Newton, Isaac. Opticks: Or, A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light. The Third Edition, Corrected. London, Printed for William and John Innys, 1721. c. 18 x 12 cm. Title Page, (6) [Advertisement I & II], 382 pages, followed by 12 folding Plates. Collation: A1-A4, B1 to Bb7. One page (Q3, 229/230) missing. Contemporary half calf over marbled paper boards. Original binding with new matching marbled papers on boards. Good condition. Binding rubbed and bumped. Marbled papers replaced with new ones in 2025. Recased, using the original board and spine. Sound binding. Edges age darkened. Top edge worn with some paper losses. Age darkened throughout. Minor signs of old bookworm. Old signatures on title page and verso of title page. Some damp staining to the top edge. Some losses to the 12 Plates present. Text block remains fully readable. Plates heavily worn, with some losses.See images.

Sir Isaac Newton (1643 – 1727) was an English polymath active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author. Newton was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment that followed. His book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), first published in 1687, achieved the first great unification in physics and established classical mechanics. Newton also made seminal contributions to optics, and shares credit with German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for formulating infinitesimal calculus, though he developed calculus years before Leibniz. Newton contributed to and refined the scientific method, and his work is considered the most influential in bringing forth modern science.
Opticks: or, A Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light is a collection of three books that was published in English in 1704. The treatise analyses the fundamental nature of light by means of the refraction of light with prisms and lenses, the diffraction of light by closely spaced sheets of glass, and the behaviour of colour mixtures with spectral lights or pigment powders. Opticks was Newton’s second major work on physical science, and it is considered one of the three major works on optics during the Scientific Revolution (alongside Johannes Kepler’s Astronomiae Pars Optica and Christiaan Huygens’ Treatise on Light).
The publication of Opticks represented a major contribution to science, different from but in some ways rivalling the Principia, yet Isaac Newton’s name did not appear on the cover page of the first edition. Opticks is largely a record of experiments, and the deductions made from them, covering a wide range of topics in what was later to be known as physical optics. That is, this work is not a geometric discussion of catoptrics or dioptrics, the traditional subjects of reflection of light by mirrors of different shapes and the exploration of how light is “bent” as it passes from one medium, such as air, into another, such as water or glass. Rather, the Opticks is a study of the nature of light and colour and the various phenomena of diffraction, which Newton called the “inflexion” of light.
Newton sets forth in full his experiments, first reported to the Royal Society of London in 1672, on dispersion, or the separation of light into a spectrum of its component colours. He demonstrates how the appearance of colour arises from selective absorption, reflection, or transmission of the various component parts of the incident light.

• Keywords: Chemistry & Physics · History · Mathematics · Natural Sciences · Reference · Science & Nature
• Language: English
• Inventory Number: 104533AB

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