Light

Book excerpt:

The book is aiming, programmatically, at showing that both in science and religious thinking the basic space-time entity is ultimately built and defined by light. In this sense, the book is emphasizing the unique role of light in understanding the world around us. The approach is based on the belief that science and religion represent two very different modes of addressing reality, both of them being relevant to us as human beings.

The language of science and religion and the answers they each give to the same questions differ due to the elementary postulates on which they are built. A dialogue and debate in the classical sense is, therefore, meaningless. This is why the book has allowed the voice of Physics and the voice of the Philosophy of Religion to be heard in their distinctiveness and nobility. Instead of endless polemics, the work proposes to acknowledge with patience and respect the altera pars approach for the same overarching topics, highlighting the complexity of both domains, and, on a transdisciplinary level, pointing towards the complexity of our mind and reality.

The book is illustrated by Valentin Petridean. The images mirror and enrich the rigorous game of the intellect, illuminating it with sparks of vivid imagination.

CONTENTS

Memories from the past and the need for a new dialogueExperiment versus ExperienceThe Nitty-Gritty of LightThe Nature of LightColours and PerceptionProducing and Absorbing LightThe Speed of Light’s PropagationLight and AetherIdeal SpaceTangible SpaceIdeal TimeTangible TimeThe Principle of RelativityThe AftermathChanging Paradigms: ‘Memories of the Future’Concluding remarks