The Fairy-Land of Science

Arabella Buckley

5 ideas

1. Natural forces as invisible working fairies

   Buckley reframes light, heat, gravity, water and chemical attraction as real 'fairies': invisible agents that are known only by their effects and are always at work transforming the world. Entering this fairyland requires disciplined imagination, the habit of asking what unseen agent is acting behind an ordinary sight such as a boiling kettle or a falling stone. On this view, wonder is a result of looking closely and scientifically, not a retreat from it.

2. A lump of coal as buried sunbeams

   Buckley traces a piece of coal back to Carboniferous swamp forests of giant club-mosses (Lepidodendron, Sigillaria), horsetails (Calamites) and tree-ferns. Their leaves used sunlight to pull carbon from carbonic acid in the air. As the plants fell, they were buried under mud and compressed over ages into seams, so the sunlight they captured was locked away as fuel. Burning coal in a Victorian grate therefore releases sunbeams that fell on the earth millions of years ago.

3. Colour as selective absorption of light waves

   Light is presented as waves travelling through an all-pervading ether, and different wave-lengths produce different colours in the eye. White sunlight contains every colour, and an object's colour is the portion of those waves it throws back after absorbing the rest. A red flower looks red because it swallows the other waves and returns only the red ones.

4. Slow everyday agents sculpt the landscape

   Raindrops, streams, frost and glaciers are the chief sculptors of the earth's surface. They work by tiny repeated actions: frost splits rock, rivers carry off grains, and ice grinds out valleys and drops boulders far from their source.

5. Flowers and bees shaped for mutual service

   A flower's bright petals, scent and nectar exist to attract bees. The bee, while feeding, carries pollen from one flower to another of the same kind. Cross-fertilised plants produce stronger seed and so flourish, which means flower and insect have been gradually fitted to each other, and what looks like ornament is a working exchange.

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