What to read after Optokinetics?

In view of recent rapid advances in technology some may be surprised to learn that at least two of the basic tenets of optics are over a thousand years old, namely the law of refl ection -- the bouncing of light off water or glass such as a mirror -- which is over two millennia old, and the law of reciprocity -- the bending of light passing the surface of water or glass -- which has not changed for over a thousand years. This volume is a slightly enlarged and amended edition of the author’s treatise by the same name published in 1982. Some of the main points of divergence from the old system are in the treatment of these basic phenomena of refl ection (Newton’s axiom II), reciprocity (Newton’s axiom III) and refraction, interpreted here by the one measurable physical property common to all lights – their motions. Furthermore, Newton’s idea that each color had its own innate property (of refraction or wavelength) is challenged. The aim of this treatise is to update our knowledge about light with the help of new actual data derived from easily reproducible experiments which form the basis of a new theory. The theory interprets this new verifi able information according to the various speeds of the lights involved. An apparent obstacle to this understanding may have been the commonly held belief that the speed of light in moving inertial frames of reference was forever constant, and therefore the evidential basis of this belief is explored in a second section of the book. The last section deals with fundamental philosophical concepts of space and time seen largely from an empirical perspective. Optics is a branch of physics, and whereas physics nowadays is wedded to mathematics the present volume starts with quantitatively perceptible reality as advocated by Ernst Mach or Max Planck: “Physics is an exact science and hence depends upon measurement, while all measurement itself requires sense-perception.”