“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

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

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Pierre Louis Maupertuis 24

French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters 1698–1759

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“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)

“Do not the Rays of Light which fall upon Bodies, and are reflected or refracted, begin to bend before they arrive at the Bodies; and are they not reflected, refracted, and inflected, by one and the same Principle, acting variously in various Circumstances?”

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

Query 4
Opticks (1704)

“Heron and Olympiodorus had pointed out in antiquity that, in reflection, light followed the shortest possible path, thus accounting for the equality of angles. During the medieval period Alhazen and Grosseteste had suggested that in refraction some such principle was also operating, but they could not discover the law.”

Carl B. Boyer (1906–1976) American mathematician

Source: The Rainbow: From Myth to Mathematics (1959), p. 205
Context: Fermat had recourse to the principle of the economy of nature. Heron and Olympiodorus had pointed out in antiquity that, in reflection, light followed the shortest possible path, thus accounting for the equality of angles. During the medieval period Alhazen and Grosseteste had suggested that in refraction some such principle was also operating, but they could not discover the law. Fermat, however, not only knew (through Descartes) the law of refraction, but he also invented a procedure—equivalent to the differential calculus—for maximizing and minimizing a function of a single variable. … Fermat applied his method … and discovered, to his delight, that the result led to precisely the law which Descartes had enunciated. But although the law is the same, it will be noted that the hypothesis contradicts that of Descartes. Fermat assumed that the speed of light in water to be less than that in air; Descartes' explanation implied the opposite.

“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 (1906–1976) American mathematician

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

“Light propagates and spreads not only directly, through refraction, and reflection, but also by a fourth mode, diffraction.”
Lumen propagatur seu diffunditur non solum Directe, Refracte, ac Reflexe, sed etiam alio quodam quarto modo, Diffracte.

Francesco Maria Grimaldi (1618–1663) Italian physicist

Physico-mathesis de lumine, coloribus, et iride, aliisque adnexis libri duo: opus posthumum, published in Bologna (1665), http://books.google.com/books?id=FzYVAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_summary_r&cad=0#PPP27,M1 Proposition I.

“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)

“Ptolemy left in his Optics, the earliest surviving table of angles of refraction from air to water.”

Carl B. Boyer (1906–1976) American mathematician

Source: The Rainbow: From Myth to Mathematics (1959), p. 61
Context: Ptolemy left in his Optics, the earliest surviving table of angles of refraction from air to water. … This table, quoted and requoted until modern times, has been admired … A closer glance at it, however, suggests that there was less experimentation involved in it than originally was thought, for the values of the angles of refraction form an arithmetic progression of second order … As in other portions of Greek Science, confidence in mathematics was here greater than that in the evidence of the senses, although the value corresponding to 60° agrees remarkably well with experience.

“Newton's proof of the law of refraction is based on an erroneous notion that light travels faster in glass than in air, the same error that Descartes had made. This error stems from the fact that both of them thought that light was corpuscular in nature.”

John Freely (1926–2017) American physicist

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

“Impossible; for how many people did you know who refracted your own light to you?”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

“Do not Bodies and Light act mutually upon one another; that is to say, Bodies upon Light in emitting, reflecting, refracting and inflecting it, and Light upon Bodies for heating them, and putting their parts into a vibrating motion wherein heat consists?”

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

Query 5
Opticks (1704)

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Pierre Louis Maupertuis 24

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