Newton's missing experiment (original) (raw)
Related papers
Experiment and mathematics in Newton's theory of color
Physics Today, 1984
On 18 January 1672 Isaac Newton wrote Henry Oldenburg, Secretary of the Royal Society, that he would send him a paper that he modestly described as “being in my Judgment the oddest if not the most considerable detection wch hath hitherto beene made in the operations of Nature.” Newton was not referring to his theory of gravitation—that was still more than a dozen years away—but rather to his new theory of the nature of white light and color. He had discovered that rays of different color have different degrees of refrangibility—or, as we would put it, that the index of refraction varies with wavelength—and that white light and, in particular, sunlight consist of a mixture of innumerable colors. Less than three weeks later, as Newton promised, he sent to the Royal Society his famous paper, “A New theory about light and colors,” which was published at once in the Philosophical Transactions. In the “New theory” he boldly proclaims: “A naturalist would scearce expect to see ye science o...
Newton's Scaffolding: the instrumental roles of his optical hypotheses
2018
Early modern experimental philosophers often appear to commit to, and utilise, corpuscular and mechanical hypotheses. This is somewhat mysterious: such hypotheses frequently appear to be simply assumed, odd for a research program which emphasises the careful experimental accumulation of facts. Isaac Newton was one such experimental philosopher, and his optical work is considered a clear example of the experimental method. Focusing on his optical investigations, I identify three roles for hypotheses. Firstly, Newton introduces a hypothesis to explicate his abstract theory. The purpose here is primarily to improve understanding or uptake of the theory. Secondly, he uses a hypothesis as a platform from which to generate some crucial experiments to decide between competing accounts. The purpose here is to suggest experiments in order to bring a dispute to empirical resolution. Thirdly, he uses a hypothesis to suggest an underlying physical cause, which he then operationalises and repres...
The optical papers of Isaac Newton
1984
List of plates Preface Editorial note Abbreviated references Introduction Synopsis of the Lectiones opticae and Optica and their major differences Concordance of article numbers Lectiones opitcae: Optica: Part I. The Refractions of Light Rays: 1. The refrangibility of rays differs 2. The measure of refractions 3. The refractions of planes 4. The refractions of curved surfaces Part II. The Origin of Colors: 5. The doctrine of colors is set forth and proved by prismatic experiments 6. Various phenomena of colors Bibliography Index.
The properties and the nature of light: the study of Newton's work and the teaching of optics
Science and Education, 2005
The history of science shows that for each scientific issue there may be more than one models that are simultaneously accepted by the scientific community. One such case concerns the wave and corpuscular models of light. Newton claimed that he had proved some properties of light based on a set of minimal assumptions, without any commitments to any one of the two models. This set of assumptions constitutes the geometrical model of light as a set of rays propagating in space. We discuss this model and the historical reasons for which it had the head-primacy amongst the relevant models. We argue that this model is indispensable in structuring the curriculum in Optics and attempt to validate it epistemologically. Finally, we discuss an approach for alleviating the implicit assumptions that students make on the nature of light and the subsequent interference of geometrical optics in teaching the properties of light related to its wave-like nature.
Newton trough the Prism of Goethe
Foreword by the foreword author The ideas of colour and wavelength are so commonplace in the modern world that there are normally no second thoughts about the observational foundations of those ideas. Taking the path of Goethe’s studies on colour, Emir Korkut not only provides a clear historical overview that will help the reader obtain the context of the concept clearly but also points out what is actually observed as distinguished from what is thought out and added to what is observed. This phenomenological approach is a hard task at the best of times, as we bring in so many ideas which appear “obvious” to us at first glance that we do not question it further, but Korkut succeeds in teasing apart the assumptions from the observations for a variety of phenomena in optics. Perhaps the most critical contribution to the discussion is how Korkut never loses sight, in every sense of the word, of the whole image, whether he is discussing light, darkness, refraction, reflection, polarization, diffraction, or any of the other repetitive patterns seen in optics. The ability to retain the whole image in the mind and to break away from the one-sidedness of the ray-tracing habits we have all learnt is made manifest in this work. It is the changing of these habits of observation and habits of thoughts that the book highlights and that shows the coherence to be gained as a result of retaining the focus on the whole image all the way through in optical observations. All in all, Korkut’s work is a brilliant contribution to fundamental optics research that demands an adequate re-thinking of the fundamentals, as such a work should.. Gopi Krishna Vijaya, PhD, Utah Spring 2023.
Robert Smith’s A Compleat System of Opticks (1738) was the most prominent eighteenth-century text-book account of Newton’s optics. By rearranging the findings and conclusions of Opticks, it made them accessible to a wider public and at the same time refashioned Newton’s optics into a renewed science of optics. In this process, the optical parts of Principia were integrated, thus blending the experimental inferences and mechanistic hypotheses that Newton had carefully separated. The Compleat System was not isolated in its refashioning of Newton’s optics. Dutch and English promoters of the new philosophy had preceded Smith by giving Opticks a text-book treatment, and they too integrated experimental and mechanistic inferences. In this way eighteenth-century text-books produced a natural philosophical discourse of light, colors and matter. This paper traces the refashioning of Newton’s optics in Dutch and English text-books of natural philosophy during the first half of the eighteenth century. It concludes with the Dutch translation of A Compleat System of Opticks and its reception among innovators of telescope manufacture.
zeta-theart, 2015
The peculiar structure of Newton's first published paper on light and colors has been the subject of an astonishing diversity of readings: to date, scholars still do not agree as to what Newton wanted to prove in this paper or how he proved it. 1 The structure of the paper is far from transparent. It consists of two very different parts: a historical account of what Newton called his "crucial experiment, " and a "doctrine of colors" consisting of thirteen propositions and an illustrative experiment. Equally debated has been the "style" of Newton's demonstration. 2 Newton begins the first part with an extensive historical account of how he became interested in the "celebrated phenomena of colors" and later reached one of its major results: that the shape of the spectrum refracted
1 Newtonian Optics in the Eighteenth Century: Discussing the Nature of Science
2015
Despite the difficulty of precisely describing the nature of science, there is a widespread agreement concerning the necessity of incorporating into curricula some notions about how the scientific activity operates. Studying the history of conceptual development and the process of acceptance of scientific ideas by the scientific community may help teachers to incorporate valuable concepts on the nature of science in science teaching. Shortly afterwards the publication of the book Opticks, by Isaac Newton, in 1704, there appears a number of popular lectures and published works presenting the content of this book, attempting to make it suitable for the general public. These published works and popular lectures, however, did not discuss some conceptual problems in Newton’s book. The present paper analyses the development and acceptance process of Newtonian optics during the eighteenth century in Europe, and emphasizes some aspects of nature of science that can be learnt by the study of...