''Light Fantastic'' is the title of a television

documentary series Television documentaries are televised media productions that screen documentaries. Television documentaries exist either as a television documentary series or as a television documentary film. *Television documentary series, sometimes called d ...

that explores the phenomenon of light and aired in December 2004 on BBC Four. The series comprised four programmes respectively titled: "Let There Be Light"; "The Light of Reason"; "The Stuff of Light"; and "Light, the Universe and Everything." The material was presented by

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...

academic

Simon Schaffer Simon J. Schaffer (born 1 January 1955) is a professor of the history and philosophy of science at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and was editor of ''The British Journal for the History of Sc ...

.http://www.bbc.co.u
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Let There Be Light

The first episode shows how the desire, by Greek, Arab and Christian scholars to penetrate the divine nature of light led to modern science's origins. The programme explores the contributions of

Empedocles Empedocles (; grc-gre, Ἐμπεδοκλῆς; , 444–443 BC) was a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a native citizen of Akragas, a Greek city in Sicily. Empedocles' philosophy is best known for originating the cosmogonic theory of the ...

;

Euclid Euclid (; grc-gre, Εὐκλείδης; BC) was an ancient Greek mathematician active as a geometer and logician. Considered the "father of geometry", he is chiefly known for the '' Elements'' treatise, which established the foundations of ...

; Al Hazen; Roger Bacon; Descartes and

Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author (described in his time as a " natural philosopher"), widely recognised as one of the grea ...

.''Let There Be Light'' 7 August 2006 01:50 BBC Four

Greek scholars

The nature of light, and how we see, was first investigated by the early Greek philosophers. Light seemed to fill all space while allowing a kind of penetration of the world thus offering a clue to the structure of the whole universe. The world was bathed in light but, to bring it within the world of reason, it was necessary to abstract and choose phenomena where light behaved in a special or strange way: Why do faraway objects appear smaller and why do objects change their position and shape when placed underwater?. Empedocles' idea, that we see objects because light streams out of our eyes and touches them, became the fundamental basis on which mathematicians would construct some of the most important theories on light and vision.

Euclid's Optics Euclid's ''Optics'' ( grc-gre, Ὀπτικά), is a work on the geometry of vision written by the Greek mathematician Euclid around 300 BC. The earliest surviving manuscript of ''Optics'' is in Greek and dates from the 10th century AD. The wo ...

expanded this idea to make an important breakthrough: We know in our minds that a faraway building is bigger, yet it is possible to position a finger such that our eye tells us they are of similar size. Euclid's elegant solution was that the eye and both the tops of finger and building must lie on the same line – thus the rays from the eye must follow straight lines; the new discipline of geometry could thus make predictions and solve problems of light and optics.

Al Hazen

Al Hazen earned a living selling his copies of Euclid's Geometry before obtaining the patronage of Al Hakim, 6th Fatimid Caliph in

Cairo Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the Capital city, capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, List of ...

. Al Hazen was unable to fulfill his task of stopping the

flooding of the Nile The flooding of the Nile has been an important natural cycle in Egypt since ancient times. It is celebrated by Egyptians as an annual holiday for two weeks starting August 15, known as ''Wafaa El-Nil''. It is also celebrated in the Coptic Church ...

and was imprisoned. Here he noted a problem with Empedocles's theory: having been in darkness and then suddenly exposed to light, his eyes felt intense pain. It seemed improbable that, if rays were indeed emitted by the eye, this would happen; instead Al Hazen postulated that light rays travelled through space in straight lines and entered our eyes by bouncing off objects. He studied

refraction In physics, refraction is the redirection of a wave as it passes from one medium to another. The redirection can be caused by the wave's change in speed or by a change in the medium. Refraction of light is the most commonly observed phenome ...

and the symmetry of reflection, producing a seven-volume work which became the new standard text.

Christian science

In the centuries following Al Hazen's death, the Catholic Church determined to demonstrate its Divine authority and produce a "Christian" knowledge of light. The translation of the work of the Islamic scholars allowed Roger Bacon, in the 13thC, to study and develop Al Hazen's work through experimentation with the distortion and colour effects of light through glass and water.

The Light of Reason

The second episode explores the link between the development of practical tools that manipulate light and the emergence of new ideas. The subject is examined through the work of

Tycho Brahe Tycho Brahe ( ; born Tyge Ottesen Brahe; generally called Tycho (14 December 154624 October 1601) was a Danish astronomer, known for his comprehensive astronomical observations, generally considered to be the most accurate of his time. He was ...

; Galileo;

Vermeer Johannes Vermeer ( , , see below; also known as Jan Vermeer; October 1632 – 15 December 1675) was a Dutch Baroque Period painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. During his lifetime, he was a moderately succe ...

; Robert Hooke;

William Herschel Frederick William Herschel (; german: Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel; 15 November 1738 – 25 August 1822) was a German-born British astronomer and composer. He frequently collaborated with his younger sister and fellow astronomer Caroline ...

; Ole Rømer;

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended ...

and

Ernest Rutherford Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937) was a New Zealand physicist who came to be known as the father of nuclear physics. ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' considers him to be the greatest ...

.''The Light of Reason'' 8 August 2006 02:00 BBC Four Brahe was granted the island of Hven by Denmark's Frederick II. From here he observed a comet in 1577. Tycho's measurements proved it was further away than supposed thus challenging the Church's traditional view that God had created the Earth at the centre of the

Universe The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the universe. ...

.Hodgkinson, Will. ''G2: Satellite, cable and digital: Pick of the day'', ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', 8 December 2004

The Stuff of Light

The third episode charts the discovery of the true nature of light and the subsequent development of modern technology such as electricity and mobile phones. The pioneers are credited as

James Clerk Maxwell James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish mathematician and scientist responsible for the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, which was the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism and li ...

;

Joseph Swan Sir Joseph Wilson Swan FRS (31 October 1828 – 27 May 1914) was an English physicist, chemist, and inventor. He is known as an independent early developer of a successful incandescent light bulb, and is the person responsible for develop ...

William Armstrong;

Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventi ...

;

Wilhelm Röntgen Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (; ; 27 March 184510 February 1923) was a German mechanical engineer and physicist, who, on 8 November 1895, produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range known as X-rays or Röntgen rays, an achie ...

;

J. J. Thomson Sir Joseph John Thomson (18 December 1856 – 30 August 1940) was a British physicist and Nobel Laureate in Physics, credited with the discovery of the electron, the first subatomic particle to be discovered. In 1897, Thomson showed that ...

; and

Max Planck Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (, ; 23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947) was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. Planck made many substantial contributions to theoretical p ...

.''The Stuff of Light'' 9 August 2006 02:00 BBC Four In 1847, as a sixteen-year-old, Maxwell was taken to see one of the minor scientific wonders of the Victorian world: A

prism Prism usually refers to: * Prism (optics), a transparent optical component with flat surfaces that refract light * Prism (geometry), a kind of polyhedron Prism may also refer to: Science and mathematics * Prism (geology), a type of sedimentary ...

made from a special Icelandic crystal.

Light, the Universe and Everything

The final episode explores the relationship between light, the eye and the mind and the development of technologies such as photography and cinema. The achievements of John Dalton;

Benjamin Thompson Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, FRS (german: Reichsgraf von Rumford; March 26, 1753August 21, 1814) was an American-born British physicist and inventor whose challenges to established physical theory were part of the 19th-century revolut ...

; Thomas Young;

Lord Rayleigh John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, (; 12 November 1842 – 30 June 1919) was an English mathematician and physicist who made extensive contributions to science. He spent all of his academic career at the University of Cambridge. Am ...

;

Joseph Priestley Joseph Priestley (; 24 March 1733 – 6 February 1804) was an English chemist, natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject educator, and liberal political theorist. He published over 150 works, and conducted exp ...

; Thomas Wedgwood;

Eadweard Muybridge Eadweard Muybridge (; 9 April 1830 – 8 May 1904, born Edward James Muggeridge) was an English photographer known for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in motion-picture projection. He adopted the first ...

;

Étienne-Jules Marey Étienne-Jules Marey (; 5 March 1830, Beaune, Côte-d'Or – 15 May 1904, Paris) was a French scientist, physiologist and chronophotographer. His work was significant in the development of cardiology, physical instrumentation, aviation, cinema ...

and

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...

are discussed.''Light, the Universe and Everything'' 10 August 2006 02:00 BBC Four From their knowledge of colour blindness, some Victorian scientists believed they could prove the perceived cultural supremacy of the English by measuring differences of colour perception in different races. The idea was that animals were lower down the evolutionary scale but had better attuned senses than humans. If it could be proved that black people had better responses to light and colour this would be evidence of their inferiority. In 1898

William Rivers William Halse Rivers Rivers FRS FRAI ( – ) was an English anthropologist, neurologist, ethnologist and psychiatrist known for treatment of First World War officers suffering shell shock, so they could be returned to combat. Rivers' most f ...

, together with a group of Cambridge academics, set off for the Torres Straits to prove exactly this. Rivers used a

tintometer The Tintometer Limited was founded in 1885 by Joseph Williams Lovibond, the son of a prominent brewery owner in Greenwich, London. J.W. Lovibond developed the world's first practical colorimeter as a means of ensuring the high quality of his beer ...

but found his original hypothesis was false and that the range of "colour difference perception" of the islanders was little different from that of the English. When Rivers returned to England he spearheaded dissemination of the fact that there was no scientific evidence to support

white supremacy White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White s ...

. The programme continues and describes Priestley's discovery of

photosynthesis Photosynthesis is a process used by plants and other organisms to convert light energy into chemical energy that, through cellular respiration, can later be released to fuel the organism's activities. Some of this chemical energy is stored i ...

DVD release

The series was released as a region 2 DVD in 201

References

External links

*
BBC Active ''Light Fantastic'' page.
*{{IMDb title, id=0810664, title=Light Fantastic 2004 British television series debuts 2004 British television series endings 2000s British documentary television series BBC television documentaries BBC television documentaries about history BBC television documentaries about science English-language television shows