On the History and Philosophy of Light | Prof. Richard F. Hassing

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 9 October 2024

⏱️ 45 minutes

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Summary

Professor Richard F. Hassing discusses the history and philosophy of light, contrasting Aristotle's and Descartes' views on light and perception, and exploring the development of light theories from Huygens to Einstein, including the rise and fall of the ether concept.

This episode includes a special hand-out which can be found here. The lecture was given on July 18th, 2024, at The Dominican House of Studies.

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About the Speaker:

Prof. Dick Hassing is a Research Associate Professor in the School of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America. His work has focused on the History of physics and philosophy of nature, Early modern philosophy, and Political philosophy.

He is the author of Cartesian Psychophysics and the Whole Nature of Man: On Descartes's Passions of the Soul and Modern Turns in Mathematics and Physics.

Richard F. Hassing is a Research Associate Professor at the School of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Tomistic Institute podcast.
0:06.8	Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.
0:13.1	The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.
0:19.1	To learn more and to attend these events, visit us
0:22.2	at to mystic institute.org. There's a handout with 28 numbered quotations. I will call out the number
0:30.7	as I read them. Light, that old and subtle stuff that is so important and mysterious that it was felt necessary to
0:41.0	arrange a special creation for it when writing Genesis."
0:46.0	And quote, Richard Feynman lectures on physics.
0:49.6	My objectives are two.
0:51.7	First, to raise the question of the relation between the human mind and the
0:56.2	world. I do this by comparing and contrasting Aristotle and Descartes on light. Second, to behold the
1:03.6	mysterious reality of light in Einstein's special theory of relativity. I do this by highlighting the great importance of the ether in wave
1:15.3	theories of light from Hegel to Maxwell and then the radical implications of the rejection of the
1:22.6	ether by Einstein. I just think that in a conference on light, there should be some mention of special relativity.
1:30.4	Part 1. Mind World Relation. Aristotle and Descartes on light.
1:36.4	A guiding question. Is the real world colored?
1:40.3	What is meant here by real world for Descartes?
1:44.8	The answer is clear.
1:47.1	The real extended world means the material, non-mental world outside of the tiny region of the brain where mind meets matter.
1:58.6	Descartes thought it was the pineal gland.
2:01.0	Some contemporary neuroscientists think it is the supplementary motor area.
2:05.8	On Descartes' account, there is much outside the mind, but inside the brain, of which we have no awareness,
	...

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