"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."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Carl B. Boyer, The Rainbow: From Myth to Mathematics (1959) p. 205
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Speed_of_light
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Speed of light
44 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Speed of light →
Related Quotes
"You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn't flying a thousan…"
"The speed of light sucks."
"One of the funniest examples of these kinds of statistics comes from Evolution: Possible or Impossible by James F. Co…"
"Hubble's law predicts that galaxies beyond ...the Hubble distance, recede faster than the speed of light ...this dist…"
"The radiation of the cosmic microwave background... has a red shift of about 1,000. ...the hot plasma of the early un…"
"A light beam that is farther than the Hubble distance of 14 billion light-years ...cannot keep up with the stretching…"
"When you are next out of doors on a summer night, turn your head towards the zenith. Almost vertically above you will…"
"Another topic deserving discussion is Einstein’s modification of Newton’s law of gravitation. In spite of all the exc…"
"For over 200 years the equations of motion enunciated by Newton were believed to describe nature correctly, and the f…"
"One of the problems has to do with the speed of light and the difficulties involved in trying to exceed it. You can't…"