Light Fantastic, with Simon Schaffer (2004) BBC

Programme one: Let There Be Light

Programme one: Let There Be Light

Greek and Arab scholars, and later Europeans such as Descartes and Newton all tried to understand light to gain a better understanding of God. Episode one shows how much of modern science's origins came from the desire to penetrate the divine nature of light.



The journey into the nature of light itself begins with a fascinating look into man's earliest beliefs. According to Genesis, God created light before the heavens and the earth. In Islamic culture, there is a close connection between light, truth and divinity.



Light Fantastic: Let There Be Light charts the powerful relationship in all cultures between our understanding of light and our ever changing relationship with religion. Beginning in Scilly 2,000 years ago Simon Schaffer embarks on his investigation with a look at the Greek philosopher and poet Empedocles, who created the first comprehensive theory of light and vision. Empedocles put forward the idea that light streams from the eyes and touches objects. From this seemingly unlikely theory, one of the most important early discoveries about light was made.



Euclid, a renowned Greek mathematician, reasoned that light must travel in straight lines. This discovery was to transform navigation into a rigorous skill based on the positions of the sun and the stars. Greek navigators opened up new trade routes, and Greek culture and learning dominated the civilised world.



Islamic scholars were to develop these ideas further: Alhazen - who made a living copying the works of Euclid - studied light and the eye in great depth and created the earliest law of reflection, that eventually pathed the way for modern optics. Jumping forward to the development and spread of Christianity, the story of light moves on to how the church used light to both inspire and control its flock.



Light was essential for the church to dramatise true faith. Churches were bathed in candle light and featured intricate stained glass windows in order to transport their flock closer to God. Light was seen as a direct messenger of God.

Source: www.bbc.co.uk

Light Fantastic explores the phenomenon that surrounds and affects nearly every aspect of our lives but one which we take for granted - light. BBC FOUR's Light Fantastic explores the phenomenon that surrounds and affects nearly every aspect of our lives but one which we take for granted - light.



Light is everywhere, it fills all space but remains one of the most puzzling, intriguing and enigmatic aspects of nature. Presenter Simon Schaffer explores the relationship between life and light, revealing how its true essence has tormented human beings since classical times. Human investigation of light has led to a series of scientific, social and artistic developments. The need to understand light revolutionised the world. The ubiquitous technologies of modern living - electricity, mobile communications and, especially, the widespread ability to illuminate the world 24 hours a day - came into being as the mysteries of light began to be unravelled.



Discussing the aims of the series presenter Simon Schaffer says: "Light Fantastic tells the story of light's meanings through history, science and technology. "The aim was to make what seems familiar into something strange, so that the technological furniture of the modern world can be given back its ancestry. "Without those memories, modern society is trapped by the illusion that everything that matters is new; or that the past belongs to the conservative. "A radical history of light's importance is all about changing the way we see, and Light Fantastic tries to do nothing less."



Each film is based around one key breakthrough in ways of understanding and controlling light. Throughout the series Schaffer explores the life and work of those who developed our understanding of light concluding with the achievements of Albert Einstein, whose theory of relativity caused a profound change in the way the sciences depict light and the universe. Anne Laking, executive producer, says: "This was a challenging and exciting series to work on. I'm thrilled to have been part of it and am looking forward to viewers' reactions when it goes out on BBC FOUR."



Paul Sen, series producer, says: "It was a great privilege to work with Simon Schaffer. He has a rare ability to make the history of science seem fresh and relevant. I hope his passion and insight come through in this series."

Source: www.bbc.co.uk

Interview with Simon Schaffer



How did you originally get involved with Light Fantastic?



Annabel Gillings, who produced the programmes, contacted me about a series on light. I think the original idea was for a science-based series using optics, vision and so on to communicate interesting discoveries in physics and chemistry and how light works. I thought this approach would be mistaken, as it judged past events as either good or bad, depending on whether they delivered us to where we are now. She was interested in my approach so we met up and worked out ways of dividing up the whole history of optics into four hours!



How is Light Fantastic different from a straight science-based documentary?



Unlike some public science writing and broadcasting which explains the roots of where we are now, this series is about understanding the roots of where we were. In other words, the past of the sciences is presented on its own terms, showing the context for the development of the ideas, the significance of forces like theology, culture and economic development. To imagine there have always been scientists is very misleading. Before the 19th Century no one calls themselves a scientist, they don't cut up the world like that. I look at the preoccupations of the clergymen, medics, industrialists, engineers and professors who make breakthroughs. Take Newton: you can't understand what he is doing in the 1660s, experimenting with prisms and sunlight, unless you realise he is obsessed by the problems of religion and God.



Light interests him because it's the principle of divinity, or how creation happens.



Realising the meaning of those experiments to Newton, in theological terms, demonstrates just how different the intellectual environment was to our current one.



I think the programmes challenge the 'conflict thesis': the idea that the progress of science has always been contested by established religion. Almost all the people I mention in the series are creationists. Galileo was a believer. He wanted the church to agree that the Earth goes round the Sun because he didn't want the church to be wrong!

You emphasise the connection between new scientific understanding and craftsmanship in the programmes…



Yes. Innovations like the spy-glass, dyeing cloth and making specs really mattered.



New phenomena, theory and stories are always related to new hardware becoming available, new relations between scholars and craftsmen and economic developments. I think this is well illustrated in the electric light story where the market plays such a key role.



The programmes seem to cover a vast territory, you visit Hven in Denmark, Sicily and Egypt comes into it…



Yes. I wanted to link up what Brits were up to in the period 1600 to 1900 and what other cultures, people, savants and natural philosophers are doing to give a networked picture of the development of the sciences.



Did the people at the forefront of the discoveries share any common traits?



I think the best way to think about the extraordinary gallery of rogues and heroes who crop up is not so much to think of them as psychological types but to try and think of them as social types.

What kinds of job, enterprise, role and vocation put Europeans into a situation where they make a scientific breakthrough? What type of society is it that puts people into positions that then allow them to do the kinds of things the programmes describe?



Alhazen, Galileo and Tycho Brahe are all men who advised the state, who were in turn trusted by the state and who in all three cases got into trouble with the state when those relations of authority and trust broke down. In all three cases it's between the reliability of the expert and the breakdown of trust that the new knowledge of optics emerges.



Was there anything you particularly liked about making the programmes?



I loved going up in the balloon on the island of Hven looking down on Tycho Brahe's garden, not just because I'd never been in one, but also because it was such a testimony to the creativity of the BBC - the production team had decided to film me in a balloon quite spontaneously, after they saw the seemingly unappealing location. The programmes also have some very fine moments of surreal juxtaposition, like the dissection of the ox eye in the case of Descartes, filmed in Smithfield. I loved talking about Descartes in Smithfield. The director, Jeremy Turner, had many brilliant ideas like that.



Was the television a good way to communicate your ideas?



There are optical affects which you can communicate on the screen but which you simply can't do any other way. I really enjoyed showing visually how things bend through lenses and I think the replications worked brilliantly - like Count Rumford's colour experiments and Tom Wedgwood's attempts to make silver nitrate blacken and so on.



Those are the best ways to communicate that the history of science is the history of work: it's lots of different human beings collaborating in groups to work very hard over long periods of time with the hardware to hand. It was also great to be able to use the Victorian scientific equipment like the wave apparatus and telescope to illustrate these people's ideas. On the other hand, it takes a very long time on telly to communicate an idea I think I communicate in a sentence when I'm writing, or talking or teaching, because so much else has to be going on.

Source: www.bbc.co.uk