Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The World, also called Treatise on the Light ( French title: Traité du monde et de la lumière ), is a book by René Descartes (1596–1650). Written between 1629 and 1633, it contains a nearly complete version of his philosophy, from method, to metaphysics, to physics and biology . Descartes espoused mechanical philosophy, a form of natural ...
A wave theory based on Young, Augustin-Jean Fresnel and François Arago's work would materialise in a novel wave theory of light. To some extent, Newton's corpuscular (particle) theory of light re-emerged in the 20th century, as a light phenomenon is currently explained as particle and wave. See also. Corpuscularianism; Speed of gravity; Photon
Planetary motion. Descartes' vortex theory of planetary motion was later rejected by Newton in favor of his law of universal gravitation, and most of the second book of Newton's Principia is devoted to his counterargument. Optics. Descartes also made contributions to the field of optics.
The vortex theory of the atom was a 19th-century attempt by William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) to explain why the atoms recently discovered by chemists came in only relatively few varieties but in very great numbers of each kind. Based on the idea of stable, knotted vortices in the ether or aether, it contributed an important mathematical legacy.
Fermat's principle, also known as the principle of least time, is the link between ray optics and wave optics. Fermat's principle states that the path taken by a ray between two given points is the path that can be traveled in the least time. First proposed by the French mathematician Pierre de Fermat in 1662, as a means of explaining the ...
Corpuscularianism. Corpuscularianism, also known as corpuscularism (from Latin corpusculum 'little body', and -ism ), is a set of theories that explain natural transformations as a result of the interaction of particles ( minima naturalia, partes exiles, partes parvae, particulae, and semina ). [1] It differs from atomism in that corpuscles are ...
In physics, the term "light" may refer more broadly to electromagnetic radiation of any wavelength, whether visible or not. [4] [5] In this sense, gamma rays, X-rays, microwaves and radio waves are also light. The primary properties of light are intensity, propagation direction, frequency or wavelength spectrum, and polarization.
Now, if one drops small pieces of light matter (e.g. wood) into the vessel, the pieces move to the middle of the vessel. Following the basic premises of Descartes, Christiaan Huygens between 1669 and 1690 designed a much more exact vortex model. This model was the first theory of gravitation which was worked out mathematically.