“WHENCE ARISES ALL THAT ORDER AND BEAUTY WE SEE IN THE WORLD”: 1704 FIRST EDITION OF NEWTON’S OPTICKS, “ONE OF THE SUPREME PRODUCTIONS OF THE HUMAN MIND” AND “ONE OF THE TWO PILLARS OF NEWTON’S IMPERISHABLE REPUTATION IN SCIENCE”

(NEWTON, Isaac). Opticks: Or, a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light. London: Printed for Sam. Smith and Benj. Walford, 1704. Quarto, contemporary full brown paneled calf rebacked, raised bands, red morocco spine label.

First edition, first issue, of Newton’s famous treatise on light and the spectrum, “one of the supreme productions of the human mind” (Andrade), with 19 copper-engraved folding plates. Also contains the first printing of Newton’s two treatises on curvilinear figures (in Latin), “intended to assert Newton’s priority to the discovery of the calculus over Leibniz” (Dibner 148). Handsome in contemporary calf, from the library of William A. Cole, distinguished collector and bibliographer.

As his Principia was the epitome of theoretical physics, Newton’s Opticks demonstrates his mastery of the experimental method. “With only the smallest exceptions, it presented work he had completed more than thirty years earlier…Unlike the fluximal methods, however, only a few men had digested the import of Newton’s published paper [on the subject] of 1672. Hence the import of the Opticks virtually equaled that of the Principia. Indeed, it may have exceeded it, for the Opticks, written in prose rather than geometry, was accessible to a wide audience as the Principia was not. Through the eighteenth century, it dominated the science of optics with almost tyrannical authority, and exercised a broader influence over natural science than the Principia did…the work remains permanently one of the two pillars of Newton’s imperishable reputation in science” (Richard Westfall). “All previous philosophers and mathematicians had been sure that white light is pure and simple, regarding colours as modifications or qualifications of the white. Newton showed experimentally that the opposite is true: there are pure coloured rays which cannot be analysed by refraction, such as the green of the spectrum; just as there are coloured rays of light which can be analysed, such as the green formed by mixing blue and yellow light. Natural white light, far from being simple, is a compound of many pure elementary colors which can be separated and recompounded at will” (PMM 172). “Unlike most of Newton’s works, Opticks was originally published in English… The work summarized [thirty-three years of] Newton’s discoveries and theories concerning light and color: the spectrum of sunlight, the degrees of refraction associated with different colors, the color circle (the first in the history of color theory), the invention of the reflecting telescope; the first workable theory of the rainbow, and experiments on what would later be called ‘interference effects’ in conjunction with Newton’s rings” (Norman 1588). “Nor would the author be confined to subjects related only to the behavior and analysis of light. The range of topics touched upon by Newton included questions of gravitation, metabolism and digestion, sensation, the circulation of blood, The Creation and the Great Flood, moral philosophy, the inductive method, and the vivid images haunting the dreams of madmen” (Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, 445). The sixteen “queries” which conclude the work summarize, in the form of rhetorical questions, Newton’s unproven views on other phenomena of heat and optics. “Benjamin Franklin was also influenced by Newton’s Opticks…and its influential queries. These were a series of strikingly original, often provocative insights embodied as questions rather than assertions. They were therefore represented as possibilities rather than facts. The ‘Queries’ were often imitated by later philosophers of nature” (Gary Rosenberg). This first issue was published anonymously, with only the initials “I.N.” at the end of the Advertisement. A later issue printed the same year contains the author’s name on the title page, but lacks the two treatises and has only 12 plates. Gray 174. Horblit 79b. Bookplates, including that of William A. Cole, distinguished collector and bibliographer of chemistry, author of Chemical Literature, 1700-1860.

Text and plates generally clean, leaf A2 with repaired closed tear, not affecting legibility, repair to corner of leaf Eee, not affecting text. Corners gently bumped. A handsome, near-fine copy in finely rebacked contemporary calf, with scientific provenance.