“Descartes maintained his confidence in the instantaneity of light. … Yet in his derivation of the law of refraction, Descartes reasoned that light travelled faster in a dense medium than in one less dense. He seems to have had no qualms about comparing infinite magnitudes!”

— Carl B. Boyer

Source: The Rainbow: From Myth to Mathematics (1959), p. 204

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Carl B. Boyer 15

American mathematician 1906–1976

John Freely (1926–2017) American physicist

Source: Before Galileo, The Birth of Modern Science in Medieval Europe (2012), p. 189

“The ancient Greeks knew the laws that govern the propagation of light in a uniform medium and upon its reflection. However, the law governing the refraction of light as it passes from one transparent medium to another was unknown until the last century. Snell discovered it, Descartes tried to explain it and Fermat criticized his explanation. Since then, many great geometers have researched the problem, although no one has yet found a way of harmonizing the law of refraction with more fundamental laws that Nature must obey.”

Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters

Accord de différentes loix de la nature qui avoient jusqu’ici paru incompatibles (1744)

“It is hard to understand how this infinitely dense singularity can evaporate into nothing. For matter inside the black hole leak out into the universe requires that it travel faster than the speed of light.”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Source: Reinventing Gravity (2008), Chapter 5, Conventional Black Holes, p. 85

“Doth not this Æthereal Medium in passing out of Water, Glass, Crystal, and other compact and dense Bodies into empty Spaces, grow denser and denser by degrees, and by that means refract the Rays of Light not in a point, but by bending them gradually in curve Lines? And doth not the gradual condensation of this Medium extend to some distance from the Bodies, and thereby cause the Inflexions of the Rays of Light, which pass by the edges of dense Bodies, at some distance from the Bodies?”

Isaac Newton book Opticks, or a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light

Query 20
Opticks (1704)

“The refraction of light agrees with the grand principle that Nature always uses the simplest means to accomplish its effects. From this principle, can be derived whenever light passes from one medium to another, the ratio of the sine of the angle of refraction to the sine of the angle of refraction equals the inverse ratio of the speeds at which light moves in each medium.
But this "budget", this expense of action that Nature minimizes in the refraction of light, is it also minimized in the direct propagation and reflection of light? Yes, it always has the smallest possible value.”

Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters

Accord de différentes loix de la nature qui avoient jusqu’ici paru incompatibles (1744)

“He had doubted the correctness of the law of refraction of light but when he found in 1661 that he could deduce it from his Principle, he not only resolved his doubts about the law but felt all the more certain that his Principle was correct.”

Morris Kline (1908–1992) American mathematician

Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), p. 580
Context: Fermat knew that under reflection light takes the path requiring least time and, convinced that nature does indeed act simply and economically, affirmed in letters of 1657 and 1662 his Principle of Least Time, which states that light always takes the path requiring least time. He had doubted the correctness of the law of refraction of light but when he found in 1661 that he could deduce it from his Principle, he not only resolved his doubts about the law but felt all the more certain that his Principle was correct.... Huygens, who had at first objected to Fermat's Principle, showed that it does hold for the propagation of light in media with variable indices of refraction. Even Newton's first law of motion, which states that the straight line or shortest distance is the natural motion of a body, showed nature's desire to economize. These examples suggested that there might be a more general principle. The search for such a principle was undertaken by Maupertuis.

“It is interesting to note that Newton was not impressed by Descartes' great argument for God's existence derived from the idea of a perfect Being, nor by other metaphysical arguments that we have mentioned; yet Newton's own arguments for God's existence from the uniformity and suitability of different parts of the universe would not have seemed like proofs to Descartes.”

Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters

Les Loix du Mouvement et du Repos, déduites d'un Principe Métaphysique (1746)

“It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off.”

Woody Allen book Side Effects

"The UFO Menace".
Side Effects (1980)

“Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.”

Douglas Adams book Mostly Harmless

Variant: Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.
Source: Mostly Harmless

“Now, since the time of Newton there had been a debate about whether light was a wave---that is, a traveling disturbance in some background medium---or a particle, which travels regardless of the presence of a background medium. The observation of Maxwell that electromagnetic waves must exist and that their speed was identical to that of light ended the debate: light was an electromagnetic wave.”

Lawrence M. Krauss book The Physics of Star Trek

The Physics of Star Trek, HarperPerennial edition (1996), p. 17.

“Descartes maintained his confidence in the instantaneity of light. … Yet in his derivation of the law of refraction, Descartes reasoned that light travelled faster in a dense medium than in one less dense. He seems to have had no qualms about comparing infinite magnitudes!”

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Carl B. Boyer 15

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