Books

First edition, first issue of this foundational work in the field of optics, in which Isaac Newton explores the nature of light and color, presenting his experiments and theories on how light behaves. Title printed in red and black, within a double-rule border and without author's name. Bound in contemporary paneled calf boards sympathetically rebacked; with 19 engraved folding plates. Very Good. Soiling to textblock and endsheets, bookplate of Irish naturalist John Vandeleur Stewart affixed to the front pastedown, ownership signature to title page. Amateur repair to gutter at title page. Numerous pencil notations throughout, though mostly confined to the margins or blank areas. Plate 5 is torn at the fold, plate 6 with corner loss affecting the image, several shaved. Second book with page 120 misnumbered as 112. A lovely copy of Newton's second major book on physical science, considered one of the Scientific Revolution's three major works on optics. It overturned centuries of thinking 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 colorless, and is altered into color by mixture with darkness caused by interactions with matter. Here Newton shows the opposite was true: light is composed of different spectral hues (he describes seven red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet), and all colors, 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. Unlike his earlier work, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which took a more deductive approach, Opticks is largely experimental and inductive. Newton's study includes detailed descriptions of his experiments with prisms and lenses, leading to the conclusion that white light is composed of a spectrum of colors. The work also delves into the phenomena of diffraction and interference, which were crucial to the development of wave theory in later years. The work is notable for containing Newton's first mathematical papers in print, and for giving the first full explanation of the rainbow, complete with related diagrams. Like Galileo, Newton decided to publish this text in his native English rather than Latin, the language of scholarship; an enlarged Latin edition would be published two years later.

Isaac Newton's 'Opticks: Or, A Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light' was originally published in Latin as 'Optice: sive, De Reflexionibus, Refractionibus, Inflexionibus et Coloribus Lucis, Libri Tres'. This work is Newton's study of the behavior of light and color, detailing his experiments with prisms and the color spectrum.