Catching the Light: The Entwined History of Light and Mind - Hardcover

Zajonc, Arthur G.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593029100 ISBN 13: 9780593029107

Publisher: Bantam USA, 1993

Synopsis

`This is a most persuasive book on a most important subject. I recommend it highly.'
Saul Bellow

With scholarship and clarity, Arthur Zajonc takes us on an epic journey into scientific history. Yet Catching the Light is not just about science; it is a book of ideas that blends science with literature, religion, philosophy, and morality and tries to answer the question that has mystified humanity from pre-history to the present day: what is light?

About this title

Review

`a multi-levelled history about virtually everything that human beings have thought about light and seeing in the last three thousand years... ...I have not enjoyed a book so much for a long time.Oliver Sacks

`a small gem of a book'James Gleik, Washington Post

Synopsis

Blending science with literature, religion, philosophy and morality, this is an odyssey into our understanding of the mystery and nature of light. A needle dropped onto the floor may be in our field of vision but remain unseen. How - in a flash of recognition - do we perceive it? Consider the true story, set down here in detail, of the man, blind from early infancy, whose eyes were surgically repaired and yet still could not see. Or the fact that the ancient Greeks lacked words for green and blue and Homer looked out on a "wine-dark" sea. What is the puzzling phenomenon of Greek colour vision? Even more puzzling, what does light look like if there is no object to reflect it? In tracing the history of light, the book presents an exploration of the evolution of knowledge and the development of the human mind itself.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bantam USA
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0593029100
• ISBN 13: 9780593029107
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 369