Main entry:

Park, David, 1919-2012.

Title & Author:

The fire within the eye : a historical essay on the nature and meaning of light / David Park.

Publication:

Description:

xiii, 377 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 357-372) and index.
The power of light : Prospectus ; The roots of matter ; Atoms and emptiness ; Plato’s philosophy of ideas ; Aristotle’s philosophy of desire ; What is science, and how do you know it is right? ; Planets power the world, light stops a planet ; The Manichees: light defeated by darkness ; And there was light -- The image and the mind : What color is green? ; The arrow from the eye ; A world full of images ; Fire within the eye ; The activity of what is transparent ; Galen and the stoics ; Aristotle takes aim at a rainbow ; Three theories of vision -- Rays : What are the stars saying? ; Euclid draws pictures of light ; Hero finds economy in nature ; Ptolemy studies optics ; Philoponus, the last Greek philosopher in Egypt ; Alkindi’s web of radiation ; Alhazen writes a book -- The light that shineth in darkness : Plato and the meaning of light ; Three Denises and the ghost of Plato ; Images of heaven ; Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln ; Species ; Interlude on university life ; Roger Bacon rebels ; How do I see what I see? ; Two doctors -- The end of classical optics : Witelo, also, writes a book ; Where did I put my glasses? ; How to paint space ; How to draw distance ; Porta asks a question ; Galileo the investigator ; “Light is created” -- From notes toward a supreme fiction, by Wallace Stevens -- A new age begins : Johannes Kepler, the emperor’s mathematician ; Paralipomena ; Lenses and species ; Refraction: Willibrord Snel improves on Ptolemy ; René Descartes invents a world ; Fermat: a mathematician looks at optics -- The rise of optical experiment : Old Römer and the speed of light ; Father Grimaldi avoids a quarrel ; Robert Hooke and the royal society ; Isaac Newton’s theory of color ; Particles of light ; Opticks ; Christiaan Huygens, the Dutch master ; The rainbow is caught ; James Bradley goes for a sail -- Enlightenment : The eighteenth century ; The musical atoms of Leonhard Euler ; Goethe does not believe what he reads ; Goethe’s theory of color ; Light is a wave ; Seeing farther: telescopes ; Seeing smaller: microscopes ; Learning from color: spectroscopy -- Unification : A world floating in ether ; Faraday imagines a field ; Maxwell: electricity plus magnetism gives light ; Hertz finds the electric waves ; The vast spectrum of light ; Trying to find the ether ; Einstein draws conclusions ; Eyes and brains -- What is light? : Light seems to be a particle ; Niels Bohr holds an atom in his hand ; A new kind of understanding ; Spooky actions at a distance ; Instruments and techniques ; Then what is light? ; Light and shade – Michelangelo’s sonnet to darkness.

Summary:

In The Fire within the Eye, scientist and author David Park helps us reconceive the everyday phenomenon of light in profound ways, from spiritual meanings embedded in our culture to the challenging questions put forth by great scientists and philosophers. Park, who is both a gifted teacher and physicist, takes us on a tour through history spanning ancient Greek, Neoplatonic, and Arabic philosopher together with astrology, the metaphysics of Galileo and Kepler, and the role of mathematics and experimentation in modern physics. By creatively synthesizing a broad sweep of historical events and intellectual movements around the theme of light, the author offers readers of all backgrounds a unique perspective on Western civilization itself. Readers will find themselves immersed in lively discussions conducted by a physicist equally at home exploring the invention of perspective by Brunelleschi and Alberti, the writings of Goethe, or the mathematical models inspiring Maxwell's electromagnetic theory. Park writes eloquently of the physical, aesthetic, and spiritual aspects of light, making this book an invaluable guide for all readers wishing to explore the fascinating relationship between science and culture.

Resources:
Table of contents
Publisher description

ISBN:

0691043329 (cloth ; acid-free paper)
9780691043326 (cloth ; acid-free paper)

Subject:

Light History.
Optics History.
Light history.
Light philosophy.
Lumière Histoire.
Optique Histoire.
Light
Optics
Lichttheorie.
Licht.
Waarneming.
Kleurwaarneming.

Form/genre:

History

Holdings:

Location: Library main 196792
Call No.: ID QC352.P34; ID:98-B1648
Status: Available