大象传媒

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.