In this essay I argue for the centrality of Newton’s theory of vision to his account of light and color. Relying on psycho-physical experiments, anatomical observations, and physical hypotheses, Newton, quite early in his career, elaborated an original, although largely hypothetical, theory of vision to which he remained faithful throughout his life. The main assumptions of this theory, I urge, play an important (although almost entirely tacit) role in the demonstration of one of the most famous theses of the Opticks: the thesis that spectral colors are “innately” present in white solar light. The theory of vision is especially crucial to understanding the second ‘synthetic’ part of the demonstration, which deals with experiments showing how white light can be artificially produced out of prismatic colors. This synthesis is not, as often conceived, a mere reversal of the analysis, brought in for pedagogical reasons, but, as I argue, an integral part of the Newtonian demonstration—and this makes its dependency on the theory of vision all the more striking. In the first two sections of this essay, I propose a reconstruction of the argument developed in Book I of the Opticks, and I show why and where a theory of vision is needed. In the third section, I go back to Newton’s early researches into the psycho-physiology of vision, in order to give a fuller presentation of Newton’s actual theory of vision and to show that this theory, even though it was developed independently of the prismatic experiments, was, in all its component parts, precisely the one needed for the demonstration of color innateness.
...MoreBook Zvi Biener (2014) Newton and Empiricism.
Thesis
Baker, Tawrin;
(2014)
Color, Cosmos, Oculus: Vision, Color, and the Eye in Jacopo Zabarella and Hieronymus Fabricius ab Aquapendente
(/isis/citation/CBB001567638/)
Article
Dijksterhuis, Fokko Jan;
(2008)
Reading Up on the Opticks. Refashioning Newton's Theories of Light and Colors in Eighteenth-Century Textbooks
(/isis/citation/CBB000831780/)
Chapter
Joy, Lynn S.;
(2012)
Dispositional Explanations: Boyle's Problem, Newton's Solution, Hume's Response
(/isis/citation/CBB001500350/)
Book
Hendrix, John;
Carman, Charles H.;
(2010)
Renaissance Theories of Vision
(/isis/citation/CBB001220203/)
Article
Wade, Nicholas J.;
(2005)
Vision and the Dimensions of Nerve Fibers
(/isis/citation/CBB000600124/)
Chapter
Yoram Hazony;
(2014)
Newtonian Explanatory Reduction and Hume’s System of the Sciences
(/isis/citation/CBB026535141/)
Article
Jacobs, Gerald H.;
(2014)
The Discovery of Spectral Opponency in Visual Systems and Its Impact on Understanding the Neurobiology of Color Vision
(/isis/citation/CBB001420789/)
Chapter
Assis, André K. T.;
(2010)
Newton and Inverse Problems
(/isis/citation/CBB001250579/)
Article
Guicciardini, Niccolò;
(2013)
The Role of Musical Analogies in Newton's Optical and Cosmological Work
(/isis/citation/CBB001211204/)
Essay Review
Guicciardini, Niccolò;
(2013)
Harper and Ducheyne on Newton
(/isis/citation/CBB001566365/)
Article
Adrian Currie;
Kirsten Walsh;
(2018)
Newton on Islandworld: Ontic-Driven Explanations of Scientific Method
(/isis/citation/CBB509318500/)
Article
Shapiro, Alan E.;
(2008)
Twenty-Nine Years in the Making: Newton's Opticks
(/isis/citation/CBB000930001/)
Chapter
Dana Jalobeanu;
(2014)
Constructing Natural Historical Facts: Baconian Methodology in Newton's First Paper on Light and Colors
(/isis/citation/CBB533370158/)
Book
Zvi Biener;
(2014)
Newton and Empiricism
(/isis/citation/CBB854623933/)
Article
Juan Pimentel;
(2015)
Teorías de la luz y el color en la época de las Luces. De Newton a Goethe
(/isis/citation/CBB575052209/)
Chapter
Jed Z. Buchwald;
Anna Marie Roos;
Gideon Manning;
(2023)
Descartes’ Experimental Journey Past the Prism and Through the Invisible World to the Rainbow
(/isis/citation/CBB272897224/)
Article
Buchwald, Jed Z.;
(2008)
Descartes's Experimental Journey Past the Prism and Through the Invisible World to the Rainbow
(/isis/citation/CBB000774401/)
Essay Review
Nieto-Galan, Agustí;
(2015)
Revisiting Colour History
(/isis/citation/CBB001566478/)
Article
Dijksterhuis, Fokko Jan;
(2015)
Understandings of Colors: Varieties of Theories in the Color Worlds of the Early Seventeenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001553530/)
Article
Malet, Antoni;
(1990)
Keplerian illusions: Geometrical pictures vs. optical images in Kepler's visual theory
(/isis/citation/CBB000032628/)
Be the first to comment!