question was, is white light simple
or complex? Descartes, for one, had regarded it as simple, and saw colors
as the result of some sort of modification of the light. Newton believed
white light was in fact composed of colors that somehow cancelled each
other out in combination to produce the effect of white. How to decide
between these two claims?
In the experiment illustrated in Figure 6, Newton took white light,
broke it into parts with a prism, selected one of the parts, and showed
that it could not be further broken down. He did this with each color,
demonstrating that monochromatic light could not be subdivided. Next,
Newton ran the experiment in the opposite direction: he broke the ray
of white light into its parts, and then recombined them by passing them
through a convex lens (see Figure 7). The result was white light. This
atomistic approach, which follows Descartes' four-step method exactly,
establishes the thesis beyond doubt. But as in the case of gravity, the
Cartesians took issue with Newton. Where, they asked, is your theory of light and color, where is your explanation of this behavior? And
as in the previous case, Newton retreated behind the smokescreen of
positivism. I am looking for laws, or optical facts, he replied, not
hypotheses. If you ask me what "red" is, I can only tell you that it is
a number, a certain degree of refrangibility, and the same is true for
each of the other colors. I have measured it: that is enough.
In this case too, of course, Newton struggled with possible explanations
for the behavior of light, but the combination of (philosophical) atomism,
positivism, and experimental method -- in short, the definition of reality
-- is still very much with us today. To know something is to subdivide it,
quantify it, and recombine it; is to ask "how," and never get entangled
in the complicated underbrush of "why." It is, above all, to distance
yourself from it, as Galileo pointed out; to make it an abstraction. The
poet may get uncritically effusive about a red streak across the sky
as the sun is going down, but the scientist is not so easily deluded:
he knows that his emotions can teach him nothing substantial. The red
streak is a number, and that is the essence of the matter.
To summarize our discussion of the Scientific Revolution, it is necessary
to note that in the course of the seventeenth century, Western Europe
hammered out a new way of perceiving reality. The most important
change was the shift from quality to quantity, from "why" to how." The
universe, once seen as alive, possessing its own goals and purposes,
is now a collection of inert matter, hurrying around endlessly and
meaninglessly, as Alfred North, Whitehead put it.23 What constitutes an
acceptable explanation has thus been radically altered. The acid test of
existence is quantifiability, and there are no more basic realities in
any object than the parts into which it can be broken down. Finally,
atomism, quantifiability, and the deliberate act of viewing nature
as an abstraction from which one can distance oneself -- all open
the possibility that Bacon proclaimed as the true goal of science:
control. The Cartesian or technological paradigm is, as stated above,
the equation of truth with utility, with the purposive manipulation
of the environment. The holistic view of man as a part of nature, as
being at home in the cosmos, is so much romantic claptrap. Not holism,
but domination of nature; not the ageless rhythm of ecology, but the
conscious management of the world; not (to take the process to its
logical end point) "the magic of personality, [but] the fetishism of
commodities."24 In the mind of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
medieval man (or woman) had been a passive spectator of the physical
world. The new mental tools of the seventeenth century made it possible
to change all that. It was now within our power to have heaven on
or complex? Descartes, for one, had regarded it as simple, and saw colors
as the result of some sort of modification of the light. Newton believed
white light was in fact composed of colors that somehow cancelled each
other out in combination to produce the effect of white. How to decide
between these two claims?
In the experiment illustrated in Figure 6, Newton took white light,
broke it into parts with a prism, selected one of the parts, and showed
that it could not be further broken down. He did this with each color,
demonstrating that monochromatic light could not be subdivided. Next,
Newton ran the experiment in the opposite direction: he broke the ray
of white light into its parts, and then recombined them by passing them
through a convex lens (see Figure 7). The result was white light. This
atomistic approach, which follows Descartes' four-step method exactly,
establishes the thesis beyond doubt. But as in the case of gravity, the
Cartesians took issue with Newton. Where, they asked, is your theory of light and color, where is your explanation of this behavior? And
as in the previous case, Newton retreated behind the smokescreen of
positivism. I am looking for laws, or optical facts, he replied, not
hypotheses. If you ask me what "red" is, I can only tell you that it is
a number, a certain degree of refrangibility, and the same is true for
each of the other colors. I have measured it: that is enough.
In this case too, of course, Newton struggled with possible explanations
for the behavior of light, but the combination of (philosophical) atomism,
positivism, and experimental method -- in short, the definition of reality
-- is still very much with us today. To know something is to subdivide it,
quantify it, and recombine it; is to ask "how," and never get entangled
in the complicated underbrush of "why." It is, above all, to distance
yourself from it, as Galileo pointed out; to make it an abstraction. The
poet may get uncritically effusive about a red streak across the sky
as the sun is going down, but the scientist is not so easily deluded:
he knows that his emotions can teach him nothing substantial. The red
streak is a number, and that is the essence of the matter.
To summarize our discussion of the Scientific Revolution, it is necessary
to note that in the course of the seventeenth century, Western Europe
hammered out a new way of perceiving reality. The most important
change was the shift from quality to quantity, from "why" to how." The
universe, once seen as alive, possessing its own goals and purposes,
is now a collection of inert matter, hurrying around endlessly and
meaninglessly, as Alfred North, Whitehead put it.23 What constitutes an
acceptable explanation has thus been radically altered. The acid test of
existence is quantifiability, and there are no more basic realities in
any object than the parts into which it can be broken down. Finally,
atomism, quantifiability, and the deliberate act of viewing nature
as an abstraction from which one can distance oneself -- all open
the possibility that Bacon proclaimed as the true goal of science:
control. The Cartesian or technological paradigm is, as stated above,
the equation of truth with utility, with the purposive manipulation
of the environment. The holistic view of man as a part of nature, as
being at home in the cosmos, is so much romantic claptrap. Not holism,
but domination of nature; not the ageless rhythm of ecology, but the
conscious management of the world; not (to take the process to its
logical end point) "the magic of personality, [but] the fetishism of
commodities."24 In the mind of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
medieval man (or woman) had been a passive spectator of the physical
world. The new mental tools of the seventeenth century made it possible
to change all that. It was now within our power to have heaven on
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