Opticks: or, a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light. The Fourth Edition, Corrected.

NEWTON, Isaac.

Published by London: Printed for William Innys, 1730

About this Item

Fourth edition, the final edition to be revised and approved by Newton himself. The Opticks is Newton's definitive study of light, the basis for the corpuscular theory of light rays that remained dominant into the 19th century. The Opticks's greatest achievement is showing that colour is a mathematically definable property. Newton demonstrates that white light is a mixture of infinitely varied coloured rays and that each ray is definable by the angle through which it is refracted. Other topics include colour circles, theories of the rainbow, and the phenomenon now known as Newton's rings. In his later years Newton made a sustained effort to tidy up his scientific legacy. This edition of the Opticks was published three years after his death by his long-time publisher, drawing on corrections "by the Author's own Hand" (preface). In those three years, Newtonian devotees had published the Optical Lectures (1728) that he had delivered at Cambridge in the 1660s, making public a work that he had only circulated in manuscript among close friends. The Lectures employed a more mathematical analysis of colour theory than did the Opticks, and Innys' fourth edition harmonizes the two works by cross-referencing philosophical propositions in the latter with geometrical demonstrations in the former. Babson 136; ESTC T69138; Gray 178; Wallis 178. Octavo (195 x 123 mm), pp. [viii], 382, [2]. Complete with terminal advertisement leaf and 12 folding plates. Wood-engraved initials, head- and tailpieces. Twentieth-century calf, spine ruled and decorated in blind and with red morocco label, marbled endpapers, edges sprinkled red. Minimal foxing to contents, paper flaw to lower outer corner of K1, text unaffected, plates crisp: a very good copy indeed.

Seller Inventory # 187897

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Opticks: or, a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light. The Fourth Edition, Corrected.
• Publisher: London: Printed for William Innys, 1730