Seventeenth-Century Experimental and Theoretical Advances Regarding the Nature of Light Lay the Foundations of Modern Optics
Overview
Johannes Kepler's (1571-1630) early seventeenth-century researches on the nature of light were the culmination of medieval developments in the science of perspectiva and inaugurated a century of research that laid the foundations of modern optics. Willebrord Snell (1580-1626) shortly thereafter discovered the law of refraction, which allowed mathematical-physical theories of light to be developed in earnest, while René Descartes (1596-1650) developed a mechanistic wave-theory of light that did much to define the boundaries for future optical studies. Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) was the first to successfully mathematize the wave picture, while Isaac Newton (1642-1727) developed a corpuscular theory. The two latter views were eventually synthesized in quantum theory during the early years of the twentieth century.
Background
Theories about the nature and propagation of light in antiquity were intimately connected with theories of vision, and implicit in all theories of vision was the requirement that there be direct contact between the visual organ and objects of vision. Different accounts of how this contact occurred were promulgated and developed into opposing schools of thought in Ancient Greece.
The atomists adopted the position of Leucippus (c.
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