Opticks

Opticks: or, A Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light is Isaac Newton's second major work of physical science, published in English in seventeen hundred and four. It is a record of experiments and of the conclusions drawn from them rather than a geometrical treatment of mirrors and lenses, and it takes as its subject the nature of light and of colour. Newton sets out in full the experiments with prisms first reported to the Royal Society in sixteen seventy-two, showing that white light is not simple but composed of rays that differ in how far each is bent, and that the colours seen in objects arise from the selective reflection, absorption and transmission of those rays. This reversed the accepted teaching that pure light was white and that colour arose from its alteration by matter. He describes seven spectral hues, arranges them in a colour circle that predicts the results of mixtures, and holds that colour is a sensation in the mind rather than a property of light itself. The work also treats diffraction, which he calls the inflexion of light, and closes with a set of open Queries on the nature of light and matter.

Written from the wikipedia article on the book.

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