ABSTRACT
Despite our tendency to associate light with vision, the commonly accepted view is that light cannot be seen per se. We see things in light, but the light itself must strike something, even if it is only a small speck of dust, in order to be seen. This is a rather odd, indeed paradoxical hypothesis, given that light is defined specifically as that which we see. Viewed from the perspective of physics, light is electromagnetic radiation within the visible wavelength band. Thus light is related to vision by its very nature and is not, to be precise, a purely physical phenomenon, even from the viewpoint of physics. This relationship between light and vision is even closer at the phenomenological level. In his Theory of Colors, Goethe defines light, to the extent that he is willing to articulate definitions at all, as “nature acting according to its laws upon the sense of the eye.”1
