Illumination and Construal: Light as Enabler and Constrainer of Possibility: 5 Enlightenment and the Rationalisation of Light

During the Enlightenment, light evolves from a medium of perception and symbolic mediation into a principle of rational order, structuring both knowledge and possibility through mathematical and experimental frameworks. Light becomes a tool for measuring, abstracting, and predicting relational fields, bridging sensory experience and conceptual understanding.

Isaac Newton’s work in optics exemplifies this transformation. By decomposing sunlight into its spectral components and formalising its behaviour through laws of reflection and refraction, light is rendered calculable and manipulable. The possibility of comprehending nature becomes contingent on understanding these luminous structures, establishing a field in which potential is both constrained and enabled by predictable relations.

Leibniz extends this rationalisation into a symbolic and metaphysical dimension. He conceives of light as an interconnected network of forces and perceptions, reflecting relational harmony at both cosmic and epistemic levels. Light is simultaneously empirical and metaphysical, structuring the human capacity to construe the universe according to reasoned principles.

Modulatory voices: Newton (optical law, spectral analysis), Leibniz (relational metaphysics), Huygens (wave theory of light).

The Enlightenment codifies light as a medium of rational construal: it frames possibility through predictable patterns, enabling humans to extend their understanding and action into previously inaccessible domains. Possibility is no longer merely perceived; it is systematically structured, calculated, and enacted, establishing luminous fields as the scaffolding for modern science, technology, and symbolic reasoning.