ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with “Illuminating Light”, an essay about light in science and culture written for the Vitra Design Museum in Germany. “True Colors” focuses on how and why we humans see the colors that we do; then “Light Dawns” describes the history of studying light and explains why it moves so fast. “Time Examined and Time Experienced” was chosen by Physics World magazine as among its best features of the year. The essay ponders the nature of time which along with space forms the pervasive fabric of reality and is woven into science and human existence; but its combined physical, cognitive, psychological, and emotional effects still elude our understanding. Though the earthly and cosmic travel times are so different, they represent the same fundamental facts about light: it moves rapidly and in straight lines from a source to our eyes—or at least so it seemed to the early Greek philosophers who contemplated light.
