A history of optics from Greek antiquity to the nineteenth century / Olivier Darrigol.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Darrigol, Olivier.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Optics--History.

Optics.

History.

Physical Description:

xii, 327 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2012.

Summary:

This book is a long-term history of optics, from early Greek theories of vision to the nineteenth-century victory of the wave theory of light. It shows how light gradually became the central entity of a domain of physics that no longer referred to the functioning of the eye; it retraces the subsequent competition between medium-based and corpuscular concepts of light; and it details the nineteenth-century quest for mechanical ether theories. The author critically exploits and sometimes completes the more specialized histories that have flourished in the past few years. The resulting synthesis brings out the actors' long-term memory, their dependence on broad cultural shifts, and the evolution of disciplinary divisions and connections. Conceptual precision, textual concision, and abundant illustration make the book accessible to a broad variety of readers interested in the origins of modern optics. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 From the Greeks to Kepler 1

1.1 Greek theories of vision 1

1.2 Medieval optics 15

1.3 Kepler's optics 26

1.4 Conclusions 34

2 Mechanical medium theories of the seventeenth century 37

2.1 Descartes's optics 39

2.2 From Hobbes to Hooke 49

2.3 Pardies's and Huygens's wave theories 60

2.4 Optical imaging 71

2.5 Conclusions 77

3 Newton's optics 78

3.1 Neo-atomist theories 78

3.2 Newton's early investigations 80

3.3 Early response 85

3.4 An hypothesis 89

3.5 The Opticks 93

3.6 Conclusions 107

4 The eighteenth century 109

4.1 Ray optics 110

4.2 Newtonian optics 121

4.3 Neo-Cartesian optics 136

4.4 Euler's theory of light 152

4.5 Conclusions 164

5 Interference, polarization, and waves in the early nineteenth century 166

5.1 Thomas Young on sound and light 166

5.2 Laplacian optics 187

5.3 Fresnel's optics 198

5.4 Conclusions 223

6 Ether and matter 225

6.1 The ether as an elastic body 227

6.2 The electromagnetic theory of light 239

6.3 The separation of ether and matter 244

6.4 Conclusions 261

7 Waves and rays 264

7.1 Hamiltonian optics 264

7.2 Diffraction theory 272

7.3 Fourier synthesis 280

7.4 Conclusions 286.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9780199644377

0199644373

OCLC:

751832040