Light
A Radiant History from Creation to the Quantum Age
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- US$17.99
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Light begins at Stonehenge, where crowds cheer a solstice sunrise. After sampling myths explaining First Light, the story moves on to early philosophers' queries, then through the centuries, from Buddhist temples to Biblical scripture, when light was the soul of the divine.
Battling darkness and despair, Gothic architects crafted radiant cathedrals while Dante dreamed a "heaven of pure light." Later, following Leonardo's advice, Renaissance artists learned to capture light on canvas. During the Scientific Revolution, Galileo gathered light in his telescope, Descartes measured the rainbow, and Newton used prisms to solidify the science of optics. But even after Newton, light was an enigma. Particle or wave? Did it flow through an invisible "ether"? Through the age of Edison and into the age of lasers, Light reveals how light sparked new wonders--relativity, quantum electrodynamics, fiber optics, and more.
Although lasers now perform everyday miracles, light retains its eternal allure. "For the rest of my life," Einstein said, "I will reflect on what light is." Light explores and celebrates such curiosity.
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Watson (Freedom Summer), a frequent contributor to Smithsonian, leads an engrossing tour of humans' longtime fascination with and study of light. He bookends his narrative with accounts of his visits to Stonehenge, for the summer solstice, and Ireland's Newgrange, for the winter solstice. Between these brilliantly described personal experiences, Watson traces scientific inquiry into the nature of light from the ancient Greeks, including Empedocles and Euclid, through scholars of the golden age of Islam such as Ibn al-Haytham (aka Alhazen), to the more modern figures of Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Richard Feynman. This isn't just a book of science history; inventors such as photography pioneer Louis Daguerre and light bulb originator Thomas Edison take their places amongst the academics of light, and Watson includes artists as well. Abbot Suger, designer of the church at Saint-Denis, France, receives his due along with the polymath Leonardo da Vinci, painters Rembrandt van Rijn and J.M.W. Turner, composer Joseph Haydn, poet and artist William Blake, and many others. Watson even includes an appendix on the light that some people see during near-death experiences. Weaving his own journeys and experiments throughout the work, Watson provides a panoramic view of human engagement with this most curiosity-inducing phenomenon.
