History of Optics from Greek Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century.
Title:
History of Optics from Greek Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century.
Author:
Darrigol, Olivier.
ISBN:
9780191626944
Personal Author:
Physical Description:
1 online resource (386 pages)
Contents:
Cover Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Preface -- Contents -- Conventions and notations -- 1 From the Greeks to Kepler -- 1.1 Greek theories of vision -- 1.2 Medieval optics -- 1.3 Kepler's optics -- 1.4 Conclusions -- 2 Mechanical medium theories of the seventeenth century -- 2.1 Descartes's optics -- 2.2 From Hobbes to Hooke -- 2.3 Pardies's and Huygens's wave theories -- 2.4 Optical imaging -- 2.5 Conclusions -- 3 Newton's optics -- 3.1 Neo-atomist theories -- 3.2 Newton's early investigations -- 3.3 Early response -- 3.4 An hypothesis -- 3.5 The Opticks -- 3.6 Conclusions -- 4 The eighteenth century -- 4.1 Ray optics -- 4.2 Newtonian optics -- 4.3 Neo-Cartesian optics -- 4.4 Euler's theory of light -- 4.5 Conclusions -- 5 Interference, polarization, and waves in the early nineteenth century -- 5.1 Thomas Young on sound and light -- 5.2 Laplacian optics -- 5.3 Fresnel's optics -- 5.4 Conclusions -- 6 Ether and matter -- 6.1 The ether as an elastic body -- 6.2 The electromagnetic theory of light -- 6.3 The separation of ether and matter -- 6.4 Conclusions -- 7 Waves and rays -- 7.1 Hamiltonian optics -- 7.2 Diffraction theory -- 7.3 Fourier synthesis -- 7.4 Conclusions -- Abbreviations -- Bibliography -- Index -- Footnote -- Preface -- ch00_fm04_prefn1a -- Chapter 1 -- ch01fn1a -- Chapter 2 -- ch02fn1a -- Chapter 3 -- ch03fn1a -- Chapter 4 -- ch04fn1a -- Chapter 5 -- ch05fn1a -- Chapter 6 -- ch06fn1a -- Chapter 7 -- ch07fn1a.
Abstract:
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 flourishing of 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.
Local Note:
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2017. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.
Genre:
Electronic Access:
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