Programme two: The
Light Of Reason
For the second programme in the Light Fantastic series Simon
Schaffer delves into the consequences of people learning to
manipulate and use light.
While scholars pondered the divine nature of light, other more humble
sorts like sailors, artists and surveyors learnt to use light for practical
purposes.
They studied light's properties to better navigate their ships, to
paint more realistically and to design buildings.
The impact of these 'artisans' of light was no less dramatic than
that of more high-minded philosophers.
For example, Galileo was only able to provide evidence that the heavens
did not go around the earth because he had a telescope.
And the reason he had a telescope was because the soldiers and traders
of Venice were hungry for such a device.
So one of the greatest controversies to shake the Catholic Church came
from the fact that artisans had built lenses to magnify the images light
carries for purely practical reasons.
Lenses would have similarly revolutionary consequences in art as painters
like Vermeer used them to paint with great social realism and in medicine
as scientists like Hooke used them to discover cells.
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