Catching the Light

401 Pages·1995·9.382 MB·English

by  Arthur Zajonc

Entwined
ry
of Light
and Mind
"A small gem
of a book”
— James Gleick,
The Washington Post

CATC HING
THE
L
ight
The Entwined History of
Light and Mind
Arthur Zajonc
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York Oxford
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York
Athens Auckland Bangkok Bombay
Calcutta Cape Town Dares Salaam Delhi
Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne
Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore
Taipei Tokyo Toronto
and associated companies in
Berlin Ibadan
Copyright © 1993 by Arthur Zajonc
First published in 1993 by Bantam Books, a division of
Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10103
First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1995
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
AU rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retneval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zajonc, Arthur.
Catching the light: the entwined history of light and mind I
Arthur Zajonc.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN-13 978-0-19-509575-3 (Pbk.)
1. Light—History. 2. Light—Philosophy. I. Title.
QC352.Z35 1993
535'.09—dc20 92-20204
Printed in the United States of America
For my wife, Heide

Contents
Chapter 1
Entwined Lights: The Lights of Nature and of Mind
1
Chapter 2
The Gift of Light
10
Chapter 3
Light Divided: Divine Light and Optical Science
38
Chapter 4
The Anatomy of Light
58
Chapter 5
The Singing Flame: Light as Ethereal Wave
97
Chapter 6
Radiant Fields: Seeing by the Light of Electricity
124
vii
Contents
Chapter 7
Door of the Rainbow
161
Chapter 8
Seeing Light—Ensouling Science: Goethe and Steiner
188
Chapter 9
Quantum Theory by Candlelight
225
Chapter 10
Of Relativity and the Beautiful
253
Chapter 11
Least Light: A Contemporary View
292
Chapter 12
Seeing Light
330
Notes
345
Acknowledgments
371
Index
373
viii
I’ll tell you how the sun rose a ribbon at a time.
Emily Dickinson.
I am the one who openeth his eyes, and there is light;
When his eyes close, darkness falleth.
the Egyptian god Ra, 1300 B.C.
If the light rises in the Sky of the heart... and, in the
utterly pure inner man attains the brightness of the sun
or of many suns... then his heart is nothing but light, his
subtle body is light, his material covering is light, his
hearing, his sight, his hand, his exterior, his interior, are
nothing but light.
Najm Razi, 1256
All the fifty years of conscious brooding have brought me
no closer to the answer to the question, “What are light
quanta?” Of course today every rascal thinks he knows
the answer, but he is deluding himself.
Albert Einstein, 1951