All was Light

Book excerpt: Opticks, Newton's most popular book, is a complex work of genius and the fruit of forty years of thought and investigation. Newton devoted various periods of experimentation to this final expression of his life's work and drew on the results of successive interactions with other scientists and thinkers. This introduction to his book disentangles the different layers of Newton's thought processes in terms of his contemporary influences, and details the development of the final text. It explains problems that arose from Newton's changing ideas during the course of the book's long preparation, touching on such controversial issues of the time as the concepts of atomism, force, and the aether. The author also looks in detail at the way Newton has been interpreted both at home and abroad. This readable, non-mathematical book serves as an excellent introduction to Newton and the great achievement of Opticks and will fascinate students and general readers interested in natural philosophy and the history of science.