SOURCE: "Newton's Optical Papers," in Newton's Papers & Letters on Natural Philosophy and Related Documents, Second Edition, Harvard University Press, 1978, pp. 3-24, 27-45.

In the following essay, Kuhn examines Newton's optical experiments and publications, commenting on the significance of his findings as well as the limitations of his experimental procedures and his presentation of results.

The original publication of the optical papers of Isaac Newton marked the beginning of an era in the development of the physical sciences. These papers, reprinted below, were the first public pronouncements by the man who has been to all subsequent generations the archetype of preeminent scientific creativity, and their appearance in early volumes of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London constituted the first major contribution to science made through a technical journal, the medium that rapidly became the standard mode of communication among scientists.

Until the last third of the...