SOURCE: A preface to Opticks, or, a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections, and Colours of Light, by Isaac Newton, Dover Publications, 1952, pp. ix-lxxvii.

In the following essay, Cohen reviews the content, textual history, and contemporary and later reception of Newton's Opticks.

Great creations—whether of science or of art—can never be viewed dispassionately. The Opticks, like any other scientific masterpiece, is a difficult book to view objectively; first, because of the unique place of its author, Isaac Newton, in the history of science, and, second, because of the doctrine it contains. One of the most readable of all the great books in the history of physical science, the Opticks remained out of print for a century and a half, until about two decades ago, while the Principia was constantly being reprinted. One of the reasons for this neglect was that the Opticks was out of harmony...