Chapter 8: To See the Invisible and to Read the Unprinted

Humans are a curious species. Already early in civilization it was noticed that water could change the angle of light. When glass was first produced some 2,000 years ago it was observed that this material too could bend light. The first lenses were produced and were given their name because of similarity in form to a bean, Latin lentil. It took some thousand years before the first eye glasses were produced but in between the Basra-born Arab polymath Hasan Ibn al-Haytham, Latinized to Alhazen had described the fundamentals of optics. As we have learnt in Chapters 4 and 5, what we see is light that has bounced off the objects filling our surroundings. Alhazen was a prominent representative of what is referred to as the Islamic Golden Age. He should also be mentioned because he may have been the first proponent of the scientific method in which a hypothesis is proven by experiments or by confirmatory mathematical procedures. This concept was reintroduced with force by the later Renaissance researchers launching the modern era of science-based societal developments. Galileo Galilee is considered as the pioneer in this field. He used his primitive binoculars to identify four moons circulating around Jupiter and this led to the revolutionary change from an Earth-centric to a heliocentric view of our solar system. Whereas Galileo looked outwards another scientist of the 17th century looked inwards…