lunch box of the day from taste good. eating in the middle of the street in the new park tables on broadway.
tigers and monkeys show at fat baby. thanks to zambri band that let us use their amp. they all look like one of my ex. new friend vick plays match maker with me and a girl named jen. i suppose she's cute, but wouldn't that be like dating my two older sisters who are named jennifer and jenny? or would that be like dating myself if i was born a girl? …jen.
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text:
shoreboy
In other news, Tesla drivers seem to be ramming into emergency vehicles?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/16/business/tesla-autopilot-nhtsa.html
nor where it is extracted from. I
Unicorns and rainbows for KenN.....
https://fpif.org/scraping-the-bottom-of-the-sea/
Cdn content.
Posted by: shoreboy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAfhiE6WTfo
This is just an investigation, not an accusation
My prediction: this will conclude with NHTSA stating that drivers were not paying attention as is clearly stated, and it is the drivers' fault. There might be some recommendation for some minor software patch that forces drivers to pay attention, which can be pushed over the air.
A lead human-interest story in the weekend Wheels section of a major Canadian newspaper is about a 2-car family's transitioning from a hybrid to an EV as they "try to be more sustainable". They upgrade their daily car every few years to seek "improvements in fuel efficiency, reliability and technology". Electric vehicles (EVs) are feted by the automobile and ecojustice sectors as part of the "just transition" to a future "carbon-neutral", happy, dignified quality of life. Another news item from the Wheels section was about the costs of home EV battery chargers costing about $2000; the chargers are plugged into electric outlets (electricity commonly supplied from fossil fuels or nuclear reactors), while the costs will be "quickly re-couped in government rebates" as public transportation subsidies continue their decline. So much for the climate emergency and for human justice, for morality and taking responsibility for mounting climate-caused human deaths and mass migration. Nothing in the newspaper about the indignation of ordinary, common people worldwide, especially among the young.
Since the 1988 Congressional definitive testimony of James Hansen and other climate scientists, there is no discourse about "Stop": elimination of fossil fuel emissions quickly morphed into adaptation and mitigation which is now replaced by "transition". EVs is a representative example of focusing on one small part, conveniently deleting the whole. The whole EV picture must include externalities, life cycle analysis, consideration of non-essential production, impacts of its production on basic human needs, the urgent timeline due to non-linear climate processes, regional climate and sociopolitical processes and who EVs actually serve, EV's effects on carbon sinks, pertinent facts about human and climate history, loss and damage obligations and debt to people totally impacted and totally innocent regarding the climate emergency, alternatives, elucidating who is served in a "just transition".....
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/10/22/deconstructing-electric-vehicles-on-the-eve-of-glasgow-cop26/print/
Last edited by: tungsten on Oct. 23, 2021, 11:05 p.m., edited 1 time in total.
Every sentence in that quote has factual errors and misinformation. I'm not going to waste my time debunking everything, since you've clearly made up your mind anyway.
However, anyone replacing their vehicle "every few years" is part of the problem.
rnayel
"Car rental giant Hertz has placed an order for 100,000 Tesla vehicles to be delivered by the end of 2022 in the largest single purchase of EVs ever. The deal, which will push the car rental giant's EV offerings to 20% of its global fleet, is reportedly worth $4.2 billion, according to sources cited by Bloomberg."
https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/25/tesla-hertz-shares-rise-electric-vehicle-order/
Posted by: rnayel
They so ugly they puuuuuurfect 4 a rental. Make peeps really wanna' beat the crap outta' 'em, eh?
KenN please, now you'are just being obtuse. Something you accuse me of. You don't really want to be me, do you?
Every sentence...
How's about this one...
The whole EV picture must include externalities,
Seriously? You think there are no external factors to consider with the production/lifecycle/disposal of EV's?
Linky from article... http://www.earth-policy.org/mobile/books/pb3/PB3ch4_ss5?phpMyAdmin=1d6bec1fea35111307d869d19bcd2ce7
Last edited by: tungsten on Oct. 26, 2021, 2:15 p.m., edited 1 time in total.
Are all the negative externalities of IC vehicles priced in to their sticker price?
They should be. Might slow the flippers and the flakes.
Of approx. 1.5 million new cars sold in Cda. 2020 only 54~k were EV.
Oh, aren't you cute with all your lack of understanding exponential growth.
EV pricing is about to become cheaper than ICE for new vehicles. This will happen within the next 2 years. Once that happens ICE is dead, and EVs will take over half the market share for new passenger cars.
How do I know this? Because it's already been done in other countries. Where purchase incentives have made the cost of an EV cheaper than an equivalent ICE, EV sales have take over. Norway and several other Euro zone countries, as well as China are proving this in real time.
Canada and US lag these other countries, because the incentives are poor.
Our people are poorer than those in Norway too. Makes it harder to buy our way to sustainability.
But implementing an incentive program that truly makes a new EV more affordable than an equivalent ICE will still work - ie., anyone buying a new car already (presumably) can afford a new car and thus will have their choices influenced by the incentives.
BC's incentive of $3000 is piss in a bucket. Even the US, which will soon be offering up to $12k in incentives is way better. Norway has a VAT that is added to all new car sales, but for the last 6 years (at least) the VAT was waived for zero emission vehicles.
mrbrett
I don't think we should be subsidizing people buying new vehicles, rather we should add what would be a subsidy amount to ICE vehicles. e.g. instead of taking $3k off the price of an EV we should add it to new ICE vehicles. There's surely some political reason that doesn't happen.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Marat's Science
4: Marat's Investigations of Light
THE BENDING OF LIGHT
DÉCOUVERTES SUR LA LUMIÈRE
The second volume of Marat's trilogy, published later in 1780, was devoted to the science of optics. In the time between the appearance earlier that year of the volume on fire and the publication in 1782 of the volume on electricity, a qualitative change for the worse had occurred in Marat's relationship with the French scientific elite. That change is reflected in the general tone of Marat's writing, which in the first two parts of the trilogy displays a more "professional" neutrality, whereas the third volume turns more polemical and antagonistic toward scientific opponents in general and members of the Academy of Sciences in particular.
Since the heightened hostility manifested itself in the third book of the series, the one on electricity, C.C. Gillispie attributes the change to a loss of psychological control on Marat's part that occurred while he was writing up his electrical experiments. A closer examination suggests, however, that Marat's change in attitude originated with his optical studies and derived less from his internal mental state than from the hostile reception the academicians gave his revisionist optical notions.
In Découvertes sur la lumière (Discoveries about Light), Marat explicitly stated his intention to revise a fundamental tenet of Newton's theory of colors. Newton's authority in this field was so great in the eighteenth century as to be virtually absolute. Marat's challenge was regarded as an act of effrontery and rejected without a real hearing. The leaders of the Academy apparently deemed Marat's innovations to be worthless without conscientiously examining them. They closed ranks against him and his later writings reflected his anger at being rebuffed.
Later commentators who have defended the Academy's cold shoulder to Marat have done so on the grounds that subsequent developments in optics proved Marat wrong in his case against Newton. These judgments based on hindsight, however, do not address the question of whether dismissing Marat's contributions out of hand was justifiable in terms of contemporary knowledge of optics.
In fact, Marat's work targeted a problem in optical science that Newton had explicitly left unresolved in his Opticks. Marat's investigations of the deviation of light as it passed close to the surface of objects—reminiscent of what Newton called "inflexion" and others have called "diffraction"—recalled attention to a neglected class of phenomena that would eventually prove to be of critical importance to optical science.[1] Although Marat insisted that the deviation of light he was describing was not the same as diffraction/inflexion, it was certainly very similar since it referred to the same observed behavior of light.
Deviation? Inflexion? Diffraction?
Whether called deviation, inflexion, or diffraction, it is not a readily apparent phenomenon. Unlike reflection and refraction it is not part of everyday visual perception and was never noticed by the natural philosophers of antiquity. The first to detect this subtle manifestation of light was the Jesuit natural philosopher Francesco Grimaldi, whose Physico-Mathesis reported it for the first time and gave it the name diffraction.[2] Grimaldi's book was published posthumously in 1665; he had died two years earlier.
The commonplace observation that a strong light source casts a sharply defined shadow leads naturally to the assumption that rays of light travel in perfectly straight lines. In darkroom experiments, however, Grimaldi detected a very slight bending of light as it passes the edges of objects.
Imagine sunlight entering a darkroom through a very small hole in the window shutters and projecting a luminous disk upon the opposite wall of the room. A knife blade placed between the hole and the disk of light produces a shadow within the disk. One would expect, if the commonsense assumption holds true, that a perfectly straight line would connect the hole, the edge of the knife blade, and the edge of the knife blade's shadow. A careful experimenter, however, will find this not to be so. The shadow will be slightly displaced from its anticipated position. Furthermore, the shadow will not be sharply defined, as would be expected, but will exhibit what appear to be a series of overlapping fringes.
Grimaldi gave the name "diffraction" to this unexpected behavior of light, and said it implied that light is a wave phenomenon. Perhaps even more surprising was his observation of barely perceptible bands of colors in the fringes of shadows projected onto the walls of his darkroom. In 1672, seven years after the publication of Grimaldi's book, Robert Hooke detected this same peculiar bending of light and the colored fringes, but apparently without knowledge of Grimaldi's work.
Meanwhile, Newton had begun his optical investigations. His primary attention was directed toward the production of colors by the passage of sunlight through a prism. As a result of a series of classic darkroom experiments, he announced that the various colors of the spectrum were all originally present in the beam of sunlight; they were separated and spread out into a rainbow-like continuum by the prism because each color is refracted a little more or less than every other color as the rays pass through the prism. He called this phenomenon "differential refrangibility."
Although Newton thus placed refraction at the center of his color doctrine, he also showed an interest in the unexpected bending of light around objects. Instead of using Grimaldi's term, diffraction, he used the term inflexion to describe it.
Newton's earliest announcement of his optical conclusions, in 1672 in the Royal Society's Transactions, provoked heated opposition, which was not at all to Newton's liking. He did not accept criticism graciously. Among other things, Hooke charged Newton with stealing his ideas about inflexion. Newton denied the charge of plagiarism, saying he had given credit to Hooke for his observations.
Newton acknowledged the reality of inflexion, conceded that he was not sure how it could be reconciled with the rest of his optical doctrines, and left it as an unsolved problem for physicists of the future to probe. Nonetheless, the early investigations into diffraction by Grimaldi, Hooke, and Newton had had no significant sequel by the time Marat began studying the phenomenon.
A useful source for determining the specific content of optical knowledge at the beginning of the last quarter of the eighteenth century is Joseph Priestley's History and Present State of Discoveries Relating to Vision, Light, and Colours. Priestley's account of the invention of the solar microscope was noted in the previous chapter. Published in 1772, this work represented the conscientious effort of a leading physicist to survey and analyze the entire body of his predecessors' accomplishments in the field of optics. Priestley's personal prestige as a scientist assured a wide readership among practitioners in the field and thereby helped to establish a standard history to which the community of physical scientists and optical craftsmen could refer.[3]
Priestley introduced Grimaldi's discovery of diffraction by describing it as "such an effect as could hardly have been suspected without actual observation."
Had Descartes, or any other philosopher before this period, been asked, what would have become of a ray of light, which should pass as near as possible to any body, but without actually impinging upon it; he would have replied, without hesitation, that it would proceed in a straight line, without being affected by its approach. But it was now found, that light coming within a certain distance of any body, will either be bent from it, or towards it.[4]
Aside from Robert Hooke's investigations, "little use had been made of Grimaldi's observations" before Newton took an interest in them. In the last section of his Opticks, Newton reported replicating Grimaldi's experiments, which Priestley says he did "with the greatest care, diversified them, and pursued them much farther." Priestley emphasizes that
as these experiments were the last that [Newton] made, and are acknowledged by himself to be incomplete, it is the more necessary to be particular in relating the circumstance of them; that others may be enabled to repeat them, and carry them still further.[5]
This gives strong testimony to the legitimacy of Marat's work in the field of optics. First of all it indicates that, in Priestley's well-informed opinion, the understanding of this subtle bending of light had not been advanced as of 1772; secondly, it is an explicit call for physicists to engage in precisely the kind of investigation that Marat was to undertake a few years later.
Newton's doctrine of color as a function of the differential refrangibility of individual rays of light achieved the status of an unchallengeable paradigm early in the eighteenth century. After 1728, Priestley says,
no person, who chose to give his name to the public, or whose name is worth recording, made any opposition to it; so that, at present, no hypothesis in philosophy stands upon surer ground, or is more generally acquiesced in, than that of the differential refrangibility of light.[6]
While presented and widely accepted as a complete and satisfying explanation of the nature of color, disturbing anomalies remained unaccounted for. If light consists, as Newton believed, of "solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, moveable Particles,"[7] what force deflects them as they pass edges of objects? And if colors are made visible by the prism's power to deflect those particles at different angles depending upon their individual colors, then how can the colors produced in diffraction experiments be explained?
Newton's "Queries"
Newton attempted to suggest some preliminary answers in the queries appended to his Opticks. By relegating them to the queries, he acknowledged that they were provisional and hypothetical; in other words, that the bending of light around objects remained an unsolved problem for the science of optics.
Newton's Opticks is divided into three sections, or "books," which are in turn divided into parts. The first two books are devoted to the reflection and refraction of light, and include consideration of the colors visible on the surfaces of soap bubbles and other such "thin transparent Bodies." Book III, Part I is devoted to inflexion. Book III has no Part II, however; this is an indication of the unfinished character of the work. In fact, Newton says as much, because after describing and discussing his investigations of inflexion, he states:
When I made the foregoing Observations, I design'd to repeat most of them with more care and exactness, and to make some new ones for determining the manner how the Rays of Light are bent in their passage by Bodies, for making the Fringes of Colours with the dark lines between them. But I was then interrupted, and cannot now think of taking these things into farther Consideration. And since I have not finish'd this part of my Design, I shall conclude with proposing only some Queries, in order to a farther search to be made by others.[8]
The queries, eventually totaling 31 in number by the 1717 edition, appear directly after this apology and constitute the ending of the Opticks. Only the first few queries are directly concerned with inflexion, but it is clear that inflexion was what Newton was referring to when he said "I have not finish'd this part of my Design."
The title of Book III, Part I is "Observations concerning the Inflexions of the Rays of Light, and the Colours made thereby," and the problem is stated at the outset:
Grimaldo has inform'd us, that if a beam of the Sun's Light be let into a dark Room through a very small hole, the Shadows of things in this Light will be larger than they ought to be if the Rays went on by the Bodies in straight Lines, and that these Shadows have three parallel Fringes, Bands or Ranks of colour'd Light adjacent to them.[9]
It should be noted that if the shadows of things in the light are larger than they ought to be, the implication is that the light is bending away from the objects it passes; if it were bending toward the objects, the shadows would be smaller. Grimaldi and Newton both recognized, however, that in fact some light rays appear to bend toward objects and some appear to bend away.
After carefully describing his inflexion experiments and apologizing for being unable to conclude the investigation to his satisfaction, Newton began listing his queries. The use of the question form was a bit of a ruse; as I.B. Cohen has pointed out, it "may have been adopted in order to allay criticism, but it does not hide the extent of Newton's belief."[10]
Newton's difficulty with inflexion is manifested in the way in which he directly contradicted himself in the queries. In Query 29 he asked:
Are not the Rays of Light very small Bodies emitted from shining Substances? For such Bodies will pass through uniform Mediums in right Lines without bending into the Shadow, which is the Nature of the Rays of Light.[11]
Here Newton explicitly stated that light rays, by their very nature, move in straight lines and therefore do not bend into the shadow. He had already suggested in earlier queries, however, that light not only bends into the shadow; it bends away from the shadow as well. In Query 3 he asked:
Are not the Rays of Light in passing by the edges and sides of Bodies, bent several times backwards and forwards, with a motion like that of an Eel? And do not the three Fringes of colour'd Light above-mention'd arise from three such bendings?[12]
What was to be made of this extraordinary eel-like behavior of light rays? Priestley reported that physicists heeded Newton's call to follow up on his investigations into inflexion: "We are much obliged to several ingenious foreigners who have made experiments similar to his." Among these ingenious foreigners were Maraldi, Mairan, Du Tour, Le Cat, and Muschenbroek.[13] Nonetheless, Priestley concluded, these investigations "cannot be said to be completed."[14]
"The doctrine of the inflection of light seems to be capable of much farther illustration," Priestley continued. "The origin of the three coloured streaks, on each side of the termination of the shadows of bodies, has not been satisfactorily traced."[15] Newton's conjecture "that light bends in its motion, like an eel . . . seems to be a kind of hypothesis that one would not chuse to have recourse to without necessity."[16]
Marat and the Academy: Round Two
Marat's choice of the bending of light around objects as a focus of scientific inquiry, then, was certainly reasonable by any contemporary standards. His patron the comte de Maillebois, the honorary member of the Academy of Sciences who had arranged for a commission to evaluate Marat's experiments with heat and fire, once again approached the Academy and requested that Marat's optical work be examined as well. As a result, another commission was named to witness demonstrations of his experiments and to issue a report on them. According to Marat, the commission's first visit took place on June 22, 1779, and the last one on January 30, 1780:
My experiments were performed during a seven-month period under the eyes of the academicians, and in that time they were all repeated a very great number of times.[17]
One reason the commission's work took so long to complete was that most of Marat's experiments could only be demonstrated on sunny days. Although the commission was officially composed of five members, most of the work devolved upon two of them: J.B. Le Roy and J.A.J. Cousin. Le Roy was assigned to write the final report.[18]
After the commission completed its observations at the end of January, Marat awaited their report. Hearing nothing but excuses from Le Roy and Cousin for several weeks, he began writing to Condorcet to ask when he might expect it to be issued. As time passed, Marat's letters became more impatient and persistent: Why the inordinate delay?[19]
The report was finally issued on May 10, 1780, and consisted of three rather brief paragraphs. Marat had it printed in its entirety at the front of his Découvertes sur la lumière and followed it with a commentary of his own.
The report began by acknowledging that inflexion was a valid topic of optical investigation:
These experiments, which are very numerous, touch upon various phenomena of light, and particularly with those having to do with its inflexion when it passes along the length of bodies.[20]
By careful wording and judicious use of phrases such as "according to the author," however, the report avoids saying anything that could be interpreted as praise for Marat's work or endorsement of his conclusions. The conclusion the commissioners were most concerned to dissociate themselves from was Marat's assertion that the decomposition of colors attributed by Newton to refraction should in fact be attributed to the deviation of light at the boundaries of objects. The separation of colors from sunlight that Newton observed, according to Marat, did not occur in his prisms but at the edges of the hole that admitted the sunlight into the room in the first place. The prism simply served to amplify the phenomenon. (This contention will be discussed further below.)
This was a rather bold hypothesis aimed at eliminating a long-standing anomaly from the science of optics by incorporating reflection, refraction, and inflexion (or "deviation") into a single explanatory model of color production. The Academy's report, however, explicitly avoided evaluating Marat's synthesis:
But since these experiments are so very numerous, as we have said, that we have not been able for that reason to verify all of them (in spite of all the attention that we have paid to them) with the necessary precision; since, moreover, they do not appear to us to prove what the author believes they establish; and since they are generally contrary to what is best known in the field of optics . . . we do not regard them as being of the nature of that which the Academy could give its sanction or its approval.[21]
The report was signed by Le Roy, Cousin, and Sage, and was certified by Condorcet. It is significant that the report does not explicitly deny the validity of Marat's theory; it simply refuses to take a position on the issue.
In reply, Marat said that he had neither asked for nor expected the Academy to endorse his conclusions; he had merely requested that the commissioners verify matters of fact. "But I had the right to expect that this scientific society would state an opinion on the precision and novelty of my experiments."[22]
As for the commissioners' charge that his conclusions "are generally contrary to what is best known in the field of optics," Marat's response was, in effect, so be it; he had stated the conclusions his experiments had led him to, and he considered that to be a positive gain for science: "Is it necessary to defend the old opinions," he asked, if they can be shown to be erroneous? "There is no scientific society in the world whose judgment can make true what is false or false what is true."[23]
Although neither the Academy's report nor Marat's response mentioned Newton's name, the authority of Newton was at the root of the dispute here. "What is best known in the field of optics" was a euphemism for Newton's doctrine of differential refrangibility. Marat's attempt to replace it with his own doctrine of deviability—promoting what had previously been a mere curiosity to the central principle of optics—was a clear challenge to Newtonian orthodoxy.
Marat's response reflects disappointment, but it did not express the bitterness toward the Academy that he later displayed.[24] His resentment apparently increased over time. He later charged that the Academy had acted dishonestly in this affair. Le Roy, he asserted, had told a friend of Marat's that he, Le Roy, had in fact written a 45-page, detailed report on Marat's experiments, but that it had been suppressed by the geometers' faction within the Academy.[25]
There is no independent evidence that such a report had ever existed, but it is not at all an implausible supposition. For the three-paragraph report that was actually released to have taken more than three months to prepare seemed preposterous to Marat. Had Le Roy not repeatedly assured him that the report was taking a lot of time and effort?[26] Had Cousin not told him that the reading of the report had required more than a single session of the Academy?[27] Why would so much time be needed to read three brief paragraphs?
Even if there had been no such report, the delay could well have been due to disputes between Le Roy, Cousin, and other academicians over how to formulate the report that did appear. Le Roy had previously complained openly to Marat that a "spirit of chicanery in the Academy" was making it difficult for him to write it.[28] It is conceivable that one or more members of the Academy recognized that Marat's exposition of the deviation of light did indeed raise questions that could not be answered within the confines of the standard Newtonian paradigm. If so, that was an admission that the central leaders of the Academy were unwilling to make. Their attitude was represented by Condorcet's later reference to "the Marat incident" as a shining example of the way the Academy should deal with "charlatans," i.e., dismissively.[29]
In any event, Marat could hardly be blamed for believing that he had been rebuffed by a conservative priesthood of science blindly defending its entrenched orthodoxy. Was the Academy's refusal to really examine the light-bending anomaly any different in principle from the refusal of Vatican astronomers to look through Galileo's telescope? Both seemed afraid to confront empirical evidence that threatened a cherished paradigm. The Galileo tale, however, had developed into one of the central myths underlying the ideology of modern science. Galileo's telescope symbolized Truth and those who refused to look through it represented ignorance and superstition. In Marat's case, it was the Academy of Sciences rather than the Catholic Church that proved unwilling to face up to empirical evidence.
Young and Fresnel
To assess Marat's value as a scientist in terms of later developments in optics would be anachronistic. Nevertheless, the inappropriateness of the charlatan and pseudoscientist labels that have often been affixed to him by later writers can be appreciated by considering how the diffraction issue evolved in the following generation.
In England, about a decade after Marat's death, the following challenge appeared in the Philosophical Transactions published by the Royal Society of London:
The experiment of Grimaldi, on the crested fringes within the shadow, together with several others of his observations, equally important, has been left unnoticed by Newton. Those who are attached to the Newtonian theory of light, or to the hypotheses of modern opticians, founded on views still less enlarged, would do well to endeavour to imagine any thing like an explanation of these experiments, derived from their own doctrines, and, if they fail in the attempt, to refrain at least from idle declamation against a system which is founded on the accuracy of its application to all these facts, and to a thousand others of a similar nature.[30]
The author of this blast, Thomas Young, was mistaken in his supposition that Grimaldi's discoveries had "been left unnoticed by Newton." His misperception in this regard is an indication of the state of neglect into which the study of diffraction phenomena had fallen. Grimaldi had been all but forgotten.
Young's optical investigations resulted in a theory able to account for diffraction by assuming that light is fundamentally wavelike in nature. Young's hypothesis did not have to ignore diffraction; it could explain it, and Newton's soap bubble colors as well, as patterns of mutual reinforcement and interference characteristic of interacting waves. At the same time, of course, Young's theory represented the ultimate challenge to Newton's concept of light rays as hard, massy particles.
Like Marat, Young did not receive an open-minded hearing from his contemporaries, as his angry rejoinder to their "idle declamations" against his system illustrates. Unlike Marat, however, he lived to see his ideas vindicated, though not through his own efforts.
About 1814 a Frenchman, Augustin Fresnel, began studying the problem of diffraction without knowing of either Marat's or Young's previous work. His first contributions to the Academy of Sciences, reporting his observations on the fringes of shadows cast by opaque objects, received a thoroughly negative response, especially from Laplace, J.B. Biot, and S.D. Poisson.[31]
Unlike their dismissive reaction to Marat, however, the academicians took the trouble to try to refute Fresnel and ultimately discovered they could not. The mathematician Poisson carefully studied Fresnel's explanation of diffraction as a consequence of the wave nature of light and demonstrated that it led to an obvious absurdity: that under certain circumstances the shadow of a small opaque disk would be brighter at the center than at the edges. Fresnel concurred with Poisson's inference, but denied that it was absurd. To the contrary, it is true; such circular shadows can indeed have bright spots at their centers. This physical fact was demonstrated in the laboratory of Fresnel's ally, François Arago, lending strong support to Fresnel's contentions.[32]
When the wave theory became dominant in the 1830s, the pendulum of Academic prejudice that had blindly shielded Newton's Opticks from criticism swung in the opposite direction. Throughout the rest of the nineteenth century the Opticks was treated as an embarrassment and downgraded to the status of a minor work representing a lapse in the great scientist's judgment.[33]
Again, the point of recounting the histories of Young and Fresnel is not to credit Marat with prescience or to identify him as their predecessor in the "march toward modern science," but to illustrate the degree to which nonscientific considerations intervened in the process of scientists coming to grips with diffraction phenomena. Until Fresnel's theory gained acceptance, the empirical facts of diffraction were subordinated for a century and a half to various social and personal biases that prevented their recognition and due consideration.
Marat, in fact, made no direct contribution to the later discoveries by Young and Fresnel, but not because his efforts were intrinsically worthless. The blame for its lack of influence is not Marat's; he did not suppress his own work. The Academy of Sciences did indeed function as a blind defender of orthodoxy in this affair, and its actions represented, to some degree, a lost opportunity for science.
The fullest statement of Marat's investigation of the deviability of light is his Découvertes sur la lumière, published in 1780. It was not his last word on the subject, however; he would continue to study and write about optics up to the eve of the Revolution. In 1784 he published a 44-page synopsis as a study guide for people taking courses on his optical theories.[34] In December of that same year his new translation of Newton's Opticks was presented (anonymously) to the Academy of Sciences for its stamp of approval; it was published in 1787.[35] In 1785 he set out to bring to completion what he had begun with Découvertes sur la lumière. That work, he had said, was simply an "extract" of a larger work to follow that would include practical applications of his principles with regard to lens-making and other useful occupations. The Revolution intervened before he could make good on this promise, but the unfinished manuscript of the Traité d'optique is in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.[36]
In 1787 he published a collection of four essays on optical problems—all had been entries in provincial academies' competitions—as Mémoires académiques. They tackled specific problems, such as how colors are produced in soap bubbles and rainbows, but Marat explained in the introduction that all four have the same purpose: to challenge Newton's doctrine of differential refrangibility. The essence of Marat's optical theories, then, is best presented in his Découvertes sur la lumière.
Unlike Marat's previous volume on fire, Découvertes sur la lumière does not bear the royal approbation that would have permitted its legal publication in France. According to the title page it was printed in London and could be purchased in Paris at the offices of the bookseller/publisher Jombert. Either Marat could not get the official censor to approve it, or he did not want to spend the time and effort to do so. Although the book certainly represented no political challenge to the crown, it is possible that its anti-Newtonian contents had alienated certain academicians enough to put its approval in doubt. It is perhaps significant that the royal censor who has earlier accepted Marat's book on fire was Sage, a member of the commission that reviewed Marat's optical experiments. On the other hand, his book on electricity seems to have had no problem gaining the censor's approval two years later. Whatever the case, it is possible that Jombert was the actual publisher and the claim of London publication was simply the standard ruse employed in old-regime France to bypass official censorship channels.
Marat did not put forward a wave theory of light. Although his work was entitled Découvertes sur la lumière, he was more directly concerned with the origins of colors than with the nature of light per se. Marat had no need of the wave hypothesis, since he accounted for the bending of light at surfaces of objects by assuming the existence of specific atmospheres surrounding objects. Later, before adopting the wave theory, Thomas Young would first find it necessary to experimentally reject "the presence of such an inflecting medium in the neighbourhood of dense substances as I was formerly inclined to attribute to them."[37]
In Découvertes sur la lumière, Marat once again utilized the familiar format of numbered experiments; the total in this book was 202. As would be expected, given the nature of the inquiry, almost all make use of the darkroom. Marat's innovation was to bring his solar microscope to bear on the subject.
Experiment number one identifies the central phenomenon that defines the focus of the work as a whole:
When one exposes any body whatsoever to the solar rays, focused in the darkroom with the use of a simple objective lens, one sees its shadow surrounded by a luminous band that is more or less bright and more or less wide depending upon the distance that it is from the screen.[38]
Marat uses the word "aureole" to denote that luminous band. To what can the appearance of this aureole be attributed? Experiment two shows that it "does not depend upon a double refraction since it occurs no less when a steel mirror is used."[39] Experiment three eliminates the configuration of the ambient air, which he had first suspected to be the cause, since the aureole "is no less perceived surrounding extremely thin bodies than it is surrounding spherical bodies."[40]
After having tested and rejected two hypotheses, Marat was left with one that he believed would prove successful. The aureole was to be attributed to "the principle of attraction that brings together at the surface of a body the rays of light that surround it."[41]
He reasoned that the rays cannot be brought together at the surface of an object unless they are subtracted from somewhere else, namely from the surrounding medium. The area farther away from the object should appear less bright, then, but in a large space the difference in brightness is generally imperceptible. Marat said that this difficulty can be overcome by making the field of light very small, which is a simple matter: "Instead of forming it outside the body, it must be formed inside."[42] By this he meant that rather than shining a light behind an object to produce a shadow surrounded by a field of light, the light should instead be directed through a small hole in a flat card. The spot on the screen will then be the field of light and the shadow will surround it. Marat did not claim this as an original idea; Grimaldi's classic experiments utilized a similar method, as did Newton's, among others.
In the next three experiments he utilized this technique and in each case found the shadow surrounding the hole bordered by a bright band. He varied the size of the hole and concluded that "the rays that pass through the hole are principally attracted toward its edges."[43]
If the hole is made very small, the luminous band circumscribes a small area. One would expect this area to be a very bright point, but it is not; it is dark. "What is the cause of this privation of light?"[44] It indicates an attraction of the rays toward the edges of the hole. This counterintuitive fact that Marat demonstrated is the inverse of the one that helped Fresnel support his case against Poisson, Laplace, and Biot several decades later.[45]
Marat's "Perioptrics"
"From these experiments and a thousand more like them," he said, "we conclude that bodies attract light."[46] Marat believed that the terminology of optics should acknowledge that this phenomenon was as important as reflection and refraction. To the recognized terms "catoptrics" (signifying reflection phenomena) and "dioptrics" (signifying refraction phenomena) he proposed adding "perioptrics" to designate "the part of optics that deals with the deviation of rays of light at the edges of bodies."[47] Marat's neologism never achieved the status of an accepted term, first of all because his optical work as a whole was suppressed, and secondly because the usefulness of such a term diminished in the nineteenth century with the rise of the wave theory of light. Nonetheless, at the time it was put forward by Marat it was a reasonable suggestion for a useful addition to the lexicon of optics.
In the course of introducing the new term, Marat stated:
No doubt the deviation of the rays of light that I have just spoken of are nothing, in truth, but an external refraction, and it should be considered as related to the same principle.[48]
This was an echo of Newton's suggestion that inflexion may perhaps be but a special case of reflection and refraction. Priestley agreed with this view and stated it more positively:
The same power that disposes the light which actually falls upon bodies to be reflected from them, or refracted into them, affects the light which only passes very near to them; some of the rays being thereby made to bend from them, which is similar to reflexion, and others to bend towards them, which is a kind of partial refraction.[49]
But whereas Newton and Priestley considered the bending of light around objects to be subordinate to refraction, Marat thought it should be the other way around: If anything, refraction was but a special case of deviation. Either way, "however similar these principles [refraction and deviation] may be, their laws are different and it is important not to confuse the phenomena."[50] Hence the need for the term perioptrics as distinct from dioptrics.
Marat devoted considerable attention to the force of attraction that he believed underlies this phenomenon. "Since all bodies attract light," he wrote, "each therefore has a particular atmosphere. This atmosphere becomes perceptible due to the aureole that appears to surround their shadows."[51] As always, the ocular demonstration ranks high among the elements that count for evidence to Marat.
If the attraction that draws light to objects is at all akin to gravitational attraction, one would expect it to vary relative to the mass of the objects. Indeed, Marat believed this would be found to be so, "because it is a consistent law that the attractive force is deployed proportionately to mass."[52] This is not the only factor, however, because "it is no less consistent a law that this force is deployed proportionately to the affinity between bodies."[53]
Marat was apparently making some assumptions about the attractive force that are not stated explicitly here. It would seem that he thought of it as a composite of gravitational force in the usual sense with the forces that cause the smallest particles of matter to bind together: the forces of chemical affinity.
Of the two factors—mass and chemical affinity—the latter clearly seemed by far the more powerful to Marat. Experiment 31 revealed that
after having introduced solar rays into a darkroom . . . if you present on the same line, at four feet from the screen, some objects of the same dimensions but different density, you will not necessarily find the most extensive aureoles around the denser objects; in fact, some of the denser objects have much less extensive aureoles.[54]
If mass were the only consideration, the denser objects would be expected to exert a greater attractive force and would therefore have broader luminous bands surrounding them, but Marat found that not to be so. More important than mass is the kind of material the object is made of:
After a multitude of experiments of this kind it was ascertained that certain materials, such as white wood, resin, paper, cotton cloth, wax, tallow, plaster, and above all the igneous fluid, attract light more than metals do.[55]
For example, Marat compared the shadows of objects made of lead and cork that were identical in size and shape. He found in both cases that the shadows were slightly smaller than would be expected if light traveled in perfectly straight lines past the objects. However, the amount of diminution of the shadows hardly differed at all between the two objects. This illustrated that neither the density of objects nor the specific characteristics of their materials has much influence on the attraction of light.
Marat discovered another variable, however, that proved to be a more significant factor:
The size of the surfaces influences the attraction of light much more than either of the two aforementioned causes. . . . The deviation of rays tangent to the circumference of spherical bodies is related to the lengths of their circumferences, not to their masses.[56]
Regardless of the density of the material, "the attractive force always deploys itself in inverse ratio to the square of the distance."[57] Therefore, it is always at a maximum right at the surface of an object. Since it is evenly distributed over that surface, increasing the surface area decreases the force per unit of area. "Thus the attraction of light is proportionately more intense in smaller as opposed to larger objects."[58] This assertion is supported by experiments 32 through 35.
Which Way Does the Light Bend?
Marat's emphasis on the attraction of light seems to place him somewhat at odds with earlier experimenters. If light is simply attracted to the objects it passes, then it would bend toward those objects and their shadows would appear smaller than if light traveled in perfectly straight lines. Marat reported that this is what he saw in the darkroom: smaller shadows.
Grimaldi's initial reports were quite the opposite: The diffraction of light produced larger shadows, and therefore indicated that the light was somehow deflected away from the edges of objects.
Newton, it will be recalled, suggested that light is deflected both ways; that in passing close to edges of objects rays of light are "bent several times backwards and forwards, with a motion like that of an Eel."[59]
The discrepancy between Marat's smaller shadows and the larger shadows reported by others can be accounted for by their differing definitions of the shadow. Marat did not include what he called the aureole as part of the shadow while the other investigators did. Some of the alternating light and dark bands or colored fringes lie inside and some lie outside the ideal shadow that would be made if the light's trajectory were perfectly straight; that is why Newton conceived of light bending backward and forward.
Marat, however, treated the bending of the light and its dissociation into colors as distinct phenomena—associated, to be sure, but not identical. To him, only the completely solid dark area counted as part of the shadow, and by that definition his claim that light always bends into the shadow and never away from it is comprehensible.
According to Marat, the colored bands outside the shadow (and even those that appeared black were really very dark blue) resulted from the decomposition of light. "All known bodies decompose light in attracting it," he declared, offering experiment number 42 into evidence:
Place some of these bodies four feet from the screen and in the cone of light; their aureole will appear distinct. Fix this aureole carefully; it will appear to be divided into three small bands, an inside one of dark blue, an outside one of pale yellow, and a white one in the middle.[60]
He found that he could increase color production by shining light through a solid object cut in such a way that it became a grid of narrow openings (un solide découpé en réseau):
But it is important that the little slits that make it up be parallel and separated only by small intervals. Then when at three feet from the screen you expose to the solar rays a card, a metal plate, or an ivory plaque cut up in this manner, the shadow of the grid is plainly seen bordered by bands of various colors. The colors that are consistently distinguishable are blue, straw, and pink.[61]
Marat had devised what would later be called a diffraction grating. Priestley's history of optics relates that a number of investigators had found colors in the shadows of very narrow objects such as needles, wires, or thin openings between straightedges, but none are reported to have arranged such objects to form a series of parallel slits, as Marat did. If color production were believed to be a function of light passing close to edges, it was a logical step to multiply the effect by multiplying the number of edges, which is what Marat accomplished with his solide découpé en réseau.
An interesting variant is described later in the book; experiments 118 and 119 utilize "a small disk with several very thin concentric circles cut out of it." The shadow of this device shows "each circle covered with three colored bands of equal width and intensity."[62]
While the color phenomena brought forth by most diffraction demonstrations in the eighteenth century were modest and no doubt unimpressive to skeptical observers, Marat's diffraction gratings could potentially have produced a more dramatic display of colors that would be harder to ignore. One of Marat's aristocratic backers, the vicomte de Montigny, wrote an ecstatic letter to the Journal de Littérature, des Sciences et des Arts raving about the colorful magic Marat could work with "white cards cut up in a certain manner." The "brilliant bursts of color and the bewitching nuances," the vicomte exclaimed, outshine "anything that Holland, anything that the Amazon River, anything that India can offer in their most magnificent flowers, butterflies, and birds."[63]
If the Academy's commissioners had been prone to discount Marat's claims, the colors produced by his novel apparatus may have given some of them pause. If Le Roy did indeed struggle over preparing his report, his difficulty might well have arisen from trying to interpret effects produced by the diffraction grating according to orthodox Newtonian principles. This, however, is a matter of speculation.
How Many Primary Colors Are There?
The first of Marat's two frontal assaults on Newtonian orthodoxy had to do with the number of primary colors. Marat disputed the prevailing belief, based on Newton's teaching, that there are seven primary colors. The truly primary colors, he said,
are limited to yellow, red, and blue, because when the light rays to which any isolated body is exposed are decomposed, they always come to have only these three different colors, whether it is in the darkroom or outdoors, by the light of the sun or that of a candle.[64]
Marat believed, as Newton had, that different colors of light are composed of qualitatively different kinds of rays. But whereas Newton believed that there could be different kinds for every perceptible color, Marat held that there could only be three: one kind for yellow light, another for red, and another for blue. All other hues are composites of these, he said, including the indigo, violet, orange, and green that the Newtonians considered primary. "Even the prism gives no more than three inalterable colors; all the others are decompositions of those."[65] This is shown by setting up a prism demonstration in the usual way, but moving it back and forth, toward and away from the screen. As the prism moves, the green band (for example) can be seen to weaken and finally disappear into the encroaching yellow and red bands.
Continuing to move the prism in the same direction results in even the yellow band fading away into the encroaching blue and red bands. This seems to imply that among the three primary colors, two of them, red and blue, are more primary than the third.
C.C. Gillispie, although critical of Marat's contentions regarding the primary colors, acknowledges that they merited more attention than the commissioners of the Academy of Sciences gave them.[66]
Newton's treatment of primary colors was certainly vulnerable, but Marat never gave his criticism any development. There is no hint of the distinction Goethe called for between the study of color as produced in light and as perceived in the eye.[67]
In fact, however, Marat did call attention to the physiological basis of color perception:
Properly speaking, the colors consist of the elemental impressions of light on the organ of sight, because the light per se does not include any color within itself.[68]
The subtle fluid of light, he continued,
is composed of parts that differ essentially among themselves, since they consistently affect the organ of sight in different manners. Thus, each ray of light is composed of three others, one of which produces the sensation of yellow, another that of red, and another that of blue; from their various combinations result a great number of composite sensations.[69]
Marat did not dwell on these points. Découvertes sur la lumière was, after all, a book about physics rather than physiology. It is worth recalling, though, that Marat's earlier publications in England included a tract on eye disease and revealed considerable knowledge (by contemporary standards) of the physiology of vision.
The Origin of Color
Marat's second major challenge to the Newtonians concerned the role of the prism in producing color. Newton's most admired experiment was the one where he showed that white light refracted through a prism divides up into a spectrum of light of various colors. He clinched his argument by showing that the beams of colored light could be refracted in an inverse manner to reproduce the original white light. This experiment was so straightforward that Newton's interpretation seemed self-evident to later generations.
Although the Newtonian explanation had attained the force of dogma and had remained virtually unchallenged for more than half a century, Marat was not convinced. The appearance of color, he contended, owes absolutely nothing to refraction; it is entirely due to the decomposition of light at the edges of objects. The colors that Newton saw on the wall did not originate in his prism but in the hole in the window shutters where the light entered the room. The light was decomposed into colors as it passed the edges of the hole; the colors already existed before the light reached the prism.
Marat anticipated some objections to this hypothesis. Admitting the light by means of a larger hole can allow white light—light that has not been decomposed—to pass through the prism; when that light reaches the screen it, too, will be seen to have separated into a spectrum of colors. Were those colors not produced by the prism?
Yes, Marat replied, but not in the way Newton thought; not by means of refraction. In this case the colors are decomposed by the light's deviation at the edges of the prism itself. As the red, blue, and yellow light then travels through the prism, it is refracted, but not differentially, as Newton would have it; all three are refracted exactly the same amount.
If some of them appear afterwards to have been refracted more than others, it is because their angles of incidence were unequal.[70]
Marat also used this explanation to account for why the images produced by prisms appear far more colorful than those produced by edges of objects. The light in the prism experiments is decomposed twice; once at the edges of the window hole and again at the edges of the prism. The diagram below illustrates the differences between Newton's and Marat's theories of how colors are produced.[71]
As proof of his contention that Newton was wrong about differential refrangibility, Marat proposed to measure and compare the focal distances of "the various rays of which light is composed." The ideal way to do this, he acknowledged, would be to use pure rays of blue, red, or yellow light. Unfortunately it is not feasible to do so, "since it is extremely difficult to gather a bundle of rays of each kind large enough to cover the entire surface of a lens."[72] As an alternative to "rays decomposed at the edges of objects" he suggests using "rays decomposed at their surface; that is to say, the heterogeneous reflected rays."[73] Red reflected rays, for example, are those that are seen when looking at a red object, such as an apple.
For experimental simplicity, Marat utilized colored disks; one red, one blue, and one yellow. The images of these disks were projected through a lens onto a plane parallel to the disk. "Since the focal distances are the same no matter what the color of the bodies, the heterogeneous rays are equally refrangible."[74] Q.E.D.
Marat noted that Newton had likewise tried to measure focal lengths of light of different colors, but reported an exactly opposite result: that the focal lengths were not the same. "I am very far from suspecting that great man of untruthfulness," Marat declared, "but I cannot fail to point out that the manner in which he proceeded was very defective."[75]
It is here that Newton's partisans must have found Marat's presentation most offensive. Marat expressed wonder that Newton could have repeated his prism experiments for thirty years, and that other physicists had repeated them for another fifty or so, without understanding where the colors were coming from: "It is regrettable that such a great genius wasted so much time in vain in this research."[76]
As for his own theory attributing all color separation to deviation rather than refraction, Marat stated:
I know that this assertion is entirely opposite to that of all authors who have written on this subject, but it is founded on a multitude of simple, clear, and consistent experiments, whereas the other authors have established their opinion only on the results of experiments that are complicated, illusory, and based upon the most superficial understanding of a principle that plays a great role in nature.[77]
These were strong words, and the "other authors" could not have been expected to find them congenial. Nonetheless, Marat's demeanor should not be considered sufficient cause for other scientists' refusal to come to grips with his critique of Newtonian optics. His experiments did indeed demonstrate significant anomalies for the accepted paradigm; Marat was justified in claiming that the apparent bending of light at the edges of objects is "a principle that plays a great role in nature." The rejection of Marat's ideas seems to have been based more upon personal antipathies than upon rational scientific criteria.
Addendum: Goethe and Marat
Wolfgang von Goethe devoted some thirty years to developing and defending a theory of colors in opposition to the received Newtonian doctrine on the nature of color. The explanation of color phenomena that Newton had advanced in his Opticks was so impressive to most scientists that it had tended to discourage further inquiry. Goethe, however, challenged the Newtonian orthodoxy in a long ideological struggle that culminated in the publication of his massive Zur Farbenlehre in 1810. Historians of science have traditionally dismissed Goethe's color theories as bad science, but recent studies have begun to force a new appreciation of Zur Farbenlehre.[78]
A central focus of Goethe's critique was the Newtonians' erroneous treatment of color as solely a physical property of light. If that were true, then color would be perfectly determined by some measurable quantity, such as Newton's "differential refrangibility" or, later, wavelength. To measure that property of light would be to know all there is to know about the color it produces. The reduction of color to a quantifiable aspect of light is seductive in its simplicity, but Goethe demonstrated that it simply does not accord with a great body of observational and experimental fact.
The Newtonian reduction leaves the undeniable facts of color perception out of account. Goethe's critique pointed the way toward understanding that the study of color cannot be exclusively restricted to the science of physics, but must be extended to the sciences of physiology and psychology as well. While light of varying measurable characteristics does exist external to the eye and brain, color does not.
The limitations of the Newtonian color doctrine exemplify the more general fallacy inherent in reductionism: the habit of declaring that a complex phenomenon is "nothing but" an aggregate of simple parts. Much of the anger that Goethe expressed toward the Newtonians derived from his understandable irritation at seeing the mantle of science being claimed exclusively for the narrow metaphysics of the "nothing-but."
It is worth noting a common theme in the traditional dismissal of both Goethe's color theory and the Mesmerists' animal magnetism. In both cases, scientific orthodoxy held that only objective phenomena qualify as worthy of scientific attention, and to be objective a phenomenon must exist "out there"; i.e., external to the human observer. By this criterion neither the crises induced by the Mesmerists in their patients nor color per se are objective. The refusal to acknowledge their reality and the need to investigate them does not indicate scientific maturity, but conservatism and narrowness of view.
Goethe devoted considerable space in Zur Farbenlehre to critically examining the ideas of his predecessors on the subject of colors. He summarized the central theses of Marat's optical theories in five pages.[79] In addition to Découvertes sur la lumière, Goethe cited two of Marat's shorter works on optics as well.[80]
Goethe believed that Marat's work had constituted a significant challenge to the Newtonian hegemony in the field of optics. He hailed Marat's opposition to the "accepted teachings" of the Academy of Sciences. As for the Academy's commission that had passed judgment on Marat's ideas, Goethe considered its "expert opinion" to be "an example of bad faith on the part of those confronted with something that cannot be totally denied, in an attempt to at least do away with it."[81]
In Goethe's opinion, Marat's writings revealed an admirable degree of "perceptiveness and insight" on his part:
As far as we are concerned, we think that Marat has, with a great deal of intelligence and good observations, brought the doctrine of color . . . to a very critical point, worthy of more observations, the clarification of which we can hope will lead to genuine progress in the doctrine of color.[82]
Marat's and Goethe's ideas on colors were by no means identical, however. "Those who are familiar with our views," Goethe wrote, "know where we stand with regard to the work of this researcher."[83] One of Goethe's main criticisms of the Newtonians was their notion that white light is a composite that can be analyzed into rays of various colors by refraction through a prism. Goethe held that white light was primary and indivisible. Marat substituted deviation for refraction as the agent of decomposition, but the very notion of decomposition was unacceptable to Goethe.
On the other hand, Goethe believed (in much the same way that Aristotle had) that color phenomena arise from a contrast of light and darkness, or black and white. Since Marat's perioptrics drew attention to color production at the edges of objects—that is, at the juncture between a dark object and the light—Goethe felt that Marat's doctrine represented an improvement over Newton's.
Goethe was no more successful than Marat in breaking through the wall of academic prejudice that shielded the Newtonian doctrine and sustained its hegemony. The recent scholarship that has recognized valuable and sophisticated insights in Goethe's ideas about color puts Marat's scientific work in a more favorable light as well.
[1] The terms "diffraction" and "inflexion" will be used interchangeably here. Its discoverer, Grimaldi, used the word "diffraction"; Newton, Marat, and Priestley all preferred "inflexion." Fresnel went back to "diffraction," which then became the universally preferred term.
[2] F. M. Grimaldi, Physico-Mathesis de Lumine Coloribus et Iride.
[3] I. B. Cohen says, "Joseph Priestley's value judgments are notable because he was a great scientist and a splendid historian." Priestley's History and Present State of Electricity "has the particular merit of expressing the point of view and the foci of interest of the third quarter of the eighteenth century." On the other hand, "it should be pointed out . . . that Priestley's history of optics is a poorer book than his history of electricity." Cohen, Franklin and Newton, 429–30.
[4] Priestley, History and Present State of . . . Vision, Light, and Colours, 171.
[5] Ibid., 317.
[7] Newton, Opticks (Query 31), 400.
[8] Ibid., 338–9.
[10] Cohen, "Preface" to Newton's Opticks, xxxv.
[11] Newton, Opticks (Query 29), 370.
[12] Ibid. (Query 3), 339.
[13] Priestley, History and Present State of . . . Vision, Light, and Colours, 521. The spellings are Priestley's. The scientists he discusses are Giacomo Filippo Maraldi (1665–1729); Jean Jacques Dortous de Mairan (1678–1771); Etienne François Dutour de Salvert (1711–89); Claude Nicolas Le Cat (1700–68); and Pieter van Musschenbroek (1692–1761).
[14] Ibid., 520–40.
[15] Ibid., 780.
[16] Ibid., 780–1.
[17] Marat, Découvertes sur la lumière, 5.
[18] Maillebois, Sage, and Montigny were the other members of the commission. Gillispie identifies Montigny as an honorary member of the Academy, J. C. P. Trudaine de Montigny (Science and Polity, 304), which is impossible because he died in 1777. The Montigny in question was in fact a regular member, the mathematician-engineer Étienne Mignot de Montigny.
[19] See Correspondance de Marat, 5–7 and 58–64.
[20] Marat, Découvertes sur la lumière, 3. The commission's report was originally printed in the Registres de l'Académie des Sciences, dated 10 May 1780.
[21] Marat, Découvertes sur la lumière, 3–4.
[22] Ibid., 5.
[24] Most notably in Les Charlatans modernes.
[25] Letter to Roume de Saint-Laurent (20 November 1783), in Correspondance de Marat, 66–7.
[26] Correspondance de Marat, 58–61.
[27] Ibid., 61.
[28] Ibid., 6. Letter of Le Roy to Marat (13 February 1780).
[29] Hahn, Anatomy of a Scientific Institution, 158. Original source: Bibliothèque de l'Institute, MS. 876, fols. 95-6.
[30] Thomas Young, "The Bakerian Lecture: Experiments and Calculations Relative to Physical Optics" (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London XCIV [1804]), 11; emphasis added.
[31] Jean Baptiste Biot (1774–1862), mathematician, elected to the Academy of Sciences in 1800; Siméon Denis Poisson (1781–1840), physicist, elected to the Academy of Sciences in 1812.
[32] John Worrall has recounted this episode—and debunked the traditional account—in "Fresnel, Poisson and the White Spot: The Role of Successful Predictions in the Acceptance of Scientific Theories" (in The Uses of Experiment: Studies in the Natural Sciences, edited by Gooding, Pinch, and Schaffer). According to Worrall the demonstration of the white spot did not force a dramatic, immediate about-face on the part of the academicians in favor of Fresnel's wave theory of light, as is often suggested. It was simply another nail in the coffin, so to speak, of the Newtonian paradigm, perhaps no more important than the century-old problem of diffraction. See also, in the same volume, Geoffrey Cantor's comments on Worrall's paper in "The Rhetoric of Experiment."
[33] See Cohen, "Preface" to Newton's Opticks, xi.
[34] Marat, Notions élémentaires d'optique.
[35] Marat's translation of Newton's Opticks is discussed in Chapter 2 on this website.
[36] Bibliothèque Nationale. Manuscripts: "Nouvelles acquisitions françaises" 309.
[37] Young, "Experiments and Calculations Relative to Physical Optics," 11, 12.
[45] Fresnel predicted the black spot as well as the white spot: "Fresnel had found that his theory entails that if light from a point source is shone on an opaque screen in which there is a small circular opening, then at certain points beyond the screen but along the axis of the aperture (that is, the extension of the line from the source to the centre of the aperture) there is total darkness. This 'black spot' prediction is 'complementary' to the white spot case—it is just as counterintuitive as the latter and its empirical success just as unexpected and remarkable." Worrall, "Fresnel, Poisson and the White Spot," 145.
[49] Priestley, History and Present State of . . . Vision, Light, and Colours, 520; emphasis in the original.
[56] Ibid., 29–30; see experiment 41.
[59] Newton, Opticks (Query 3), 339.
[63] Journal de Littérature, des Sciences et des Arts, vol. II (1781), 230–1.
[66] Gillispie, Science and Polity, 307.
[67] Ibid., 328. Gillispie was commenting on Marat's Mémoires académiques, not his Découvertes sur la lumière. On Goethe, see the addendum at the end of this chapter.
[68] Marat, Découvertes sur la lumière, 133.
[71] Source: Mme. M. A. Tonnelat, "The Spread of Newtonian Optics," in René Taton, The Beginnings of Modern Science, 459.
[78] C.C. Gillispie wrote: "It is impossible to read the Farbenlehre without an acute sense of embarrassment at the painful spectacle of the author, a great man, making a fool of himself" (Gillispie, The Edge of Objectivity, 196). A number of scholars have recently reinvestigated this work of Goethe's and have concluded that he was not so foolish after all; see Sepper, Goethe Contra Newton; and Amrine, Zucker, and Wheeler, Goethe and the Sciences: A Reappraisal.
[79] Goethe, Zur Farbenlehre, vol. II, 601–6.
[80] The other two works were Découvertes de M. Marat sur le feu, l'électricité, et la lumière and Notions élémentaires d'optique. Goethe cited the original French edition of Découvertes sur la lumière but also noted Weigel's 1783 German translation.
[81] Goethe, Zur Farbenlehre, vol. II, 605.
Copyright 2012 Clifford D. Conner. A Booknoise Site.


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Video Game Scores
TRON Evolution was released in November of 2010 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Windows and PlayStation Portable. It was developed by: Propaganda Games, GameStar and SuperVillain Studios. The musical score was written by three well-known composers: Sascha Dikiciyan(Mass Effect, Borderlands 2, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided), Cris Velasco(God of War, Mass Effect, Overwatch), and Kevin Manthei(Twisted Metal Black, City of Villains, Star Trek Online).
Back in 2010, iam8bit pressed about 200 copies of the 7-track vinyl soundtrack for TRON Evolution which is unfortunately no longer available. It was the first vinyl released by iam8bit and now goes for, get this.. $500-1,000. It's rare you find them on auction sites or for sale but I remember seeing one for about $800 a while back and said to myself, that has to be a misprint. You'd have to be a true, unwavering, die-hard TRON Evolution fan to fork out that much dough.
There's no extracting involved here, the music files are .wav encoded. It's just a matter of properly editing, labeling and numbering the soundtrack. I identified the tracks by using the txt file within the games folders. One thing I noticed though is that there were 16 duplicate tracks that weren't mentioned in that txt file. I'm not sure what they are used for but I generally do not like to include redundant tracks in our uploads, so I left them out. There were only 4 or 5 tracks that I blended together instead of leaving them separate(TRON_Trailer_30secloop_1,3,4 and TRON_Abraxas_30secloop3,4,5), that's because they blend together that way in-game and rather than have a handful of similar tracks, I thought it best to place them together. At first, I contemplated leaving the tracks in no particular order just to save time and get the soundtrack uploaded but then I decided to do this thing right. It looks like a mess with the tracks in incorrect order, so every track is placed in the order heard while playing the game. I wanted to mention the Credits tracks. The Credits Music consists of two tracks: The Tron Codex and Spiritual Ambience. They repeat back to back two or three times until the credits finish rolling but you hear them earlier in-game so that's why they're separated and placed before the end. I did not include The Grid or Derezzed because, as most of you know by now, we do not include music that's been officially released and is available to purchase online. Both of those tracks are inlcuded on the TRON Legacy Score written by Daft Punk.
As far as I can tell—maybe somebody could shed some light on this—the tracks TronIntroB, Disc Room Music 01, LightBike_2 and Tron_Ambient_2 seem to be unused. I've double-checked all of the placements in the files and do not see anywhere those tracks are played. So, I mixed them into the soundtrack order where I thought they make the most sense.
I labeled the tracks according to the titles used in the txt file but renamed them, for instance "TRON Ambient A" instead of "Tron_Amb1_A_Intro" for a cleaner appearance. I also decided to include the locations when applicable to make the tracks easier to identify.
I didn't include the mixes that Sasha Dikiciyan has on his own SoundCloud - he does have very good arrangements of multiple tracks, so make sure to check those out. Such as; Enter the Grid is The Tron Codex track but at the 1:30 mark Enter the Grid transitions to another track for the final minute; I'm unsure of the track on the first half of The Chaos Complex but the second half is Tron_Arena_1(Sentry); The_end_of_Everything is the same unmixed track from the game; and finally, Flynn's Lament I believe is the music to the cut-scene later in the game during a long discussion with Flynn.
There are a handful of tracks that Sasha has listed as "Unreleased" and I'm assuming that means that they weren't used for the Vinyl I mentioned earlier because they are certainly used in the game. Sentry #1 is played while Escaping Clu's Sentries and Tron derrez is played while in the Master Line Control Room as an example.
But there we have it. The TRON Evolution Soundtrack is uploaded in both FLAC and MP3. Enjoy!
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How to Watch: No. 1 Tennessee at South Carolina
by RTI Staff - Jan 29, 2019
(Photo via GamecocksOnline.com)
Tennessee survived their first week as the No. 1 team in college basketball, though they had an extremely close call against Vanderbilt on the road in their first game as the top-ranked team. Now, the Vols will go back on the road to defend their No. 1 ranking against an SEC opponent.
The No. 1 Vols (18-1, 6-0 SEC) travel to Columbia, South Carolina to take on the Gamecocks (10-9, 5-1 SEC) on Tuesday night. Tennessee has won two-straight games against the Gamecocks, but South Carolina has won four of the last seven meetings between the two teams.
Tennessee is currently riding a 14-game winning streak, the second-longest winning streak in school history. South Carolina is coming off a road loss to a bad Oklahoma State team on Saturday, but they had won five of their last six games before that.
South Carolina started off the 2018-19 season on a rough note. The Gamecocks were 5-7 before entering SEC play, and they had lost to the likes of Wofford, Stony Brook, and Wyoming.
But once the Gamecocks started their conference schedule, they found their groove.
Frank Martin's squad won their first four SEC games before falling in a blowout to LSU on the road. They responded after that loss by beating No. 16 Auburn at home, then they lost to Oklahoma State. On the whole, South Carolina is 5-1 in SEC play and have two wins over ranked opponents (No. 14 Mississippi State and No. 16 Auburn).
Seniors Chris Silva and Hassani Gravett lead the way for South Carolina, and freshman A.J. Lawson is a big contributor as well. Silva averages 14 points and 6.8 rebounds per game in SEC play and 13.1 points and 6.9 rebounds per game overall.
The Gamecocks are one of the few teams that can match the girth and size of the Vols. Silva measures in at 6-foot-9, 205 pounds, Malik Kotsar is 6-foot-10, 245 pounds, and Felipe Haase is 6-foot-9, 249 pounds. All three of those players average over 22 minutes per game
Tennessee forward Grant Williams is coming off a strong week of play. He was awarded the SEC Player of the Week after notching a new career-high against Vanderbilt on Wednesday when he totaled 43 points and was a perfect 23-of-23 from the free throw line. He averaged 31 points, 5.5 rebounds, three assists, and 2.5 blocks in UT's two wins last week.
Here's everything you need to know about today's match-up. And if you can't make it to the game, here's how you can watch and listen to the Tennessee vs. South Carolina game.
Tip-Off: 6:30 Eastern, January 29th, Colonial Life Arena (Columbia, SC)
TV: SEC Network
Streaming Online: WatchESPN.com or ESPN app
Radio: Vol Network (99.1 FM or 990 AM in Knoxville/surrounding areas)
Line: Tennessee (-8.5)
Cordarrelle Patterson: "I Should've Stayed Another Year" at UT
Vols Offer 2020 Dual-Threat QB out of Florida


ottoneu Fantasy Football is live! Get a free team!
The wait is over! You can now join or create an ottoneu Fantasy Football league. Tell your co-workers, your friends, and definitely your single-season fantasy football leagues! Sign up now. Go, go!.
There are some basic rules and roster/scoring options to review for the best experience. As always, feel free to reach out with any questions.
ottoneu Fantasy Football has been in the works since 2013, and it would not have been possible without your support and encouragement. Try it out and share you thoughts with me and other players.
A contest, as promised, to score a free team: leave a comment stating how much you'd spend out of your $400 budget on Andrew Luck if he was the very first player nominated in your draft. We'll pick a winner and give you $20 towards an ottoneu Fantasy Football team for this season, either a new one or one you already have. Have at it!
Woah, I expect much higher. I bet he reaches $100 in some leagues. I would go up to $75.
If we need to pick an exact number, put me down for $86. If he's the first pick I don't want to mess around waiting for deals. Get someone fast and then you can lay back and wait for the bargains to fill in around him.
My last bid would be $65. Just because QB wouldn't be the position I'd be willing to overspend on.
I'd go up to $85 on Luck.
Call me crazy, but there are other QBs I'd rather have. Let some other team blow 25% of their budget.
$30 tops, too many good QBs out there.
The number of players you get is going to be pretty lean and I'd prefer to spend as much money on players who are going to get me points this year/next than save money for flyers on college kids.
$45 at most. Rather have Bridgewater and someone else younger to build off of. Money at RB and a strong TE.
Andrew Luck should go for about $40 at the high end. The scoring system heavily favors dual-threat running backs and elite wide receivers. Ideally, you'd have 2, $60 running backs, 3 $50 wide receivers, a $40 TE (yes, the elite ones are worth that much here), a $5 kicker and 2 $10 RB backups.
The remaining $25 would go to matchup guys, depth and prospects.
Quarterbacks (outside of the top 2-3 guys) will be largely replaceable in Ottoneu football and for that reason I see many of the top teams taking a stars and scrubs approach. You can't easily platoon your skill players or play match ups like you can in baseball, so the consistent ones will bring home the dollars.
I think dual-threat quarterbacks will be heavily undervalued in Ottoneu. I'll take a $30 Kaepernick over a $40 Luck any day.
The real question here is…how much do you pay for Demaryius Thomas?
I'd go as high as $40 on Luck. Some people might think that's low, but 10% of your budget is a good chunk of change. And if you don't get him, that's fine. There are plenty of other very capable QB's out there, and that just means you can spend more on a quality running back. I'd honestly spend more on a RB than any QB. There's a lot more depth at the QB position, and you never know when one of those younger guys could be poised for a breakout season.
How can I bid when I haven't looked at the scoring yet?!?
I'd guess $79 for Mike Trout…I mean Andrew Luck.
I would say $85 as he is probably the best player in the league and is a young guy who will keep getting better. Think of Trout, but with a bigger gap between him and the next best option.
This should obviously vary per league type although all ottoneu leagues have the same scoring for QBS. I figure that regular PPR and maybe one flex is the most popular format and if that is the case, the numbers Luck is widely expected to put up this year would price him around $62. This is assuming one doesn't break the bank for prospects in college and prices them as nin producers for this year. But I'd pay no more than $62.
The best QB in football right now 101$!!
Luck is clearly worth no more than $20.
Given that I wildly undervalue talent, does anyone need someone to fill a spot in a $20 league?
Ottoneu is all about finding value. There is no way that a high profile QB at the first pick is going to go for a "value" price. Expect to pay full retail.
If I think someone is willing to pay $100 for him, then I'm bidding $99.


text:
Q: Webpack compiling assets on every request - Ruby on Rails 6 I have a problem with Webpack in my Ruby on Rails application.
In development pages are loaded very slowly because on every request webpack recompiles the changes:
Started GET "/404" for ::1 at 2020-12-03 15:24:33 +0100
Processing by ErrorsController#not_found as HTML
  Rendering errors/not_found.html.erb within layouts/errors
  Rendered errors/not_found.html.erb within layouts/errors (Duration: 0.6ms | Allocations: 688)
The resolved_paths option has been deprecated. Use additional_paths instead.
[Webpacker] Everything's up-to-date. Nothing to do
The resolved_paths option has been deprecated. Use additional_paths instead.
[Webpacker] Everything's up-to-date. Nothing to do
The resolved_paths option has been deprecated. Use additional_paths instead.
[Webpacker] Everything's up-to-date. Nothing to do
The resolved_paths option has been deprecated. Use additional_paths instead.
[Webpacker] Everything's up-to-date. Nothing to do
The resolved_paths option has been deprecated. Use additional_paths instead.
[Webpacker] Everything's up-to-date. Nothing to do
The resolved_paths option has been deprecated. Use additional_paths instead.
[Webpacker] Everything's up-to-date. Nothing to do
The resolved_paths option has been deprecated. Use additional_paths instead.
[Webpacker] Everything's up-to-date. Nothing to do
The resolved_paths option has been deprecated. Use additional_paths instead.
[Webpacker] Everything's up-to-date. Nothing to do
Completed 200 OK in 1204ms (Views: 1203.4ms | ActiveRecord: 0.0ms | Allocations: 31195)

In development I can fix that by using ruby bin/webpack-dev-server but when running my RSpec tests there is the same problem. On every request, webpack is recompiling the assets and tests are really slow.
My config/webpacker.yml looks like this:
# Note: You must restart bin/webpack-dev-server for changes to take effect

default: &default
  source_path: app/javascript
  source_entry_path: packs
  public_root_path: public
  public_output_path: packs
  cache_path: tmp/cache/webpacker
  check_yarn_integrity: false
  webpack_compile_output: true

  # Additional paths webpack should lookup modules
  # ['app/assets', 'engine/foo/app/assets']
  additional_paths: [
    'vendor/assets'
  ]

  # Reload manifest.json on all requests so we reload latest compiled packs
  cache_manifest: false

  # Extract and emit a css file
  extract_css: true

  static_assets_extensions:
    - .jpg
    - .jpeg
    - .png
    - .gif
    - .tiff
    - .ico
    - .svg
    - .eot
    - .otf
    - .ttf
    - .woff
    - .woff2

  extensions:
    - .mjs
    - .js
    - .sass
    - .scss
    - .css
    - .module.sass
    - .module.scss
    - .module.css
    - .png
    - .svg
    - .gif
    - .jpeg
    - .jpg

development:
  <<: *default
  webpack_compile_output: true

  compile: true

  # Verifies that correct packages and versions are installed by inspecting package.json, yarn.lock, and node_modules
  check_yarn_integrity: true

  # Reference: https://webpack.js.org/configuration/dev-server/
  dev_server:
    https: false
    host: localhost
    port: 3035
    public: localhost:3035
    hmr: false
    # Inline should be set to true if using HMR
    inline: true
    overlay: true
    compress: true
    disable_host_check: true
    use_local_ip: false
    quiet: false
    headers:
      'Access-Control-Allow-Origin': '*'
    watch_options:
      ignored: '**/node_modules/**'

test:
  <<: *default
  compile: true

  # Compile test packs to a separate directory
  public_output_path: packs-test
  check_yarn_integrity: false

production:
  <<: *default

  # Production depends on precompilation of packs prior to booting for performance.
  compile: false

  # Cache manifest.json for performance
  cache_manifest: true

  webpack_compile_output: true

How can I fix that?

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


A teenager has been arrested on suspicion of malicious communication following the publication of an offensive Facebook post in relation to the disappearance and death of Mansfield schoolgirl, Amber Peat.
The 19-year-old, who lives in the London area, is accused of making the post on social media during the inquiry to find the 13-year-old.
The man was arrested by the Metropolitan Police and is currently in custody.
Rumours and gossip had plagued the internet since the youngster went missing from her Mansfield home on the evening of Saturday, 30th May.
Her body was found in a hedgerow off Westfield Lane - less than a mile from her home - three days later.
She was found hanged, and police have repeatedly emphasised there are no suspicious circumstances.
Despite this, there were still some taking to Facebook and spreading wild accusations.


Just a quick note for all of you out there who have been debating whether you should get your copies of Shroud of Darkness, Lady of Fire and End of Days, there is an etsy exclusive currently out there to help convince you to take the digital plunge.
You can get all three books in the Shroud of Darkness trilogy for £1.99 – yes, you can get hold of all three books for the same price as one on etsy, which is £1 less than you can get them on amazon. This digital box set comes in kindle format and if getting three books for the price of one wasn't enough, for ever 350 copies of the digital box set sold, C.S. Woolley will be giving away a copy of Rising Empire: Part 1.


GK Consulting LLC is a female-owned and -operated small business specializing in ethical and actionable social research and evaluation. We are passionate about ensuring everyone – in particular the most marginalized people – are given a voice so that interventions can be most effectively planned, implemented, and adapted. All of our work is of the highest caliber, and integrates the appropriate balance of the academic and the practical, depending on the client's needs. We offer expertise in education, gender, and poverty reduction, particularly in fragile contexts.
With an impressive database of consultants, GK Consulting can guarantee well-organized teams and individuals with ample experience and drive, carefully selected for each individual project.
GK Consulting prides itself in strict adherence to ethical research with human subjects, as prescribed by the American Sociological Foundation (ASA) in addition to specific country-level guidelines set by the client. Social research that has the potential to negatively impact even one person must be re-thought.
Norwegian Church Aid: Midline Evaluation (2016) on NCA's Gender Based Violence reduction program in North and South Kivu regions, Democratic Republic of Congo; follow-up from baseline conducted by GK Consulting in 2014.
"GK Consulting led us at Plan UK through a large and complex baseline study at the start of a girls' education project. The fund manager and evaluation manager on the donor's side were extremely specific about what they wanted versus what Plan UK was planning and Gwen and her team managed this impeccably... The result was a high quality piece of work and one of the best baselines we have had at Plan UK.
Copyright © 2015 Welcome to GK Consulting. Design and Developed by WebMax Tech.


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text:
< Back to Visionary Insights
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE GREAT INDOORS
Emma Wilhelm, Senior Global Marketing Manager
In The Great Indoors: The Surprising Science of How Buildings Shape Our Behavior, Health, and Happiness, Emily Anthes examines how indoor spaces affect our bodies and minds, for better or worse, in so many ways. While researching this book, Anthes talked to leading researchers in building sciences and visited innovative spaces including a school, a commercial real estate company, a healthcare lab, a residence for people with disabilities, and a women's prison.
People in the building industry will come away with new inspiration to create more humane and life-affirming buildings. At SageGlass, we love to be part of innovative projects with ambitious goals for occupant health and wellness. And in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, interest in healthy buildings is soaring. So Monique Salas, our Healthcare Business Development Manager, recently interviewed Anthes to learn more about this important new book.
Building Science in the Time of COVID-19
While the book was just released this summer, Anthes wrote it well before COVID-19 was an issue. Yet there are some very relevant concepts. "I do talk in the book pretty explicitly about how we can design spaces that reduce the spread of infectious disease, and so while I didn't have COVID in mind, some of those lessons apply," says Anthes. "But then the other piece of it is — even beyond the disease itself — we're all spending so much more time in our homes. And so I think there are a lot of lessons from the book about how we can create homes and indoor spaces that are really restorative and help keep us healthy and happy. There's plenty of stress during this time, but through some changes to — and attention to — our built environment, we can try to minimize that and create spaces where we feel safe and comfortable."
Anthes has written several recent articles related to COVID-19:
"The Pandemic's Indoor Opportunity: How Design Affects the Safety of our Indoor Environments"
"Coronavirus Lockdowns May Raise Exposure to Indoor Air Pollution"
"Pandemics spread in hospitals. Changes in design and protocols can save lives."
The Inspiration for the Book
Anthes is a science writer who spends a lot of time poring over scientific journals. Seven or eight years ago, she noticed a lot of new research on what's often referred to as the indoor microbiome: the collection of microorganisms that inhabit the built environment.
"We spend all this time in our buildings — 90% of our time indoors — but I never really thought much about what was happening in them," explains Anthes. "And it made me realize that these environments are so much richer and more complex than I had realized, and so that was the spark that prompted me to say, 'What else is there to find out about these environments?' and, 'What power do they have that we often overlook?'"
Anthes has been researching and writing on the built environment for several years. For instance, four years ago she published an article in Nature called "The office experiment: Can science build the perfect workspace?" The Great Indoors is a culmination of everything she's learned through thorough research and first-hand experience in some unique spaces.
Nuggets of Wisdom on Daylight and Views
As a business development professional in the electrochromic glass industry, Monique Salas thinks a lot about the significance of daylight and views. In the interview, she asks Anthes to share a couple nuggets of wisdom on the topic. "As it happens, daylight and views — and particularly views of nature — are two of the most important things you can provide building occupants," says Anthes. "There are just reams and reams of scientific literature."
Anthes goes on to explain that daylight can:
boost our moods
regulate our circadian rhythms
And views of nature can:
reduce stress, anxiety, and pain
boost concentration, focus, and productivity
"So basically, if there's any positive outcome you want to encourage," explains Anthes, "daylight and views can help do that. They're really critical for building occupants." While the research on the benefits of daylight and views is clear, access to these elements is often still seen as a luxury. (Consider, for instance, the corner office.)
Understanding the "So What?"
Anthes explains that a lot of the earliest research on daylight and views was done in hospitals. Patients in sunnier rooms require fewer painkillers, are discharged sooner, and have lower mortality rates. "Even if we're not making much headway at convincing hospital administration that the humane thing to do is provide daylight and views," says Anthes, "there's a really compelling economic argument, too."
Similar arguments can be made for other indoor environments like workplaces and schools. In fact, research has found that daylight and views affects our cognition. Anthes explains something called attention restoration theory. "It turns out that looking out a window, particularly at a natural landscape, engages us in a sort of effortless way," she says, "and it allows our minds to rest, and then subsequently improves our focus, and our attention spans, and our productivity."
A companion theory to attention restoration theory is the biophilia hypothesis. "That's very much about how looking at nature relaxes us," explains Anthes, "and then that relaxation has all sorts of downstream effects: reducing cortisol and dropping blood pressure." Combined, the two theories make a compelling business case for designing indoor spaces that offer plenty of daylight and views of nature.
For more takeaways related to the commercial real estate, healthcare, and building industries, watch the entire 30-minute interview with Monique Salas and Emily Anthes.
About Emily Anthes
Emily Anthes is a science journalist and author. Her new book, The Great Indoors: The Surprising Science of How Buildings Shape Our Behavior, Health, and Happiness, was published in June. She is also the author of Frankenstein's Cat: Cuddling Up to Biotech's Brave New Beasts, which was longlisted for the PEN/E.O Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. Emily's work has also appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Wired, Nature, Slate, Businessweek, and elsewhere. Her magazine features have won several awards, including the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award and the NASW Science in Society Journalism Award. Emily has a master's degree in science writing from MIT and a bachelor's degree in the history of science and medicine from Yale, where she also studied creative writing. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Watch Interview
WHY LOOKING AT NATURE IMPROVES OUR COGNITIVE PERFORMANCE
SAINT-GOBAIN HEADQUARTERS OCCUPANT COMFORT STUDY: THE VALUE OF MULTI-COMFORT
WELL-BEING: THE NEW FRONTIER IN TALENT MANAGEMENT
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