The Vibrant Color Wheels Designed by Goethe, Newton & Other Theorists of Color (1665–1810)
Maybe it’s the cloistered headiness of Rene Descartes, or the rigorous austerity of Isaac Newton; maybe it’s all the leathern breeches, gray waistcoats, sallow faces, and powdered wigs… but we tend not to associate Enlightenment Europe with an explosion of color theory. Yet philosophers of the late 17th and 18th centuries were obsessed with light and sight. Descartes wrote a treatise on optics, as did Newton.
Newton first described in his 1672 paper the “revolutionary new theory of light and colour,” the University of Cambridge Whipple Library writes, “in which he claimed that experiments…
The skinny
The skinny isn't ready yet — notes appear once the transcript is processed.