Banner logo

WIKIMANIA '17
Watch the opening keynote session LIVE from Montreal
Jimmy Wales in conversation with anthropologist Gabriella Coleman
Opticks
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the book by Newton. For the subject in general, see Optics.
For the computer program, see Opticks (software).

The first, 1704, edition of Opticks: or, a treatise of the reflexions, refractions,
inflexions and colours of light.

A 1730 edition
Opticks: Or, a Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of
Light is a book by English natural philosopher Isaac Newton that was published in
English in 1704.[1] (A scholarly Latin translation appeared in 1706.) The book
analyzes the fundamental nature of light by means of the refraction of light with
prisms and lenses, the diffraction of light by closely spaced sheets of glass, and
the behaviour of color mixtures with spectral lights or pigment powders. It is
considered one of the great works of science in history. Opticks was Newton's
second major book on physical science. Newton's name did not appear on the title
page of the first edition of Opticks.

Contents [hide]
1 Overview
2 Opticks and the Principia
3 The Queries
4 Reception
5 See also
6 References
7 External links
Overview[edit]
The publication of Opticks represented a major contribution to science, different
from but in some ways rivalling the Principia. Opticks is largely a record of
experiments and the deductions made from them, covering a wide range of topics in
what was later to be known as physical optics.[1] That is, this work is not a
geometric discussion of catoptrics or dioptrics, the traditional subjects of
reflection of light by mirrors of different shapes and the exploration of how light
is "bent" as it passes from one medium, such as air, into another, such as water or
glass. Rather, the Opticks is a study of the nature of light and colour and the
various phenomena of diffraction, which Newton called the "inflexion" of light.

In this book Newton sets forth in full his experiments, first reported to the Royal
Society of London in 1672,[2] on dispersion, or the separation of light into a
spectrum of its component colours. He demonstrates how the appearance of color
arises from selective absorption, reflection, or transmission of the various
component parts of the incident light.

The major significance of Newton's work is that it overturned the dogma, attributed
to Aristotle or Theophrastus and accepted by scholars in Newton's time, that "pure"
light (such as the light attributed to the Sun) is fundamentally white or
colourless, and is altered into color by mixture with darkness caused by
interactions with matter. Newton showed just the opposite was true: light is
composed of different spectral hues (he describes seven red, orange, yellow,
green, blue, indigo and violet), and all colours, including white, are formed by
various mixtures of these hues. He demonstrates that color arises from a physical
property of light each hue is refracted at a characteristic angle by a prism or
lens but he clearly states that color is a sensation within the mind and not an
inherent property of material objects or of light itself. For example, he
demonstrates that a red violet (magenta) color can be mixed by overlapping the red
and violet ends of two spectra, although this color does not appear in the spectrum
and therefore is not a "color of light". By connecting the red and violet ends of
the spectrum, he organised all colours as a color circle that both quantitatively
predicts color mixtures and qualitatively describes the perceived similarity among
hues.

Opticks and the Principia[edit]

Opticks differs in many respects from the Principia. It was first published in
English rather than in the Latin used by European philosophers, contributing to the
development of a vernacular science literature. This marks a significant transition
in the history of the English Language. With Britain's growing confidence and world
influence, due at least in part to people like Newton, the English language was
rapidly becoming the language of science and business. The book is a model of
popular science exposition: although Newton's English is somewhat datedhe shows a
fondness for lengthy sentences with much embedded qualificationsthe book can still
be easily understood by a modern reader. In contrast, few readers of Newton's time
found the Principia accessible or even comprehensible. His formal but flexible
style shows colloquialisms and metaphorical word choice.

Unlike the Principia, Opticks is not developed using the geometric convention of
propositions proved by deduction from either previous propositions, lemmas or first
principles (or axioms). Instead, axioms define the meaning of technical terms or
fundamental properties of matter and light, and the stated propositions are
demonstrated by means of specific, carefully described experiments. The first
sentence of the book declares My Design in this Book is not to explain the
Properties of Light by Hypotheses, but to propose and prove them by Reason and
Experiments. In an Experimentum crucis or "critical experiment" (Book I, Part II,
Theorem ii), Newton showed that the color of light corresponded to its "degree of
refrangibility" (angle of refraction), and that this angle cannot be changed by
additional reflection or refraction or by passing the light through a coloured
filter.

The work is a vade mecum of the experimenter's art, displaying in many examples how
to use observation to propose factual generalisations about the physical world and
then exclude competing explanations by specific experimental tests. However, unlike
the Principia, which vowed Non fingo hypotheses or "I make no hypotheses" outside
the deductive method, the Opticks develops conjectures about light that go beyond
the experimental evidence: for example, that the physical behaviour of light was
due its "corpuscular" nature as small particles, or that perceived colours were
harmonically proportioned like the tones of a diatonic musical scale.

The Queries[edit]
See main: The Queries
Opticks concludes with a set of "Queries." In the first edition, these were sixteen
such Queries; that number was increased in the Latin edition, published in 1706,
and then in the revised English edition, published in 1717/18. The first set of
Queries were brief, but the later ones became short essays, filling many pages. In
the fourth edition of 1730, there were 31 Queries, and it was the famous "31st
Query" that, over the next two hundred years, stimulated a great deal of
speculation and development on theories of chemical affinity.

These Queries, especially the later ones, deal with a wide range of physical
phenomena, far transcending any narrow interpretation of the subject matter of
"optics." They concern the nature and transmission of heat; the possible cause of
gravity; electrical phenomena; the nature of chemical action; the way in which God
created matter in "the Beginning;" the proper way to do science; and even the
ethical conduct of human beings. These Queries are not really questions in the
ordinary sense. They are almost all posed in the negative, as rhetorical questions.
That is, Newton does not ask whether light "is" or "may be" a "body." Rather, he
declares: "Is not Light a Body?" Not only does this form indicate that Newton had
an answer, but that it may go on for many pages. Clearly, as Stephen Hales (a firm
Newtonian of the early eighteenth century) declared, this was Newton's mode of
explaining "by Query."

Reception[edit]
The Opticks was widely read and debated in England and on the Continent. The early
presentation of the work to the Royal Society stimulated a bitter dispute between
Newton and Robert Hooke over the "corpuscular" or particle theory of light, which
prompted Newton to postpone publication of the work until after Hooke's death in
1703. On the Continent, and in France in particular, both the Principia and the
Opticks were initially rejected by many natural philosophers, who continued to
defend Cartesian natural philosophy and the Aristotelian version of color, and
claimed to find Newton's prism experiments difficult to replicate. Indeed, the
Aristotelian theory of the fundamental nature of white light was defended into the
19th century, for example by the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in his
Farbenlehre.

Newtonian science became a central issue in the assault waged by the philosophes in
the Age of Enlightenment against a natural philosophy based on the authority of
ancient Greek or Roman naturalists or on deductive reasoning from first principles
(the method advocated by French philosopher Ren Descartes), rather than on the
application of mathematical reasoning to experience or experiment. Voltaire
popularised Newtonian science, including the content of both the Principia and the
Opticks, in his Elements de la philosophie de Newton (1738), and after about 1750
the combination of the experimental methods exemplified by the Opticks and the
mathematical methods exemplified by the Principia were established as a unified and
comprehensive model of Newtonian science. Some of the primary adepts in this new
philosophy were such prominent figures as Benjamin Franklin, Antoine-Laurent
Lavoisier, and James Black.

Subsequent to Newton, much has been amended. Young and Fresnel combined Newton's
particle theory with Huygens' wave theory to show that colour is the visible
manifestation of light's wavelength. Science also slowly came to realise the
difference between perception of colour and mathematisable optics. The German poet,
Goethe, with his epic diatribe Theory of Colours could not shake the Newtonian
foundation - but "one hole Goethe did find in Newton's armour.. Newton had
committed himself to the doctrine that refraction without colour was impossible. He
therefore thought that the object-glasses of telescopes must for ever remain
imperfect, achromatism and refraction being incompatible. This inference was proved
by Dollond to be wrong." (John Tyndall, 1880[3])

See also[edit]
Book icon
Book: Isaac Newton
Color
Color theory
Prism (optics)
Theory of Colours book
Book of Optics (Ibn al-Haytham)
Elements of the Philosophy of Newton (Voltaire)
Multiple-prism dispersion theory
References[edit]
^ Jump up to: a b Newton, Isaac (1998). Opticks: or, a treatise of the reflexions,
refractions, inflexions and colours of light. Also two treatises of the species and
magnitude of curvilinear figures. Commentary by Nicholas Humez (Octavo ed.). Palo
Alto, Calif.: Octavo. ISBN 1-891788-04-3. (Opticks was originally published in
1704).
Jump up ^ Newton, Isaac. "Hydrostatics, Optics, Sound and Heat". Retrieved 10
January 2012.
Jump up ^ Popular Science Monthly/Volume 17/July
1880)http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_17/July_1880/Goet
he's_Farbenlehre:_Theory_of_Colors_II
Burnley, David The History of the English Language: A Source Book 2nd Edition,
2000, Pearson Education Limited.
External links[edit]
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Opticks
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Optics.
Full and free online editions of Newton's Opticks

Rarebookroom, First edition

Gallica, First edition
Google Books, Fourth edition
Internet Archive, Dover reprint, Fourth edition
Cambridge University Digital Library, Papers on Hydrostatics, Optics, Sound and
Heat Manuscript papers by Isaac Newton containing draft of Opticks
Opticks public domain audiobook at LibriVox
[hide] v t e
Isaac Newton
Publications
De analysi per aequationes numero terminorum infinitas (1669, published 1711)
Method of Fluxions (1671) De motu corporum in gyrum (1684) Philosophi Naturalis
Principia Mathematica (1687) General Scholium (1713) Opticks (1704) The Queries
(1704) Arithmetica Universalis (1707)
Other writings
Notes on the Jewish Temple Quaestiones quaedam philosophicae The Chronology of
Ancient Kingdoms Amended (1728) An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of
Scripture (1754)
Discoveries
and inventions
Calculus Newton disc Newton polygon NewtonOkounkov body Newton's reflector
Newtonian telescope Newton scale Newton's metal Newton's cradle Sextant
Theory
expansions
Kepler's laws of planetary motion Problem of Apollonius
Newtonianism
Bucket argument Newton's inequalities Newton's law of cooling Newton's law of
universal gravitation Post-Newtonian expansion Parameterized post-Newtonian
formalism NewtonCartan theory SchrdingerNewton equation Gravitational constant
Newton's laws of motion Newtonian dynamics Newton's method in optimization Gauss
Newton algorithm Truncated Newton method Newton's rings Newton's theorem about
ovals NewtonPepys problem Newtonian potential Newtonian fluid Classical mechanics
Newtonian fluid Corpuscular theory of light LeibnizNewton calculus controversy
Newton's notation Rotating spheres Newton's cannonball NewtonCotes formulas
Newton's method Newton fractal Generalized GaussNewton method Newton's identities
Newton polynomial Newton's theorem of revolving orbits NewtonEuler equations
Newton number Kissing number problem Power number Newton's quotient NewtonPuiseux
theorem Solar mass Dynamics Absolute time and space Finite difference Table of
Newtonian series Impact depth Structural coloration Inertia
Phrases
"Hypotheses non fingo" "Standing on the shoulders of giants"
Life
Cranbury Park Woolsthorpe Manor Early life Later life Religious views Occult
studies The Mysteryes of Nature and Art Scientific revolution Copernican Revolution
Friends
and family
Catherine Barton John Conduitt William Clarke Benjamin Pulleyn William Stukeley
William Jones Isaac Barrow Abraham de Moivre John Keill
Cultural depictions
Newton (Blake) Newton (Paolozzi) In popular culture
Related
Writing of Principia Mathematica List of things names after Newton Isaac Newton
Institute Isaac Newton Medal Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes Isaac Newton
Telescope Newton (unit) Elements of the Philosophy of Newton Isaac Newton S/O
Philipose
Categories: 1704 booksEnglish non-fiction literatureBooks by Isaac NewtonOptics1704
in scienceMathematics booksPhysics books
Navigation menu
Not logged inTalkContributionsCreate accountLog inArticleTalkReadEditView
historySearch

Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Donate to Wikipedia
Wikipedia store
Interaction
Help
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact page
Tools
What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Permanent link
Page information
Wikidata item
Cite this page
Print/export
Create a book
Download as PDF
Printable version
Languages

Catal
Dansk
Eesti
Espaol
Franais
Italiano

Norsk bokml

Suomi
Svenska

Trke
Ting Vit
Edit links
This page was last edited on 21 June 2017, at 21:02.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License;
additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and
Privacy Policy. Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation,
Inc., a non-profit organization.
Privacy policyAbout WikipediaDisclaimersContact WikipediaDevelopersCookie
statementMobile viewWikimedia Foundation Powered by MediaWiki