CHAPTER 3

ON THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE

HISTORY OF OPTICS!

History of science, if seen as more than a mere chronicle of findings

and biographies, is a young discipline. It can aim much higher: like the
history of any field of enquiry, it may try to shed light on the psychology
of the enquirer; besides, it may exhibit the logical structure of theories,
and from it derive how they may develop. To follow how such possibilities
happen to be realized by this or that enquirer is an especially engaging
task.
To do justice to physical ideas we must see them as part of reflections
on the world as a whole. Many a hypothesis appears important only
when we note that it was meant to prop up much wider sets of notions
prevailing at the time. When deciding whether to give up a hypothesis,
or to preserve it through what may be rather daring auxiliary assumptions,
we must ask above all what other hypotheses stand or fall with this one.
Through its scope a hypothesis has a rank. We cannot call it more or
less correct; but we can say that one hypothesis matches another in
scope and that to give it up would greatly, or little, transform our picture
of the world. A history of purely physical, or chemical, or zoological
ideas could be given only for enquirers who lack a wider outlook. Even
then it must fail, since current general notions always function in science,
if only vaguely.
Goethe was one of those who tried to meet general demands: his way
of studying the history of optics remains exemplary. Universal in outlook,
he pursued the ramified paths of the subject and showed how various
ideas were linked into a network: he connected particular physical
notions with much wider concepts and with general trends of thought,
often philosophical.
Genuine contributions have come only from those historians of
science who were familiar with the philosophy of their time and had
formed some views on the nature of hypotheses, and on similar topics.
Whewell, whose brilliant work remains of great value, is notable in
philosophy, too; likewise Diihring and Mach who analysed the genealogy
102 EMPIRICISM AND SOCIOLOGY

of mechanics. Duhem soon went beyond the narrow confines of physics

and reached valuable philosophic conclusions that lend peculiar charm
to his illustrations from the history of science.
Still, such achievements remain rather individual. These men did not
work jointly with others on the history of physics as chemists may be
said to work on chemistry. In mathematics, chemistry, physics, zoology,
botany and other sciences certain methods of research have emerged and
are generally used by everyone in the same way, because they have been
recognized as usable tools. A routine, partly practical and partly theoretical,
has developed. The study of the history of science lacks generally ac-
knowledged methods such that anyone can follow, whatever his leanings.
Hence, alongside a few outstanding pronouncements by individual
historians of science, there are many less vital ones hardly related to the
former, nor inspired by a common plan in treating even the simplest
scientific question. But the great, too, could work together much better
if what divides them were reduced to a minimum.
Perhaps some relief might derive from drawing attention to the tools of
analysis. The special task of making people generally aware of this must
begin with the dissection of physical theory. Descartes, in his Method,
demands such taking apart into elementary constituents. To make this
general demand is one thing, to carry it out in a concrete instance quite
another. We shall discuss the analysis of physical theories only as a means
to historical study, but the implications are wider.
We must show how best to sift out from the systems of hypotheses what
became most vital for the development of physics. Though opinions
may differ as to what is important in any particular hypothesis, there
can be agreement on how an analysis of hypotheses is to proceed (for
instance, like a post mortem). We must try to see clearly how far a
physical theory hinges on the images used, and how far on those features
that actually carry the argument. Perhaps we cannot grasp some devel-
opments unless we consider the images and pictures; in other cases we
must rely on what governs the mathematical treatment of phenomena;
or, maybe, both ways of looking at it are steps. At all events, the latter
analysis has not yet become current among historians of physics. Some
modem physicists, who, like Poincare or Duhem, are reckoned among
conventionalists, allow that the mathematically important features are
relevant to classification and analysis. But this leaves open the philo-
 FOUNDATIONS OF THE HISTORY OF OPTICS 103

sopbical question. Those who wish to give more weight to the imagery
of hypotheses (as I believe one must in some cases), may without con-
tradiction add this to the analysis.
Let us illustrate this from the history of optics between the early 17th
and early 19th centuries: in that period a series of outstanding thinkers
discussed a fairly narrowly defined field of phenomena which was yet
rich enough to evoke complicated hypotheses. Acoustics early reached
a fairly complete form, and could be developed without great controver-
sies. Electricity, on the contrary, shows a bewildering range of phenomena
and systems of hypotheses. Often the cognate is severed and the disparate
linked. The hypotheses are so different that it is hard to compare them.
Moreover, able experimenters and astute mathematicians were so evenly
ranged behind either theory that the battle swayed for a long time. Beyond
the early 19th century we can no longer pursue a simple history of optics,
because it soon became linked with findings from electricity, magnetism
and the theory of heat. We can no longer encompass the intricacies. Only
recent decades, or better, years, are slowly restoring a feeling that
hypotheses and theories will soon so far settle down that on looking
back we may discern their origins. For to find in a tangled skein of
hypotheses the origins of what will come later is to nurse forebodings
of the hypotheses of the future, an enterprise beyond the daring of any
oftoday's experts.
Accounts in the history of physics are rarely started from a complete
dissection of the several theories into elementary propositions. Hence the
lack of an adequate classification of different views that takes note of
their constituent parts. Writers usually describe schools of thought
by one outstanding characteristic without consulting, as they should,
the totality of characteristics. The case of Descartes' optics shows what
this may lead to: Whewell reckons him among emission theorists, while
Littrow (Whewell's translator into German), in a comment, calls him a
forerunner of the wave theory. How can this be? Descartes' account
contains elements of both theories. Some of his remarks show that he
began from the assumption that a luminous body emits corpuscles, or at
least that luminous corpuscles are ejected from its neighbourhood and
travel towards the eye. The sensation of light is caused not by the original
particles reaching the eye, but through their pushing against other
particles which transmit a pressure. If we stress the displacement of the
104 EMPIRICISM AND SOCIOLOGY

particles, we have an emission theory; if the leading notion is that seeing

results from the transmission of a state, we must group the account with
wave theories.
This already shows what difficulties arise from dividing existing views
into two types. Such dichotomies occur in all disciplines. They really
belong to a primitive form of concept formation, which any theory bent
on perfection must try to shed as fast as it can. Dichotomies might
perhaps do, if the two types could be described as A and non-A, but this
is almost never so. Usually each outlook received its hallmark separately,
without examination whether the two might not be compatible. Suppose
a theory rests on three elementary notions, a, b, c, with contradictories
a*, b*, c*. The following constellations may occur:

abc
ab c*
ab* c
a b* c*
a* b c
a* b c*
a* b* c
a* b* c*

If, for classification, we use only a, there are four a and four non-a
theories. But usually we describe one group of views by a and the other
by c. Clearly, this cannot yield a complete division. In fact we mostly
find 80me only of the possible outlooks, which leaves the set to be classified
less transparent, as for instance
ab c*
a b* c*
abc
a* b c
a* b* c

Writers then usually call the first two pure a-theories, the last two pure
 FOUNDA TIONS OF THE HISTORY OF OPTICS 105

c-theories, and the middle one, weakly, a 'transition' theory, which is

therefore often given less attention. Where would chemistry be today if
it had rigidly held on to its salts and acids? It advanced to a highly
successful system of classification, which it constantly extends by adding
characteristics of many kinds (electric, etc.), aiming at as complete a
description as possible. In the history of physics we ought to make a
similar attempt to regard the various outlooks as combinations of
elementary notions and to describe them accordingly. Classification may
then proceed variously, and become less vital so long as the characteristics
are transparent and can be surveyed. Thus we shall come to contrast
'natural' combinations with 'artificial' ones. For not all outlooks derivable
from a set of elementary notions will occur in 'nature', just as not all
chemically possible combinations occur among minerals.
The variety of views in the history of optics stems partly from the
different ranges of findings and partly from different ways of accounting
for them. For a clear picture, we must group the elementary observations
on which the various outlooks rest. In practice this is rather difficult,
because scientists often omit important things; sometimes actual findings
are deliberately or otherwise neglected. Our analysis would aim less
at finding what scientists knew but rather at stating, for each theory,
the essential parts of experience.
To show on what kind of classification of outlooks a systematic
historical treatment would have to rest, let us confine ourselves to
periodicity, polarization, interference and diffraction, leaving aside
whether in any instance these are elementary findings or elementary
notions. Findings and notions are usually equal in number. Most often
hypotheses are richer than the known range of facts.
In Descartes (1596-1650) there is as yet no complete theory of light.
In his cosmogony, laid down in the Principia Philosophiae (1644), he
deals mainly with the propagation of light. In the Dioptrices and Meteora
that appeared with the Discourse on Method (1637), the origin of colour
and the rainbow are discussed. Periodicity and polarity are absent,
but there are theoretical notions that might correspond to diffraction.
For he explains the effect of the larger corpuscles in space on the smaller
ones: a large one presses on several smaller ones which thus scatter like
rays. Traces of the wave and emission theories were mentioned above.
Great wealth of notions and experience shows in the writings of
106 EMPIRICISM AND SOCIOLOGY

Grimaldi (1618-1663), whose work appeared in 1665. He insists that

light is similar to sound, though he gives other analogies too. He knows
diffraction (beams seem wider than if light travelled in straight lines)
and interference (light reinforced by light may yield darkness). In his
lively imagination light is something highly complex. This, he feels, he
can account for only by assuming many elementary properties, of which
he recognizedjluidatio (current), undulatio (wave motion), agitatio (move-
ment), vo/utatio (rolling). Here too we meet the view that white light
contains the other colours. Grimaldi's statements on vibrations perhaps
hint at periodicity. In the sequel simpler and more precise notions of
light were generally preferred. A light ray as complex as his was not
admitted and theoretically mastered until much later.
With Malebranche (1638-1715) the notion that light is similar to
sound becomes central, though we must recall that the nature of sound
had not then been adequately explored: the theory of interference arose
in acoustics and optics at about the same time. Malebranche replaces
Descartes' small hard corpuscles by small eddies which can spread
simultaneous impacts into various directions. Space is thus filled with
countless small centres of force which push and are pushed, a view on
the whole answering to Huyghens (1629-1695). The appendix of Male-
branche's work on Truth (first published in 1675) contains highly pic-
turesque discussions. He describes how the totality of elementary
vortices must be thought of as shaken by periodic vibrations. The various
colours then arise from different rates of vibration. Whereas the period-
icity of light emission is well brought out, it is not quite clear whether
he recognized periodicity of propagation.
The great Huyghens differs from his forerunners above all in holding
light to be much simpler than it really is. His outstanding achievements,
which helped to pave the way for the later mathematical theory, were
possible perhaps just because he greatly reduced the vast wealth of
phenomena and then dealt carefully with what remained. The fruitful
leading idea of Huyghens' principle is resolutely carried through, but
this involves only a few elementary notions. On the experimental side
his work is wanting too. In his Treatise on Light (1678) he quite neglects
colours which, as can be seen in Malebranche, are the very item that
may lead to a theory of vibrations. This omission is doubtless the reason
why Goethe in his history of colour the orynever mentions him. For
 FOUNDATIONS OF THE HISTORY OF OPTICS 107

Huyghens, too, light resembles sound, but he does not consider sound to
be periodic. The 'Huyghens ray' is not periodic, but may be polarized.
From his discussion we may at best infer that light consists of spherically
propagated single impulses. He thought of light rays roughly as many
did of X-rays before Laue and others revealed their periodicity through
interference. Even before this, X-rays were considered as a kind of wave
radiation, if we go by the constant velocity of propagation in vacuo
rather than by periodicity. Huyghens' principle is important: all points
of the sphere become centres of new spheres expanding uniformly in all
directions and together forming a new spherical surface. Thus besides
the direction of propagation he introduces a second direction of motion,
just as Malebranche had already vaguely done. If we knew nothing
about Huyghens save that he found his principle, we might well assume
he had introduced it to account for diffraction, since this can easily
be deduced. We know that this was not his motive, he did not even know
of Grimaldi's experiments when he wrote his book on light. Since his
hypothesis leads to diffraction, he has to explain its absence in experiment
from the assumption that diffraction produces luminous effects too weak
to be seen, just as today we explain that light travels in straight lines.
Interference he touches not at all, nor could he deal with it by means
of his hypotheses. But he does treat of spheroidal waves, double refraction
and polarization of light rays.
In Newton (1642-1727) much is vague and vacillating. That, partly,
makes him great. Like Grimaldi he senses the vast range of optical
phenomena. Although he strives, by means of farflung abstractions, to
escape from the wealth of things seen, elsewhere he does them justice.
He even touches on the possibility that the movement of the aether might
be adduced for the theory of light and uses it in trying to explain the
colours of thin layers. Thus in Newton there are many more elementary
notions and hypotheses than in Huyghens. Some are worked out but
none is so central as with Huyghens. On his own showing Newton hardly
values speculations on the nature of light. But from his Optics (1704)
which followed an earlier Treatise on Light (1672), and from the Principia
(1686) we infer how deeply he was preoccupied with, and influenced
by, this problem. In the Principia, the vital statements are in the section
on the motion of very small bodies impelled by centripetal forces directed
to the various parts of a large body; likewise in the section on the propaga-
108 EMPIRICISM AND SOCIOLOGY

tion of motion in liquids. There he points out, against the view that light is
wave motion, that the entire wall behind a slit should have to be illu-
minated. He does indeed know diffraction, but fails to link it with the
wave character of light, regarding it rather as due to the material of the
slit. This outlook is not an isolated auxiliary hypothesis for he uses
similar notions for reflection. Even a well polished mirror should, accord-
ing to him, show strong dispersion; what prevented it was that the mirror's
material set up around the body a uniform layer of force which was the
real cause of reflection. His great number of elementary notions afforded
many possibilities for later physicists to work out. Newton's ray is
periodic and can be polarized. Periodicity first made possible a theory
of periodic waves and interference. Newton attributed periodicity to
his particles of light in order to explain the colour of thin layers. As
to when periodicity arises, his view vacillates; according to his Optics,
Book Two, proposition twelve, not until transit through the refracting
surface. The periodically recurring arrangement of particles, the surges
of easy reflection or easy transition already involve the notion of interval
that figures again in the wave theory. Later thinkers, like Brewster (1781-
1868) see the particle of light as having two poles, with now one and
now the other leading in the direction of motion, because of rotation
about an axis normal to it. If the positive end collides, there is transit,
if the negative, reflection. The difficulties arising from this hypothesis
led to many auxiliary hypotheses, many of which are discussed at length
by Biot (1774-1862). The hypothesis of surges involves periodicity but
not interference. In Proposition twelve, Newton gives a hypothesis for
those who need one: it recognizes that vibrations of the illuminated
material influence the light ray, but not that interference occurs. Period-
icity does not entail interference. Nothing, at first, is said about what
happens when a positive and a negative end hit the material together.
Attempts to extend the hypothesis of surges to account for interference
as well came later. Indeed, Biot laid it down as a condition for visibility
that particles of opposite polarity must not hit the eye at the same time.
To explain why there was no effect on a photographic plate, special
hypotheses were adopted concerning the chemical nature of light. Thus,
it was one of the main founders of emission theory who introduced
periodicity, which is so vital in modern light theory. But Newton is aware,
too, that light may be polarized at right angles to the direction of propaga-
 FOUNDATIONS OF THE HISTORY OF OPTICS 109

tion. He is the first to use the term 'polarization' and compares the effect
of feldspar crystals on light with magnetic influences. He regarded
polarization as proof of emission theory, though later it was used as a
prop of wave theory. It could be explained only if particles could
be magnetized. The emission hypothesis thus recognized a double
polarity of corpuscles, one in the direction of propagation (surges) and
the other normal to it, when the ray has passed through feldspar. Thence-
forth periodicity and polarizability are backed now by emission the-
orists, now by wave theorists. Because, on the whole, wave theory won,
many even among the scientifically cultured have been led to imagine
that through its greater wealth it outpaced emission theory, which they
regard as rather primitive. The unfair contrast between complete and
incomplete theories partly springs from the unfortunate dichotomy of
emission and wave. How differently the history of physics would have
figured in human thought if physicists had been divided into periodics
and non-periodics. This too would have been faulty, as must be any
classification based on a single characteristic. Because Newton linked
the periodicity of light rays with the colour of thin layers, emission
theory was long superior to wave theory, if we may reckon Huyghens
~nd his followers as wave theorists, although periodicity had not been
adopted in their doctrine. It was Malus (1775-1811), one of the main
opponents of wave theory, who advanced the theory of polarization in
unforeseen ways by extending magnetic analogies. Had he lived to see
today's discoveries, such as the Zeeman effect, they would merely have
spurred him on to stretch his magnetic theory of light still further.
Newton's opponents long failed to produce an equally valuable
hypothesis to explain optical phenomena. Euler (1707-1783), who was
a wave theorist, indeed knows periodicity; like Malebranche, he explains
the colours from the rate of vibration, but works without Huyghens'
principle. His main objection to emission theory was incidentally that
one could not grasp how emitted particles might penetrate solid bodies,
a criticism since superseded, given that alpha and beta particles penetrate
aluminum as corpuscular rays.
At the end of the 18th and the early 19th centuries, optical controversies
became very lively. Young (1773-1829) in England and Fresnel (1788-
1826) in France extended the wave theory, perfecting it by introducing
interference and also transverse instead of longitudinal oscillations, and
110 EMPIRICISM AND SOCIOLOGY

especially by linking the theories of interference and diffraction; at the

same time Brewster (1781-1868) in England and Biot and Malus in
France favoured emission theory, to mention only a few on both sides.
The emission hypothesis is especially well developed in the work of
Biot, who shows a beginning of statistical physics where he speaks of the
distribution of states of surge.
Contending workers recognized each others' special advantages.
When Malus had published his work on polarization by reflection,
Young wrote to him: Malus' experiments had shown where Young's
own theory was wanting, though they had not shown it false. Biot
admitted to his opponent Fresnel that the latter's theory was superior,
while Fresnel recognized that Biot's formulas were useful. The theories
had grown so far that they agreed in many vital points. Brewster, in
his Optics remarks that the magnitude d which appears in the measure-
ments of Newton's rings is an absolute quantity which, however inter-
preted, refers to two sets of opposite phenomena. In emission theory
d is twice the gap between surges to easy reflection and refraction, while
in wave theory it is the wavelength. He ends with a sentence that Mach,
Duhem or Poincare might have uttered one hundred years later, saying
that these periods and spaces really exist, the only thing hypothetical
are the names given them. Should we then classify the great systems of
hypotheses merely by those names?
With the few characteristics specially chosen here, we can give a system-
atic comparison thus:

Periodicity Polarisability Huyghens' Interference

Principle

Huyghens no yes yes no

Newton yes yes no no
Young yes yes yes yes

If Young's theory were marked only by these four characteristics, then

if they were of equal weight, Huyghens and Newton would be equally
close to Young. The analysis may naturally be greatly refined; under
periodicity, for instance, one might separate emission from propagation:
the latter could be periodic without the former being so.
Newton's notion of light was clearly closer to periodic wave rays than
 FOUNDATIONS OF THE HISTORY OF OPTICS 111

to corpuscular rays: Newton's rays are much closer to gamma rays with
their many properties, than to alpha or beta rays. For gamma rays have
periodicity, while alpha and beta rays have none. How far a hypothesis
meets all demands may depend on the efforts made on its behalf. Duhem
said that if physicists had offered a prize for an optical system based on
emission while agreeing with Foucault's finding that light travelled faster
in air than in water, such a theory would have been found. Often promis-
ing theories were dropped because the young are always eager to tamper
with the work of their elders. Thus the electric fluid hypothesis was
quickly abandoned, though Lodge could show much later that it was
more serviceable than had ever been suspected, as in his hydraulic
model of a Leyden jar discharge. Likewise for the doctrine of two elec-
tricities which today is on the rise again. Before fighting a hypothesis,
one ought to give it its most finished form, a task often too great for a
lifetime's work. But the historian of physics will have gained much if
at times he tries to rehearse the scope of an older theory. Oersted used
to advise his young chemists to translate old theories into the new ones
as best they might, in order to recognize their value or uselessness. He
showed, ingeniously, how many propositions in the theory of oxydation
already figured in phlogiston theory, which had, for instance, recognized
that breathing was a form of burning.
We shall not enquire whether the creative impulse suffers when several
theories are worked out at once, but the historian of physics cannot
avoid such comparative surveys. Today many would dismiss the views
of Duhem and Poincare sketched above as a whim of fashion: yet this
fashion is very old, it arises wherever several highly finished theories
live side by side. Equality is claimed either by the champions of defeated
theories who wish to save them, or by protagonists of theories that have
yet to make good, who wish to soften objections. Sometimes impartial
critics adopt such views. A hundred years ago, others beside Brewster
held that emission and wave theories could equally be perfected; witness
Herschel's (1792-1871) view that Newton's theory, if pursued as carefully
as Huyghens', might lead to just as viable an account of phenomena
hitherto held to lie beyond its scope, if only we were to extend Biot's
hypothesis about spinning particles of light: emission of particles at
equal intervals, and a corresponding motion of the luminous body
would then account for interference without an aether. Similarly,
112 EMPIRICISM AND SOCIOLOGY

Whewell (1794-1866) held that Biot's moving polarization coincided

with wave theories in several points, since the intervals of interference in
the one might equally well be described by the intervals of oscillations
of the plane of polarization in the other.
If we replace emission and wave theories by an ampler set of types
marked by a range of characteristics, the history of physics might gain.
The historian would then not follow traditional classifications, as often
today, but might take into account other peculiarities. He need not then
favor features that might play minor roles as ideas. We cannot hope that
those who pursue the subject will always display the insight of genius
and find the vital point at once, but we may insist that the serious student
should give impartial attention to a range of features. Even then he must
doubtless choose, but that responsibility is lighter. If we attend to
features like the four we have used, then emission or wave character
would in some cases become rather unimportant. This is linked with
the type of contemporary philosophy held by Poincare who said, con-
cerning emission and wave hypotheses, that their role was secondary,
and that they were retained merely for convenience of clear exposition.
When we pursue historical studies, might it not be wise, systematically
to examine what features of systems of hypotheses are to be used, and
in what order? Might we not always begin by enumerating the features
vital for calculation, while reserving the analysis of the leading images
for wider discussion? Such systematic procedures would make it easier
to set up in outline all theories that can be constructed from a set of
basic notions, and then observe which of these do in fact occur. None of
this bars a more thoroughgoing exploration of how ideas develop. But
here we need a more generous perspective, if we are to lay bare the
innermost drives of the history of ideas.

REFERENCE

1 [1915, Bib!. No. 81 - Ed.].