychophysiological and Cognitive Account
Descartes’s psychophysiological account of how accommodation and con-

vergence work to yield distance perception is among his more original
contributions to the theory of vision. At the same time, he did not claim to
account for the visual perception of distance or other spatial properties such
as size entirely through a psychophysiological account. Accommodation
and convergence cannot account for all distance perception, if only because
their range is severely limited. These factors operate (respectively) out to
two or three feet and fifteen or twenty feet, in the estimate of the Treatise (H
67, AT 11:162), or four or five feet and a “short distance,” in the Dioptrics
(O 110, AT 6:144). For distance perception beyond this range, Descartes
invoked the traditional mechanisms of mental habit or unnoticed reasoning.
He presumably believed that some factors (such as prior knowledge) are
intrinsically cognitive or mental in their operation.
The interpretive problem is not to choose between these two sorts of ex-
planation, psychophysiological and cognitive, as if Descartes were required
to adopt one or the other; the problem is to see how they fit together. In
this regard, Descartes does not offer explicit help. Here is a sketch of how
things might relate.
On one occasion, Descartes apparently affirms that he has only a cogni-
tive account of the visual perception of spatial properties. In a well-known
passage from the Sixth Replies, he says: “that size, distance, and shape can
be perceived one from another by means of calculation [ratiocinatio] alone
I demonstrated in the Dioptrics” (CSM 2:295*, AT 7:438). This claim, as
it stands, is untrue.27 The Dioptrics explicitly offers a psychophysiological
account of the perception of distance by accommodation. Moreover, taking
the Treatise into account, the best interpretation of his natural geometry
is also psychophysiological. Even so, in the Dioptrics Descartes also in-
vokes relations between size and distance perception that rely on implicit
reasoning or mental habit.
There are several such cases, which open up the possibility of multiple re-
lations between cognitive factors and perceptual appearances. Immediately
after the natural geometry passage,28 Descartes says that we also perceive
27
Descartes may have had several reasons for this over-simplification. To begin with, in
responding to the objector’s question about error being corrected by reason or the senses, he
focused on the distinction between unnoticed judgments (which contain errors) and studied
judgments (which do so less frequently) and so referenced only cognitive factors from the
Dioptrics; see Hatfield and Epstein 1979, 378. Vinci (1998, 129–130) emphasizes the role of
unnoticed judgments in explaining illusions. See also Wolf-Devine’s (1993, 84–88) discussion
of the Sixth Replies and Dioptrics. In any event, the Dioptrics and Treatise, which incorporate
psychophysiological mechanisms, carry greater weight, as they give Descartes’s full account
of distance, size, and shape perception. Indeed, the fullest account is in the Treatise, which
remained unpublished when Descartes wrote this passage.
28
One might wonder whether a passage continuing from the first mention of “natural ge-
ometry” in the Dioptrics is not also cognitive. It describes distance perception with a single
distance by responding to “the distinctness or indistinctness of the shape

seen, together with the strength or weakness of the light” (O 106–107, AT
6:138). Although this might occur through a psychophysiological mecha-
nism, Descartes says that we “judge” objects to be nearer or farther away
in this fashion. If we take this to describe the process by which we perceive
distance, he has offered a cognitive account. If so, the judgment allows us
“to perceive” (apercevoir) distance. An unnoticed cognitive operation yields
a phenomenal experience of a location at a distance (as in the “third grade
of sense” from the Sixth Replies).29
Descartes next endorses one of Ibn al-Haytham’s means for distance
perception. For objects of known size at a distance, we are able “not
actually to see, but to imagine” (O 107, AT 6:139) their distance: “looking
from afar at some body that we are used to seeing close at hand, we judge
its distance much better than we would if its size were not so well known
to us” (O 107, AT 6:140). Given Descartes’s careful notation that we
don’t actually see the distance, here cognitive factors (e.g., known size) do
not yield a visual perception of distance, but rather an imagination and
judgment of distance.
eye that is placed first at point S and then at s (Figure 4); this action “will suffice to cause
the magnitude of the line Ss and of the two angles XSs and XsS to combine together in our
imagination, making us perceive [apercevoir] the distance of the point X: and this happens
by an action of thought that, although it is only a simple act of imagination, nonetheless
implicitly contains a reasoning [raisonnement] quite similar to that used by surveyors, when,
by means of two different stations, they measure inaccessible places” (O 106*, AT 6:138). The
passage deserves its own close reading. I would emphasize that Descartes attributes this means
of perceiving distance to the imagination, not judgment; although this act of imagination
“implicitly contains a reasoning” like that employed explicitly by surveyors, he could mean
that it contains such reasoning in the way that a mathematical compass contains the solutions
to trigonometric or other problems. Accordingly, the imagination would combine the two
views (from S and s), and the motion of the head in moving between them, to create a specific
lean of the pineal. As I read it, this passage does not decisively indicate whether the “action of
thought” is a mechanically effected act of imagination (a noncognitive process yields a distance
perception) or an unnoticed cognitive act of calculation. By the way, the Latin translation of
1644 renders “n’estant qu’une imagination toute simple” (AT 6:138) as “licet simplex judicum
esse videatur” (AT 6:609), which reads more definitely as the description of a cognitive act
and may have mislead readers restricted to the Latin, such as Berkeley. Also, the Latin renders
“raisonnement” as “ratiocinatio”; the latter often means “calculation” in Latin, a meaning
also found in the French but which was fading during the seventeenth century (Rey 1992,
1709).
29
In Hatfield and Epstein 1979, 376–378 we argue that Descartes held, in the Sixth Replies,
that unnoticed acts of reasoning or unnoticed mental habits yield a phenomenally immediate
experience of size, shape, and distance in the “third grade of sense.” I discuss Descartes’s
psychological (or judgmental or cognitive) accounts of the perception of distance, size, and
shape (as well as his psychophysiological mechanisms) in Hatfield 1986, 56–60; 1990, 38–39;
and 1992, 356–357. Wolf-Devine (1993) examines the psychophysiological vs. psychological
distinction using the terms “mechanical” and “homuncular.” She suggests (88–89) that
Descartes was primarily interested in mechanistic accounts and brought judgmental processes
to bear in an ad hoc manner. I believe that Descartes understood that cognitive factors must
be brought into play beyond near distances, owing to the limited range of accommodation
and convergence.
142 Gary Hatfield
Descartes now turns to two cases in which our experience of distance

is uncertain and we judge distance relations, implicitly or not, by taking
other factors into account. In the first case, beyond a dimly illuminated
forest lie mountains bathed in sunlight. If we responded only to the force
of the light, we might believe the mountains are closer; but the “position
of this forest . . . makes us judge it the nearer.” Here, it is natural to read
“position” as position along the ground line; the forest lies on a segment
that we would see first if, starting out staring at our feet, we slowly and
continuously sweep our gaze upward. In the second case, he speaks of
judging the distance of two ships on the sea, one smaller and proportionally
closer than the other, so that they “appear equal in size” (O 107, AT 6:140).
In this case, having noted that one ship appears less distinct, we judge it to
be farther away.
At this point, one might propose that Descartes held that because accom-
modation and convergence operate only to about twenty feet, beyond that
distance our experiences of distance become uncertain or phenomenally
indefinite. Accordingly, we would only see distance within the range of
our psychophysiological mechanisms, after which cognitive factors would
come into play that allow us merely to judge distance without experiencing
it phenomenally.
This interpretation faces difficulty, for at least two reasons. First, the
immediate phenomenal experience of distance is not restricted to the psy-
chophysiological mechanisms, for the Dioptrics describes a “seeing” of a
size at a distance which is the product of a mental combination of visual
angle with a value for distance (O 107, AT 6:140). This discussion includes
Descartes’s observation of what was later called size constancy. Speaking
of objects, Descartes says:
their size is estimated according to the awareness [con-
noissance], or the opinion, that we have of their distance,
compared with the size of the images that they imprint on
the back of the eye; and not absolutely by the size of these
images, as is obvious enough from this: while the images
may be, for example, one hundred times larger when ob-
jects are quite close to us than when they are ten times
farther away, they do not make us see the objects as one
hundred times larger because of this, but as almost equal
in size, at least if their distance does not deceive us. (O
107*, AT 6:140)
Descartes here rejects that we experience size by visual angle alone. Rather,
we combine visual angle (the equivalent of retinal size) with an “awareness”
or “opinion” of the distance. The result is a “seeing” of a size, not a mere
judging or estimating. On this interpretation, a value for distance (obtained
either psychophysiologically or cognitively) combines with a sensing of
visual angle to yield a phenomenal experience of a size at a distance.
Second, Descartes incorporates this relation between distance and visual

angle into his discussions of the small apparent sizes of the sun and moon
and of the moon illusion. He observes that although astronomical reasoning
informs us that the sun and moon are very large, they nonetheless “appear”
to us as one or two feet in diameter. This results because we cannot
“imagine” them as being more than one or two hundred feet away (O 111,
AT 6:144). Further, from antiquity, it has been observed that the horizon
moon frequently looks larger than the moon when overhead.30 It was
known that the visual angle produced by the horizon moon is no larger;
hence, another explanation was needed. From antiquity, theorists had
proposed that the apparent (read: phenomenal) size of the moon depends
on the value the visual system accepts for its distance. If we perceive the
moon as being farther away at the horizon than when overhead, it “appears”
larger (O 111, AT 6:145).
In these cases, Descartes allows a value for distance to enter not only
from perceptual awareness (connoissance) but also from “opinion” or
“imagination”; and yet the result is not a bare judgment but a seeing or
appearing of distance and size. Accordingly, Descartes’s hybrid account of
the integration of psychophysiological sensings with cognitively conditioned
sensings must be multifaceted. It must allow for cases, such as the ships at
sea, in which perceptual processes yield appearances of equal size but we
judge one item as larger, and for objects of known size at a distance, which
appear small and yet we correct for this through a judgment.31
I do not suffer from the illusion that this sketch has rendered all the
pieces as fitting together seamlessly. It may raise as many problems as it
addresses. I do hope that it indicates directions for further thought anent
Descartes’s hybrid account.
10 Implications
There is a long tradition, abetted by Berkeley’s Essay towards a New Theory

of Vision, according to which Descartes (implausibly) held that distance
perception arises through mental representations of the lines and angles of
the triangle of convergence which enter into mental computations.32
Although such a criticism is partially applicable to Kepler’s account of
the triangle of convergence, it does not fit Descartes as interpreted here.
Kepler did provide a cognitive account. Most likely, it did not ascribe angle-
side-angle reckoning to perceivers but attributed association of distances
with ocular states (including ocular musculature states) through habit and
30
Descartes also noted this illusion for the sun; one should avoid looking directly at the sun
in evaluating this point.
31
It further must allow for reflective judgments on sense perception, illusions, and the ontology
of sensory qualities (see Hatfield 1992, 357).
32
A standard source for Berkeley’s account and his criticism of Descartes is Atherton 1990.
On Berkeley’s associative account, see also Hatfield and Epstein 1979, 379–382.
144 Gary Hatfield
custom. In this respect, it partly resembled Berkeley’s own associationist

position. Kepler has the common sense becoming aware of the distance
between the eyes by custom and habit. Berkeley denies any awareness or
representation of interocular distance, but posits associative connections
among visual forms, muscular feelings, and tactual acquaintance with
three-dimensional structures.
The present reading of Kepler and Descartes might facilitate a survey of
the optical writers of the seventeenth century to see who adopted Descartes’s
psychophysiological account,33 who (besides Berkeley) attributed to him
a calculative natural geometry, and who adopted Kepler’s noncalculative
custom and habit.
With respect to Descartes, this reading amplifies the role of the brain in
his psychology of vision and indeed in his psychology more generally. His
natural geometry involves what we would today call brain computation,
mechanically effected. I say “mechanically effected” to signal that I do
not believe Descartes held that the “computation” in natural geometry is
carried out in a symbolic brain medium or is an instance of intentionally
characterized information-processing.34 Descartes hypothesized that some
brain states closely track distal states of affairs. It was not particularly
difficult for him to posit brain states mirroring proximal states such as the
retinal image; he need only mechanize Kepler’s discovery, in this way alter-
ing perspectivist accounts of transmitted images. But there is considerable
insight in imagining a brain state that tracks a distal state by mechanical
means. Accordingly, we must assign a larger role to brain processes than is
found in typical portrayals of Descartes’s mind–body dualism.
While I resist assimilating Descartes’s brain processes to contemporary
computational vision, I think a comparison with the noncomputational
informational account of Gibson (1950; 1966) is in order. Gibson was a
fan of modeling visual processing on “smart mechanisms” that can achieve
mathematically appropriate results through mechanical structure rather
than explicit computation. The planimeter is one such device (Runeson
1977). By fixing one arm and then running a wheel around the perimeter
of a plane figure, the planimeter offers a readout of the figure’s area. It is
a mechanical structure, but there is nothing in it that explicitly represents
formulae for computing areas. It just gives the area.
Similarly, Descartes’s mechanism of natural geometry sets up a corre-
lation between a brain state and a location at a distance. It does so via a
33
Malebranche (1997b, chap. 9.3) has the triangle of convergence and the accommodation of
the eye producing perceptions of distance. He calls these perceptions “judgments” but explains
that by this term he means sensations (chap. 7.4) produced according to psychophysiological
rules that take into account the geometry of vision and the structures of the eye, nerves, and
brain (1997a, sec. 25). In the first edition of the Search, he makes the tendency to have these
sensations part of the “nature” of the soul, but in the second edition and after he explains
that God performs the calculations and gives us the sensations (1962, 96, 109).
34
Gaukroger (2002, 200–203) attributes corporeal representations and information processing
to Descartes. For a response, see Hatfield 2008.
mechanical structure that nowhere contains an explicit formula for com-

puting the altitude of the triangle of convergence or the lengths of the two
sides. Rather, as a result of its mechanical structure, it just produces a brain
state that co-varies with the distance to the object (and presumably the
direction).
There is a larger story to be told about the brain and Descartes, one that
looks to the role of brain processes in producing adaptive behaviors that
are adjusted to environmental circumstances. This larger story concerns a
Descartes who differs from the familiar punching bag for anti-dualists. It is
a Descartes for whom the brain as a mechanical system plays an important
psychological role. This new Descartes is someone I would like to know
better and whose story wants telling.
Gary Hatfield
E-mail : hatfield@phil.upenn.edu
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Natural Geometry in Descartes

Article in Res Philosophica · January 2015

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Abstract: According to Kepler and Descartes, the geome-

Scholars have long puzzled over Descartes’s notion of natural geometry,

Res Philosophica, Vol. 92, No. 1, January 2015, pp. 117–148

FIGURE 1. The triangle of convergence. The converging

In Kepler’s earlier invocation of “the geometry of the triangle,” there is

some views, part of Descartes’s larger program of proposing and supporting

2 Commonalities and Differences in Optics before and after Kepler3

al-Haytham, an eleventh-century Islamic philosopher. For our purposes, we

FIGURE 2. Visual angle, size, and distance illustrated in

3 Kepler on the Triangle of Convergence

Kepler published two books on optics, both in the service of astronomy.

perceptible ratio to the distance of the eyes. . . . For here

This reading is confirmed by the continuing discussion in chapter 3. Kep-

4 Descartes and the Triangle of Convergence

Descartes was well-acquainted with Kepler’s optical works, describing

discussed other means of “seeing,” “judging,” or “imagining” distance by

In the Dioptrics, the discussion of natural geometry is similar, but the

FIGURE 3. The blind man with crossed sticks from the

The surrounding passages in both works help, by discussing the percep-

FIGURE 4. The binocular visual system from the Dioptrics.

be joined, in accordance with Figure 4, to perception of visual direction.

sensation that accords with the retinal image to project a three-dimensional

5 Natural Geometry as Reasoning or as Psychophysiology

It is generally recognized by Descartes’s philosophical interpreters that his

6 Limb Position Later in the Treatise

The Treatise is Descartes’s most complete account of his machine psychol-

FIGURE 5. Binocular eyes interacting with a pointing arm,

itself” (H 92, AT 11:181). This account of limb proprioception is illustrated

7 The Triangle of Convergence and the Physiology of Distance Per-

Thus far, we have Descartes’s account of the perception of limb location

B; and if it were made to lean a little farther forward, it

FIGURE 6. The visual system in the Treatise, showing

The envisioned mechanism is a psychophysiological correspondence and

system. Rather, there is a mechanical yoking of the size of the triangle of

8 Natural Geometry and Proportional Compasses

According to the above interpretation of Descartes’s natural geometry, he

controlling the triangle of convergence performs a mechanical operation

9 Descartes’s Hybrid Psychophysiological and Cognitive Account

Descartes’s psychophysiological account of how accommodation and con-

distance by responding to “the distinctness or indistinctness of the shape

Descartes now turns to two cases in which our experience of distance

Second, Descartes incorporates this relation between distance and visual

There is a long tradition, abetted by Berkeley’s Essay towards a New Theory

custom. In this respect, it partly resembled Berkeley’s own associationist

mechanical structure that nowhere contains an explicit formula for com-

Acknowledgements An earlier version was presented at the 2014 Henle Conference on

Wolf-Devine, Celia. 2000. “Descartes’ Theory of Visual Spatial Perception.” In Descartes’

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