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Emma Coolidge · Joined: 01 Apr 2014 Posts: 8 Location: United States

Post your thoughts about how the work of each scientist might help in answering the project question: What is Light?
“The search for an answer to the question “what is light?” profoundly changed the discipline of science”

Like many others have said, Newton's regard for process and the importance of a consistent scientific method changed Science. He was extremely logical in his thinking. Also, I don't know how "revolutionary" this was, but before he announced his theory of color, he put his discoveries to use and basically reinvented the telescope. His value of the practicality of information seems like a more concrete approach to science than ones which previous philosophers took.

Two things stood out to me about Faraday. The first was his idea that "if electricity could generate magnetism...then magnetism ought to be able to generate electricity" (108). His deductive reasoning is really, really good. I was also struck by his idea about the possibility of light being a force rather than a material (I'm not sure I interpreted that bit exactly right?). I think that the way he came up with these ideas impacted Science as a discipline, but I'm still working on exactly what the effects are.

Maxwell had a huge impact on the field of science in terms of information, and a slightly smaller impact on the process of Science as a discipline. He really used math and creativity together in a way most people (especially high schoolers like me) have a hard time imagining.

amartinez · Joined: 31 Mar 2014 Posts: 16

Sorry for this super late post!! I think what Faraday and Maxwell ran up against constantly was the fact that they lived in a society that prioritized Newtonian truth over any other evidence, which I have a very difficult time accepting for a number of reasons. Primarily, it's upsetting to think about the kind of ideas that might have been censored as a result, and moreover it really made me question what is so absolutely Truth-containing in fact gleaned from experimental evidence. In other words - why is experiment true? Newton was "the first person to distinguish the rays of different colours, and he named the seven coulours of the spectrum" because of mystical belief - if he can allow for this personal bias in an area of his scientific method, who is to say that his experiments were not filled with bias of their own, or the results produced? Beyond margin of error, I'm really starting to question why an experiment created to produce a specific result/test a specific idea or hypothesis is considered truthful if it's inherently skewed towards a certain goal. And to boot, when Maxwell was deriving his analogy between electricity and fluid, his mental image was so physically impossible - and yet, he derived what is commonly accepted as Truth. The whole idea of a fact being attained by means of non-truthful thinking just seems quite dubious to me, and I'm very skeptical of Newtonian's scientific method now.
All that being said about Newtonian method, I think his work with the prism might help in considering where to look for light in order to define it (not just where to look for light, but where to look for light that will be discernibly separate enough to perhaps perform experimentation). Furthermore, Faraday's innovative ideas about electricity and magnetism creating fields of reality seems inviting of exploring light as not just a presence, but an object - as we cannot "touch" light, we cannot touch these fields, but declaring them as space makes them feel a little more three-dimensional, and thus much easier to relate to. (I think this also came up a lot in the reading: Science is purely human; it is influenced by peer groups and inescapably biased. To this end, it's also a lot about how we relate to objects, and it's so curious to me that we try to disguise this search for relationships to ourselves as a curiosity to detachedly explore the world. I personally think that it develops the methods and the goals of the discipline to be somewhat about control, but that's another topic). Finally, Maxwell's four all-encompassing equations make me think that his way of treating Science was much more thematic rather than amalgamated (for instance, rather than building only off his previous argument, he tied all his ideas back to a central search - much like Aristotle and Darwin). Treating Science like this allows for continual discovery rather than isolated knowledge; I think, because there were theories about the potential for light's existence as either a wave or a particle, that having a success-story for revisitation rather than pompous defense of perhaps-wrong evidence is critical to fully understanding light's properties.

Greg Wright · Joined: 31 Mar 2014 Posts: 9

I didn't know we were supposed to post here on Wednesday night (oops).

Any who,

What is Light?
“The search for an answer to the question “what is light?” profoundly changed the discipline of science”

What is light? This question definitely divided the scientific world and most definitely proves to be a difficult question for the average Joe to answer. But! Newton wasn't just an average Joe. He was hecka smart. Although some of his ideas about the corpuscules were wrong, he paved the way for later scientists to examine light. One of my favorite things he proved was that white light is "un-pure" or made of all wave lengths. Also he invented a pretty rad telescope that was wicked simple and is really easy to build. (I made one with my dad a few summers ago, cool stuff).

After Newton there were many other scientists that improved upon or disproved some of his theories leading to a stronger understanding of science and to more experiments being done to prove theories. Eventually the mathematicians got involved, Maxwell + folk, and now we've got some great differential equations for light! Yeah!

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