The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them. A rt historian Kenneth Clark describes the 17th century. He begins with their use of light. Clark uses the words light and experience in their metaphorical as well as their literal senses. The Dutch masters were consummate handlers of light.
Sunlight etches buildings in stark morning clarity.
It flows through windows. It carries images through mirrors. Light illuminates and clarifies our experience. The rise of 17th-century science was built on a new kind of experience. It gave us the first scientific experiments.