"Optics" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in this number an excellent article on "Parlor Magic," in which they are told, by Professor Leo Grindon, one of the Faculty of the Royal School of Chemistry in Manchester, England, how to perform some very interesting, and in some cases, quite astonishing experiments in chemistry, optics, etc. Some of our readers may be familiar with a few of these experiments, but the majority of them will be found novel to nearly all young people. Occasionally, there are materials or ingredients called for, which are somewhat expensive, and some of the experiments require a good deal ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... the same time, in their shifting shades of blue, green, and a nameless sort of dark grey, there was a sinister light in them that lent to the whole face an aspect almost alarming. Moreover, they were the most luminous optics I think I have ever ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... to the discourse of "his ancient," or regaling him "with sweet converse"; and thus they onward jog, until the sign of the "Greyhound," stretching quite across the main street, greets their expectant optics, and seems to forbid their passing the open portal below. In they wend then, and having seen their horses "sorted," and the collar marks (as much as may be) carefully effaced by the shrewd application of a due quantity of grease and lamp-black, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... case in another light. The following considerations may serve to remove certain untoward difficulties in metaphysics and optics, which beset the path, not only of the uninitiated, but even of the professors of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... disappeared; leaving behind it a clear open area of ice of the same dimensions. We now perceived that this bed of ice, which was thinly suffused with water, had produced the illusion, by reflecting and refracting (as persons skilled in optics would no doubt easily explain) a rocky and woody section of ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... they could not help being interested in observing the bohemianism of these gently reared but decadent sons of respectable English families. As soon as they could they left the table, and Tobey, observing their uneasiness in spite of his damaged and nearly useless optics, decided to send them to another room where they could pass the afternoon without further annoyance. Stubby escorted the party and ushered them into a good sized room which he said was "Algy's study," although no ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... which the enlarged mind is to be formed, the varied information acquired, the appreciation of the grand and the beautiful imbibed, which are essential to an accomplished and really useful writer of travels? Sulphuric acid and Optics, Anatomy and Mechanics, will do many things; but they will never make an observer of Nature, a friend of Man, a fit commentator on the world ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... to trace, in a few words, the origin of this admirable society, by whose indefatigable exertions the air-pump has become necessary to the domestic economy of every peasant's cottage; and the Budelight and beer-shops, optics and out-door relief, and Daguerrotypes and dirt, have become subjects with which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... fingers. His misty mind searches for some point of egress. Confronting (rather uncomfortably) hat stands, tables, porcelains, and other hall appurtenances, he at length shuffles his way back to the stairs, where, as if doubting his bleered optics, he stands some moments, swaying to and fro. His hat again falls from his head, and his body, following, lays its lumbering length on the stairs. Happy fraternity! how useful is that body! His companion, laying ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... blessing find) Is not to act or think beyond mankind; No powers of body or of soul to share, But what his nature and his state can bear. Why has not man a microscopic eye? For this plain reason, man is not a fly. Say what the use, were finer optics given, T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the heaven? Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er, To smart and agonize at every pore? Or quick effluvia darting through the brain, Die of a rose in aromatic ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... there is often an internal secret despair of finding the truth, which so far paralyzes their efforts as to prevent them from seeking it with that deep earnestness, without which it is seldom found. The history of optics furnishes a most impressive illustration of the justness of this remark. Previous to the time of Newton, no one seemed to entertain a real hope that this branch of knowledge would ever assume the form and clearness of scientific truth. The laws and ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... Wits have wonder'd what Analogy There is 'twixt Cobbling* and Astrology: How Partridge made his Optics rise, From a Shoe-Sole, to ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... The subject of optics still continuing to engross Newton's attention, he followed up his researches into the structure of the sunbeam by many other valuable investigations in connection with light. Every one has noticed the beautiful colours manifested in a soap-bubble. ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... substance capable of casting such a shadow could have interposed; and, indeed, as they described it, the shadow seemed to have no sort of relation to the position of the light, and appeared, as I have said, in manifest defiance of the laws of optics. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... For this purpose, when he was again left alone, he got out of bed and examined the window- shutters. He soon perceived a small chink in one of them, through which a ray of light found its passage and rested upon the ceiling. Now, the science of optics will inform us that the pictures of the white cow and the pigs, and of other objects out of doors, came into the dark chamber through this narrow chink, and were painted over Benjamin's head. It is greatly to his credit that he discovered the scientific principle of this phenomenon, ...
— Biographical Stories - (From: "True Stories of History and Biography") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Howe'er our earthly motion varies; And twice a year he'll cut the equator, As if there had been no such matter. Some wits have wonder'd what analogy There is 'twixt cobbling and astrology; How Partridge made his optics rise From a shoe-sole to reach the skies. A list the cobbler's temples ties, To keep the hair out of his eyes; From whence 'tis plain, the diadem That princes wear derives from them: And therefore crowns are nowadays Adorn'd with golden stars and rays: ...
— English Satires • Various
... Clarke, then 37 years old. He had been for 12 years chaplain to the Bishop of Norwich, and Boyle Lecturer in 1704-5, when he took for his subject the Being and Attributes of God and the Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion. He had also translated Newton's Optics, and was become chaplain to the Queen, Rector of St. Jamess, Westminster, and D. D. of Cambridge. The accusations of heterodoxy that followed him through his after life date from this year, 1712, in which, besides the edition of Caesar, he published a book ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... this age must not be forgotten: her treatment of Roger Bacon. Roger Bacon was a Franciscan monk, who not only studied Greek, Hebrew, and Oriental languages, but who devoted himself to natural science, and made many discoveries in astronomy, chemistry, optics, and mathematics. He is said to have discovered gunpowder, and he proposed a reform of the calendar similar to that introduced by Gregory XIII., 300 years later. His reward was to be hooted at as a magician, and to be confined in ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... replied the man addressed. "Our science of optics is still very defective, and though our ...
— In the Year 2889 • Jules Verne and Michel Verne
... beyond mankind; No powers of body or of soul to share, But what his nature and his state can bear. Why has not man a microscopic eye? For this plain reason, man is not a fly. Say what the use, were finer optics given, To inspect a mite, not comprehend the heaven? Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er, To smart and agonize at every pore? Or quick effluvia darting through the brain, Die of a rose in aromatic ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... we thought that our careful efforts at concealment had been so easily seen through, with never a word to show us that they saw. They had followed up words of ours on the science of optics, asked innocent questions about glasses and the like, and were aware of the defective ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... might have been a Charlotte Corday. So let her also be shielded from the ban of ridicule. Nonsense of enthusiasts is very different from nonsense of ninnies. She was truly a high-minded person, of that order who always do what they see to be right, and always have confidence in their optics. She was not unworthy of a young man's admiration, if she was unfit to be his guide. She resumed her ancient intimacy with Austin easily, while she preserved her new footing with Richard. She and Austin ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the dubious waves of error tossed, His ship half-foundered, and his compass lost, Sees, far as human optics may command, A sleeping fog, and fancies it dry land: Spreads all his canvas, every sinew plies; Pants for 't, aims at it, ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... walked north to the branch library to turn in his book on which a six-cent fine impended. With the yellow card in his hand, he went over to the fiction section of the open shelves. No more Hentys, no more Optics. He was in love, and love stories he ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... best that the market could supply, yet he was able, from his knowledge of optics and chemistry, to improve them for his own uses far beyond the ability of the makers. His studio was filled with examples of his work, and his mind was stocked with information and opinions on all subjects ranging from international policies to ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... sanction, than that of the great nobility and cavaliers. Marina's eagerness to find a precedent for the interference of the popular branch in all the great concerns of government, has usually quickened, but sometimes clouded, his optics. In the present instance he has undoubtedly confounded the irregular proceedings of the aristocracy exclusively, with the deliberate ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... branches of physics—electricity and magnetism. The whole scheme of these important sciences rests on the hypothesis of "electric fluidity," or of imponderable matter of which the existence is nothing less than proved. Or optics? Optics certainly appertain to the most important and completest branch of physics, and yet the undulatory theory of light, which we accept now as the indispensable basis of optics, rests on an unproved hypothesis, on ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... greatly enlarged, so that they seemed as those of the fish men take from a mile depth in the Gulf of Nice,—which are excessively magnocular,—even as large as the round tower of Copenhagen were their optics, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a cellular NMT-450 network; waiting lists for telephones are long; local service outside Minsk is neglected and poor; intercity - Belarus has a partly developed fiber-optic backbone system presently serving at least 13 major cities (1998); Belarus's fiber optics form synchronous digital hierarchy rings through other countries' systems; an inadequate analog system remains operational international: Belarus is a member of the Trans-European Line (TEL), Trans-Asia-Europe ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... he has a perfect right to choose between the verse form and the prose form simply according as he can versify or not, is grievously in the wrong. There is no more justification for, say, a purely didactic poem or descriptive poem than there is for the rhyming which begins somebody's treatise on optics with these egregious words:— ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... and came down stern foremost; and being now regularly at the slack end, for I could not well get lower, I sat still, scratching my caput in the midst of a gay company of morning visitors, enjoying the gratifying consciousness that I was distinctly visible to them, although my dazzled optics could as yet distinguish nothing. To add to my pleasurable sensations, I now perceived, from the coldness of the floor, that in MY downfall the catastrophe of my unmentionables had been grievously rent, but I had nothing ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... in business as wine merchants. But Joseph Jackson Lister, who married in 1818, and became in 1827 the father of the famous surgeon, was much more than a merchant. He had taught himself the science of optics, had made improvements in the microscope, and had won his way within the sacred portals of the Royal Society. Letters have been preserved which show us how keen his interest in science always remained, and with what full appreciation he entered into the researches which his son was making ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... world, are all perfectly determined; selenographic maps have been drawn with a perfection that equals, if it does not surpass, those of terrestrial maps; photography has given to our satellite proofs of incomparable beauty—in a word, all that the sciences of mathematics, astronomy, geology, and optics can teach is known about the moon; but until now no direct communication with it ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... were not left long to ascertain in what direction to expect a recontre, for a fresh eructation of the metrical whine gave them sufficient notice. The black boy soon descried the disturbers of their peace by the glitter of a host of canine optics, and directed his masters and their friend where to fire. This they did; and the effect of their shots was instantly apparent, from the excessive yelping that greeted their ears, and satisfied them that some, at least, of their annoyers had got something to remember; ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... and I'll get six months. He knew where I'd go. I haven't any money," and tears not only filled the wondrous optics of poor Miss Montmorency, but flowed ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... the philosopher and the deeply-learned in nature's laws will read of this with generous disdain; but they forget that this spring had its charter right from God, and was fed from other fountains farther up the hill. Besides, optics is God's own science—and this was ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... Give but my spirit its desired scope, - A giant in a pismire, I not grope; Deny it,—and an ant, with on my back A firmament, the skiey vault will crack. Our minds make their own Termini, nor call The issuing circumscriptions great or small; So high constructing Nature lessons to us all: Who optics gives accommodate to see Your countenance large as looks the sun to be, And distant greatness ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... lover, Pyramus, through the wall that separated them, but nothing known to man could have shut out the supreme gloriousness of the interior of Jupiter's palace. Even with the goggles of the Argus regulated to protect one thousand eyes upon my nose, it made my dazzled optics blink. ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... ABERRATION (in Optics).—In the refraction of light by a convex lens the rays passing through different parts of the lens are brought to a focus at slightly different distances—this is called SPHERICAL ABERRATION; at the same time the coloured ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... I will some day," declared the old man, a fanatic gleam shining in his faded optics. "I'll find it some day, Zeb. I never got to it, but I come mighty close—yes, sir, ole Pete he come ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... exhibition. Billy, with two watches hung by one chain, undergoing the revolutionary movements of buckets in a well, and his eye-glass set round with false pearls, are admirably "en suite" with his bugle optics. The frowsy madam in faded finery, with all the little Buttons, attended by a red-haired poor relation from Inverness (who is at once their governess and their victim), form the happy tenantry of this moving closet. No less than three, crests surmount the arms of this descendant ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... indeed, beings so diminutive that they bear the same proportion to the rest of the intellectual that Eels in vinegar do to the rest of the material world; the latter are only to be seen through microscopes, and the former only through the false optics of a Rosicrucian understanding." And finally, he decides that "these diminutive beings are only Sawney (that is, Alexander Pope), taking the change; for it is he, a little lump of flesh, that talks, instead of a little spirit." Dennis's profound gravity contributes an additional ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... to see my old friends, whom distance cannot diminish, figuring up in the air (so they appear to our optics), yet on terra firma still—for so we must in courtesy interpret that speck of deeper blue, which the decorous artist, to prevent absurdity, had made to spring ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... round and round, looking for her needle, which, strange to say, she could not find; she opened her snuff-box, and took a pinch to clear her optics. "Deary me, why, what's the matter with my snuff? and where can that needle be? Child, come and look for the needle; don't be sticking ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... instead of being flattened, is elongated at the poles: by ignorance of which the loss above mentioned occurs yearly. There is, or is to be, a substitute for attraction and an "application hitherto neglected, of a {138} recognized law of optics to the astronomical theory, showing the true orbits of the heavenly bodies to be perfectly circular, and their orbital motions to be perfectly uniform." all irregularities being, I suppose, optical ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... he proposed to make in the interests of trade must be made good to him in some way. So, "by way of getting even," he made violent love to all the pretty eyes he met in his commercial travels—"to have something to think about after he should have found favor in the strabismic optics of ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... you do not lay the blame on the science of optics. The moon is immeasurably less distant than Mars, yet with Mars our communication is fully established. I presume you will not say that you ...
— In the Year 2889 • Jules Verne and Michel Verne
... and only stopped me at two places: one was at a word too strong for what I had to describe, and the other at one too weak. The doctrine he allowed to be quite orthodox, concerning gravitation, refraction, reflection, optics, comets, magnitudes, distances, revolutions, etc., but made a discovery to me which, had I known sooner, would have overset me, and prevented my reading any part of my work: he said he had almost always ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... of the old deductive method, that of the mediaeval Aristotelianism, which had been worse than fruitless in the study of nature, men now set out with a great enthusiasm to study facts, and to observe their laws. Modern optics, acoustics, chemistry, geology, zoology, psychology and medicine, took their rises within the period of which we speak. The influence was indescribable. Newton might maintain his own simple piety side by side, so to say, with his character, as a scientific man, though even he did ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... forward by a feigned immaterial principle, called the vital agent. But when it was discovered that the heart is constructed upon the recognized rules of hydraulics; the eye upon the most refined principles of optics; that the ear was furnished with the means of dealing with the three characteristics of sound—its tympanum for intensity, its cochlea for pitch, and its semicircular canals for quality; and that the air, brought ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... important. By this I mean, a general knowledge of the mathematics, of mechanics, optics, hydrostatics, astronomy, chemistry, botany, and the like. The teaching of these should be accompanied by experiments. Experimental philosophy, as I observed before, is peculiarly interesting to youth. Such knowledge ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... face, and gave me such a look of sorrowful tenderness as might have melted my heart, but within those eyes there lurked a something that I did not like; and I wondered how I ever could have admired them—her sister's honest face and small grey optics appeared far more agreeable. But I was out of temper with Eliza at that moment for her insinuations against Mrs. Graham, which were false, I was certain, whether ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... if they saw me in the valleys, though they were upon the rocks, they would run away as in a terrible fright; but if they were feeding in the valleys, and I was upon the rocks, they took no notice of me; from whence I concluded, that by the position of their optics, their sight was so directed downward, that they did not readily see objects that were above them: so, afterwards, I took this method—I always climbed the rocks first, to get above them, and then had ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... new facts, whose importance will probably be commensurate with the attention directed to these branches of study. Expectations of this nature may be entertained with regard to meteorology, several parts of optics, and to radiating heat, and electro-magnetism, since the admirable discoveries of Melloni and Faraday. A fertile field is here opened to discovery, although the voltaic pile has already taught us the intimate connection existing between electric, magnetic, and chemical phenomena. Who will venture ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... excursion to Marietta, her large, calm eyes searched his countenance with a look of offended dignity, which caused his tongue to cleave to the roof of his mouth. Speechless for the moment, but not blinded, Plutarch withdrew his optics from the imperious dame, and took an instantaneous brain-picture of her companion, a light-footed, quick-glancing girl about eighteen years of age, whose arrival put little Harman into an ecstasy, and gave manifest delight to the servants. ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... together, and you could scarcely turn, for the people. The old fellow fixed his eye on me; there was a fatal fascination in it. Getting off without recognition, would have been unpardonable disrespect. In a moment, his finger was in my button-hole, and his rheumy optics glittering with the satisfaction of your true bore, when he has met with an unresisting subject. I listened to his common-places with the utmost apparent satisfaction. Directly, he began to speak ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... library was a spot of some austerity; the proceedings of learned societies, cyclopaedias, physical science and above all, optics held the chief place upon the shelves, and it was only in holes and corners that anything legible existed as if by accident. Parents' Assistant, Rob Roy, Waverley and Guy Mannering, Pilgrim's Progress, Voyages ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... optics, and sees through dioptrics, He's a dab at projectiles—ne'er misses his man; He's complete in attraction, and quick at reaction, By the doctrine of chances he squares every plan; In hydraulics so frisky, the whole Bay of Biscay, If it flowed but with ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... "magic" is very simple and requires no more skill to prepare or execute than any clever boy or girl of fourteen may possess. It is based on the performance of the famous Hermann, and relies on a principle of optics for its success. To prepare such a magic cave, the requisites are a large soap box, a few simple tools, some black paint, some black cloth, and ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... greens or reds stronger or weaker than another in proportion to the condition of his eye. Another may grasp only her varying degrees of gray. One man unduly exaggerates the intensity of the dark and the opposing brilliancy of the lights. Another eye—for it is largely a question of optics, of optics and temperament—sees only the more gentle and sometimes the more subtle gradations of light and shade reducing even the blaze of the noonday sun to half-tones. Still another, whether by the fault of over-magnifying power or long-sightedness, detects an infinity ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... men flourished in the Netherlands. But the glory of others, in countries presenting a wider theatre for their renown, in many instances eclipsed them; and the inventors of new methods and systems in anatomy, optics and music were almost forgotten in the ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... of the laws of pneumatics and hydrostatics), digests, oxygenises its blood—millions of years before any one had discovered oxygen—sees and hears, operations that involve an unconscious knowledge of the facts concerning optics and acoustics compared with which the conscious discoveries of Newton are insignificant—shall we say that a baby can do all these things at once, doing them so well and so regularly without being even able to give them attention, and yet without ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... mathematicks, 205 Optics, philosophy, and staticks, Magick, horoscopy, astrology, And was old dog at physiology But as a dog that turns the spit Bestirs himself, and plies his feet, 210 To climb the wheel, but all in vain, His own weight ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... Slammer—Doctor Slammer of the 97th rejected! Impossible! It could not be! Yes, it was; there they were. What! introducing his friend! Could he believe his eyes! He looked again, and was under the painful necessity of admitting the veracity of his optics; Mrs. Budger was dancing with Mr. Tracy Tupman; there was no mistaking the fact. There was the widow before him, bouncing bodily here and there, with unwonted vigour; and Mr. Tracy Tupman hopping about, with a face ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... different times. We know too little of the laws which determine their appearances to be warranted in finding contradiction or difficulty here. The power of seeing may depend on the condition of the beholder. It may depend, not as with gross material bodies, on optics, but on the volition of the radiant beings seen. They may pass from visibility to its opposite, lightly and repeatedly, flickering into and out of sight, as the Pleiades seem to do. Where there is such store of possibilities, he is rash who talks ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... doubt, besides his hatred of the Church, lay at the bottom of Condorcet's tolerance or more towards Mahometanism. The Arabian superstition was not fatal to knowledge, Arabian activity in algebra, chemistry, optics, and astronomy, atoned in Condorcet's ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... this is not a good time for studying optics. What we want is knowledge that shall bring us to the brig without being shot at by ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... the sky will reflect into water too near the bottom of the picture, a painter's license may move it higher in its vertical line; but if the same cloud is made to reflect at an angle several degrees to right or left, the artist breaks the simplest law of optics. The painter's art at best is one of deception. In the first case the lie was plausible. In the second case any schoolboy could have "told on" ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... Stag,' said the lady (privileged as a sweetheart she called him Stag, though everybody else was obliged to call him Stagyrite), 'how will they know it's meant for me, Stag?' Upon which I am sorry to say the philosopher fell to cursing and swearing, bestowing blessings on his own optics and on posterity's, meaning yours and mine, saying: 'Let them find it out.' Well, now, you see I have found it out. But that is more than I hope for my crypto-criminals, and therefore I take this my only way of giving them celebration and malediction ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... of the ordinary principles of optics on the part of the reader is assumed, for there are plenty of books on the theory of lenses, and, in any case, it is my intention to treat of the art rather than of the science of the subject. By far ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... of its most valuable articles were from the pen of the editor. At a later period he was one of the leading contributors to the Encyclopaedia Britannica (seventh and eighth editions), the articles on Electricity, Hydrodynamics, Magnetism, Microscope, Optics, Stereoscope, Voltaic Electricity, &c., being from his pen. In 1819 Brewster undertook further editorial work by establishing, in conjunction with Robert Jameson (1774-1854), the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, which took the place of the Edinburgh Magazine. The first ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... lie, son," said the man who was minus one of his optics, as he thrust his face close down to that of Ted, as though he would look straight into his heart; but this was something that no one else had ever succeeded in doing, and the attempt did not ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... much more amenable to their approach, for, after a little persuasion, she rose in a very stately way, blinked her rather human-looking, eye-lashed optics, and stalked to the other wives to stand with them, hissing and cackling a little, while the bad eggs were removed and the fresh thirty-nine were put in their place, Emson arranging them as regularly as he could in accordance with ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... her handbag. Mrs. Palmer suppressed a little scream. She had expected that ivory-handled thing to appear. Instead there was a treasury note of a size that caused the white part of the boy's eyes to expand beyond all the laws of optics. ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... of astronomy, with its eccentrics and its epicycles, was an hypothesis utterly at variance with fact, which nevertheless did great things for the advancement of astronomical knowledge. Kepler was the wildest of guessers. Newton's corpuscular theory of light was of much temporary use in optics, though nobody now believes in it; and the undulatory theory, which has superseded the corpuscular theory and has proved one of the most fertile of instruments of research, is based on the hypothesis of the existence of an 'ether,' the properties of which are defined in propositions, ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... end for which the Master became like unto us in His incarnation and passion was that we might become like to Him by the reception of His very own life unto our souls. Light makes many a surface on which it falls flash, but in the optics of earth it is the rays which are not absorbed that are reflected; but in this loftier region the illumination is not superficial but inward, and it is the light which is swallowed up within us that then comes forth from us. Christ will dwell in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... your optics as well. You like to see other folks; taking the bitters is another thing. The tea-bell ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... the pleasure of casting my optics upon the individual of Nancy Ellen's choice," said Agatha primly, "but Miss Amelia Lang tells me he is a very distinguished person, of quite superior education in a medical way. I shall call him if I ever ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... not as yet brought his experiments so far as the last speakers. He was not a Naturalist himself. His line was Optics. He described some interesting cases of Double Refraction, Mock Suns, and Lunar Rainbows, that had come under his notice, before sitting down with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... behoveful: he that can tell his money hath arithmetic enough: he is a true geometrician, can measure out a good fortune to himself; a perfect astrologer, that can cast the rise and fall of others, and mark their errant motions to his own use. The best optics are, to reflect the beams of some great man's favour and grace to shine upon him. He is a good engineer that alone can make an instrument to get preferment. This was the common tenet and practice of Poland, as Cromerus observed not long since, in the first ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... right." If those I-told-you-so's got their desert they would long ago have been pitched over the battlements. The mote in their neighbor's eyes—so small that it takes a microscope to find it—gives them more trouble than the beam which obscures their own optics. With air sometimes supercilious and sometimes Pharisaical, and always blasphemous, they take the razor of the divine judgment and sharpen it on the hone of their own hard hearts, and then go to work on men sprawled out at full length under disaster, cutting ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... or farther south than the Tibboos, some fifteen or twenty days' journey. From the town of Ghat to the base of this range is half a day, eastward, although the range looks, by the ordinary delusion of Desert optics, to be close ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... discern Mrs. Dyer from the other comely gentlewoman who lives up at staircase No. 5; or, if you should make a blunder in the twilight, Mrs. Dyer has too much good sense to be jealous for a mere effect of imperfect optics. But don't try to write the Lord's Prayer, Creed, and Ten Commandments, in the compass of a halfpenny; nor run after a midge or a mote to catch it; and leave off hunting for needles in bushels of hay, for all these things strain the eyes. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... reasoned upon very successfully which, by their nature, never can be objects of perception: such are the atoms of Chemistry and the ether of Optics. But the severer methodologists regard them with suspicion: Mill was never completely convinced about the ether; the defining of which has been found very difficult. He was willing, however, to make the most ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... vengeance, and conceal'd the shame: So lurk'd in sects unseen. With greater guile False Reynard[96] fed on consecrated spoil: The graceless beast by Athanasius first Was chased from Nice, then by Socinus nursed: His impious race their blasphemy renew'd, And nature's King through nature's optics view'd. Reversed they view'd him lessen'd to their eye, Nor in an infant could a God descry: New swarming sects to this obliquely tend, 60 Hence they began, and here they ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... girls who are trained to play on musical instruments. But this is surely to show a complete misunderstanding of the question. It is like saying that the best preparation for a painter to know the colours reflected on water by a cloudy or sunny sky would be a course of optics. Music is at once the most imaginative and the most severely abstract of the arts, and the absence of women from music must be referred to deeper causes, which yet, it seems to me, are not far ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... the same stand-point of pure reason. Even though I have obtained no further light from the side of intuition, I have from that of intellect. So that, if there be in truth any such intuition, I occupy with regard to the organ of it the same position as that of the blind lecturer on optics. But on this very account I cannot be accused of ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... his favourite metre. In this helpless condition of closed optics and hanging jaw, we find the followers of Plato. It is by shutting their eyes that they see, and by opening their mouths that they apprehend. Like certain broad-muzzled dogs, all stand equally stiff and staunch, although few scent the game, and their lips wag, and water, at whatever distance ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... great subjects of Newton's labours—the fluxional calculus, physical astronomy, and optics—a very large portion of his time, while resident in his college, was devoted to researches of which scarcely a trace remains. Alchemy, which had fascinated so many eager and ambitious minds, seems to have tempted Newton with an overwhelming force. What theories he formed, what experiments he ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of two men travelling the same way, starting together, but advancing at different rates; one, we say, falls behind the other. In this manner of expression, we follow exactly the principles on which we started, and suit our language to our ideas and habits of thinking. By the law of optics things are reflected upon the retina of the eye inversely, that is, upside down; but they are always seen in a proper relation to each other, and if there is any thing wrong in the case, it is overcome by early habit; and ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... or the anthelion of the Scandinavian Alps, and the aerial cities so often seen by explorers and travelers? Do not they defy the law of optics? Must we understand the intricacies of articulation and the forces back of it before we can appropriate speech? Must we discard all belief in an infinite mind because we cannot understand it, and therefore say we are not a part of it because there is no Infinite? Should we discard the ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... countenance, of a man well stricken in years, a pale, thin, scholar-like visage, with eyes dim and bleared by the lamp-light that had served them to pore over many ponderous books. Yet those same bleared optics had a strange, penetrating power, when it was their owner's purpose to read the human soul. This figure of the study and the cloister, as Hester Prynne's womanly fancy failed not to recall, was slightly deformed, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... great advantage to him when the problem is to construct an etymology by following the gossamer clews that lead from sensual images to the metaphorical and tropical adaptations of them to the demands of fancy and thought. The nice optics that see what is not to be seen have passed into a sarcastic proverb; yet those are precisely the eyes that are in the heads and brains of all who accomplish much, whether in science, poetry, or philosophy. With the kind of etymologies we are speaking of, it ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... beloved," said Bothwell, in the same tone of raillery, "will be, firstly, that I will tweak thy proboscis or nose. Secondly, beloved, that I will administer my fist to thy distorted visual optics; and will conclude, beloved, with a practical application of the flat of my sword to the ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... he was sent first to school and then to Cambridge, where he was soon conspicuous for his talents and his genius. In due time he was made a professor. His discoveries in astronomy, mechanics, and optics are of world-wide renown. The law of gravitation was established by him, and set forth in his paper De Motu Corporum. His treatise on Fluxions prepared the way for that wonderful mathematical, labor-saving instrument—the differential calculus. In 1687 he published his Philosophiae ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... succeeds; [Endnote BB] deluded long By Fancy's dazzling optics, these behold The images of some peculiar things With brighter hues resplendent, and portray'd With features nobler far than e'er adorn'd Their genuine objects. Hence the fever'd heart Pants with delirious hope for tinsel charms; Hence oft obtrusive on the eye of scorn, Untimely zeal her witless ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... 1662 the Gresham Professorship of Geometry, which he resigned on being appointed first Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in the same university. During his tenure of this chair he pub. two mathematical works of great learning and elegance, the first on Geometry and the second on Optics. In 1669 he resigned in favour of his pupil, Isaac Newton, who was long considered his only superior among English mathematicians. About this time also he composed his Expositions of the Creed, The Lord's Prayer, Decalogue, and Sacraments. He was made a D.D. by royal mandate ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... is we who advance, not they. You will soon acquire a practical knowledge of the laws of optics, and learn to calculate distances and sizes as well as the ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... snatched the light, and both men hastened to examine the prisoner's hand. After a single glance their eyes met and each set of optics inquired of ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... discussed optics, as they called it, and whether a certain injury to the brain would produce blindness or not, but they could not agree about it, and said they must test it by experiment by-and-by; and next they discussed plants, and that interested me, because in the ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... Beach Beacon was quite instructive; since we viewed there a practical application of an important principle in optics, based on ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... professional groove laid down for him. On the contrary, his passion for learning seemed to increase with the diminution of the time available for its gratification. He studied Italian, Greek, mathematics; Maclaurin's Fluxions served to "unbend his mind"; Smith's Harmonics and Optics and Ferguson's Astronomy were the nightly companions of his pillow. What he read stimulated without satisfying his intellect. He desired not only to know, but to discover. In 1772 he hired a small telescope, and through it caught a preliminary ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... the sides of a church spire are slightly curved, so that they swell out a little in the centre. This is called the entasis of the spire, and belongs to the study of optics in architecture. Where the spire has no entasis the same effect is produced by the introduction of small projecting gables, bands of carving, or a little ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... binomial theorem, discovered at the age of twenty-two; for the invention of fluxions; for the demonstration of the law of gravitation; and for the discovery of the different refrangibility of rays of light. His treatise on Optics and his Principia, in which he brought to light the new theory of the universe, place him at the head of modern philosophers—on a high vantage ground, to which none have been elevated, of his age, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... Moors themselves, which had held out so marvellously under this system of oppression, began now to be exhausted. Many signs of this might be discerned by much less acute optics than those of the archbishop; but his were blinded by the arrogance of success. At length, in this inflammable state of public feeling, an incident occurred which led to ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... reward. On the contrary, there is no story so absurd that they did not invent at my cost. I was watched by glasses on the opposite side of the lake, and by glasses, too, that must have had very distorted optics; I was waylaid in my evening drives. I believe they looked upon ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... and wholeness we cannot attribute to Goethe. He is still a little straitened, a little pestered by the doubting and critical optics which our time turns upon man, a little victimized by his knowledge of limitary conditions and secondary laws. Nevertheless, a noble man is not to his eye "contained between hat and boots," but is of untold depth and dimension. He indicates traits ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... expression about her handsome mouth spoke the truth, must have been twenty hours out of the twenty-four. As the soldiers approached to lead him away, Sir Norman tried to catch her eye; but in vain, for she kept those brilliant optics most unwinkingly fixed on the ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... optics can contribute similar material. The questions of color harmony and color contrast, light intensity and mutual support of uniformly colored objects, of irradiation, depth and perspective, are significant for an effective display in the ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... badly. Now let us abolish it altogether and make a better one." But in doing so he begs the whole question at issue. The point is, can we make a better one or must we be content with patching up the old one? Take an illustration. Scientists tell us that from the point of view of optics the human eye is a clumsy instrument poorly contrived for its work. A certain great authority once said that if he had made it he would have been ashamed of it. This may be true. But the eye unfortunately is all we have to see ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... same box with Lord C, and in a most consequential tone hallowed out, "Waiter! bring in a pint of Madeira, and a couple of wax candles, and put them in the next box." He then drew to him Lord C.'s candle, and set himself to read. His Lordship glanced at him a look of indignation, but exerting his optics a little more, continued to decypher his paper. The waiter soon re- appeared, and with a multitude of obsequious bows, announced his having completed the commands of the gentleman, who immediately lounged round into his box. Lord Camelford having finished his ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... follows from this that as these laws are merely the outcome of human experience they can have no validity outside of it. Consequently, adds the writer I have quoted, just as the study of optics teaches us that the human eye yields a very different picture of the external world from that given by the eye of a fly, for instance, and as each of them is equally far from the reality, so the truth ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... notwithstanding the great advantage which he derived from a habit of patient thinking, indulged bold and excentric thoughts, of which his Queries at the end of his book of Optics are a sufficient evidence. And a quick conception of distant analogies, which is the great key to unlock the secret of nature, is by no means incompatible with the spirit of perseverance, in investigations calculated to ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... was master of the Greek and Hebrew languages, then very rare accomplishments; and is pronounced by Roger Bacon, a very competent judge, of whom we shall presently have occasion to speak, to have spent much of his time, for nearly forty years, in the study of geometry, astronomy, optics, and other branches of mathematical learning, in all of which he much excelled. So that, as we are informed from the same authority, this same Robert of Lincoln, and his friend, Friar Adam de Marisco, were the two most learned men in the world, and excelled ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... an experimental philosopher, Newton surpasses Bacon. Newton's works contain nothing in point of style and illustration comparable to Bacon's essays; Bacon's works contain nothing in point of scientific discovery and mathematical calculation comparable to Newton's "Optics" and "Principia." ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... "Well, that don't go a minute! Here!" says he, "glue your optics to that." He chucked out a specimen peppered with yaller. "That's my mine. I'm just thinkin' of taking a half interest in the mint. You can pick her to go twenty thousand to the ton—help yourselves, gents." He began sortin' rock. "Oh, ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... the middle of November, I was with my brother Francois, two years younger than I, in my father's room, watching him attentively as he was working at optics. A large lump of crystal, round and cut into facets, attracted my attention. I took it up, and having brought it near my eyes I was delighted to see that it multiplied objects. The wish to possess myself of it at once got hold of me, and seeing myself ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the existence of more or less accentuated markings upon the surface of Mars. The progress of optics, admitting of greater magnifications, exhibited the form of these patches more clearly, while the study of their motions enabled the astronomers to determine with remarkable precision the diurnal rotation of this planet. It occurs in 24 hours, 37 minutes, 23.65 seconds. Day ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... in optics is the same as in acoustics, the same as in everything—it is based on simplicity. Those colors, like those notes, the number of whose vibrations or waves in the same time bear some simple ratio to each other, are harmonious; an absolute equality produces unison; ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... in place of them. Among mathematical works of this century were the Algorismus (Arithmetic) and the Libellus de Sphaera (On the Sphere) by John Holywood (Sacrobosco); and the Perspectiva Communis, i.e. Optics, by John (Peckham) of Pisa. A treatise on Music by John de Muris of Paris was produced in the early part of the fourteenth century. All of these were well-known university text-books. They appear in the list at Leipzig throughout the ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... perishing by the way), and at last Transcendentalism evolve itself (if I construe aright), as the Euthanasia of Metaphysic altogether. May it be sure, may it be speedy! Thou shalt open thy eyes, O Son of Adam; thou shalt look, and not forever jargon about laws of Optics and the making of spectacles! For myself, I rejoice very much that I seem to be flinging aside innumerable sets of spectacles (could I but lay them aside,—with gentleness!) and hope one day actually to see a thing or two. Man ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the bottom. For this purpose, when he was again left alone, he got out of bed, and examined the window-shutters. He soon perceived a small chink in one of them, through which a ray of light found its passage, and rested upon the ceiling. Now the science of optics will inform us, that the pictures of the white cow and the pigs, and of other objects out of doors, came into the dark chamber, through this narrow chink, and were painted over Benjamin's head. It is greatly to his ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... thing is to discover how it operates. The eternal forms of things are laws of natural action. Such are the law of gravitation, the laws of optics or of chemical combination. A static picture unless so interpreted must be ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... especially noted was that the stranger had only one eye—and that set in a rather forbidding countenance. Ordinarily he might have pitied him, but in his present mood Drew envied him. The stranger's one remaining eye had, after all, seen more of the world than his own two good optics would likely ever see. ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... this curtain is the crystalline lens (l.), the curvature of the anterior face or which is controlled by the ciliary muscle (c.m.). In front of the lens is the aqueous humour (a.h.). The description of the action of this apparatus involves the explanation of several of the elementary principles of optics, and will be found by the student in any text-book of that subject. Here it would have no very instructive bearing, either on general physiological considerations ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... Conception of the thing, and the marvellous method of its production,[1] but doubtless, also, all those wonderful laws of reflection, refraction, polarization, and a thousand others, which the science of Physical Optics investigates. ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... learning. In this branch [of science] the beam of light is explained on those methods of demonstration which form the glory not so much of Mathematics as of Physics and are graced with the flowers of both [Footnote: 5. Such of Leonardo's notes on Optics or on Perspective as bear exclusively on Mathematics or Physics could not be included in the arrangement of the libro di pittura which is here presented to the reader. They are however but few.]. But its axioms being laid ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... or of active life, in which Jesuits were not to be found. They guided the counsels of Kings. They deciphered Latin inscriptions. They observed the motions of Jupiter's satellites. They published whole libraries, controversy, casuistry, history, treatises on optics, Alcaic odes, editions of the fathers, madrigals, catechisms, and lampoons. The liberal education of youth passed almost entirely into their hands, and was conducted by them with conspicuous ability. They appear to have discovered the precise point to which intellectual culture can be carried ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the day coach, coatless and with both eyes blackened, was Archie Tolleston; he almost fell into the arms of our cattle buyers. I recognized Archie at a glance, and dragging the detective inside the waiting-room, posted him as to the arrival with the wild look and blood-shot optics. Siringo cautioned me to go to his room and stay there, promising to ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He was graduated from Christ Church College, Oxford, in 1710, succeeding Keill as lecturer in Experimental Philosophy. He was especially learned in natural philosophy, mathematics, geometry, and optics, having lectured before the King on various occasions. He was very popular in the Grand Lodge, and his power as an orator made his manner of conferring a degree impressive—which may explain his having ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... her, and will not, until it is her good pleasure, be bent to the development called a climax, as the puppet-woman, mother of Fiction and darling of the multitude! ever amiably does, at a hint of the Nuptial Chapter. Diana in addition sustained the weight of brains. Neither with waxen optics nor with subservient jointings did she go through her pathways of the world. Her direct individuality rejected the performance of simpleton, and her lively blood, the warmer for its containment quickened her to penetrate things and natures; and if as yet, in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... by the writers on optics, that the eye at all times sees an equal number of physical points, and that a man on the top of a mountain has no larger an image presented to his senses, than when he is cooped up in the narrowest court or chamber. It ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... shortly acknowledged before the class. This caused young Mr. Newton to stand out as a prodigy. Usually students have to rap for admittance to the higher classes, but now the teachers came and sought him out. One professor told him he was about to take up Kepler's Optics with some post-graduate students—would young Mr. Newton come in? Isaac begged to be excused until he could examine the book. The volume was loaned to him. He tore the vitals out of it and digested them. When the lectures ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... sort might not eventually command as general a public adhesion as is commanded by a physical science. Even the personally non-religious might accept its conclusions on trust, much as blind persons now accept the facts of optics—it might appear as foolish to refuse them. Yet as the science of optics has to be fed in the first instance, and continually verified later, by facts experienced by seeing persons; so the science of religions would depend for its original material on facts of personal experience, ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... theory of three primary elements in the sensation of colour, which treats the investigation of the laws of visible colour as a branch of human physiology, incapable of being deduced from the laws of light itself, as set forth in physical optics. It takes advantage of the methods of optics to study vision itself; and its appeal is not to physical principles, but to our consciousness of our ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... be pert. To come back to what I was originally saying—I repeat, sir, I am at twelve paces from my object, six from the mirror, which, doubled by reflection, makes twelve; such is the law of optics. I suppose you ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... authors, has shown that the inference is a very strong presumption. Again, it is easy to over-value such complex instruments as we possess. The possessor of an up-to-date camera, well instructed in the function and manipulation of every part, but ignorant of all optics save a hand-to-mouth knowledge of the properties of his own lens, might say that a priori no picture could be taken with a cigar-box perforated by a pin-hole; and our ignorance of the mechanism of the Psychology of ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... see my old friends, whom distance cannot diminish, figuring up in the air (so they appear to our optics), yet on terra firma still, for so we must in courtesy interpret that speck of deeper blue which the decorous artist, to prevent absurdity, has made to spring up beneath their sandals. I love the men with women's faces and the women, if possible, ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... later, rendered a similar service for Italy. He also translated many works from the Arabic, including Ptolemy's Almagest (p. 49), a book of astronomical tables, and Alhazen's (Spanish scholar, c. 1100) book on Optics. Other monks studied in the Spanish cities during the twelfth century, a few of whom brought back translations of importance. Frederick II [7] employed a staff of Jewish physicians to translate Arabic ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... measure these, as a mental necessity, we are urged indefinitely on to a minuteness without conceivable limit, in effect, a minuteness that is beyond all finite measure or conception. So that, as modern physics and optics have enabled us not to conceive merely, but to actually realize, the vastness of spatial extension, side by side with subtile tenuity and extreme divisibility of matter, so the labor, enthusiasm, and perseverance of thirty years, stimulated by the insight ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... within this circle of flesh, nor is it in the optics of these eyes to behold felicity. But besides this literal and positive kind of death, there are others whereof divines make mention, as mortification, dying unto sin and the world. In these moral acceptations, the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... inferior in beauty and suggestion. Instead of motionless repetition of given detail, there are flickering, sinuous, mazy windings and twistings of colour, light, and shadow—a capricious hurrying from surface to surface. Knowledge of optics cannot rob them of their marvel and their glamour. And if such be their effect on the modern mind, what must it have been on that of primitive man! No laws of reflection came within his ken. He looked down on the still surface of tarn, or pool, or fountain, and saw, sinking downwards, ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... investigation. As a school-boy I obtained (despite the frequent closing of my visual organs) considerable Insight into Physical Science in the course of numerous pugilistic encounters. A close Application to Optics at that time enabled me to get some ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... BLAUER DUNST)," as is very strange indeed. Strange among all mankind; doubly and trebly strange among the unfortunate species called Kings in our time. To whom,—for sad reasons that could be given,—"wind and blue vapor (BLAUER DUNST)," artistically managed by the rules of Acoustics and Optics, seem to be ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... as in refined drawing, the hand goes beyond the eye, and one has to depend upon the feel; and when one has once learned what a delicate affair touch is, one gets a horror of all coarse work, and is ready to forgive any amount of feebleness, sooner than that boldness which is akin to impudence. In optics the distinction is easily seen when the work is put to trial; but here too, as in drawing, it requires an educated eye to tell the difference when the work is only moderately bad; but with "bold" work, nothing can ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... to make you acquainted with certain elementary phenomena; then to point out to you how the theoretical principles by which phenomena are explained take root in the human mind, and finally to apply these principles to the whole body of knowledge covered by the lectures. The science of optics lends itself particularly well to this mode of treatment, and on it, therefore, I propose to draw for the materials of the present course. It will be best to begin with the few simple facts regarding light which were known to the ancients, ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... of Optics and Refraction; formerly Physician in Philadelphia Hospital; Member of Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania State and ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... mixed) the Commissioners (in their Scheme of 1875), include mathematics, properly so called, and those departments of natural philosophy that are mathematically handled—statics, dynamics, and optics. But the next branch, entitled "Natural Science," is what I am chiefly to remark upon. Under it there is a fivefold enumeration: —(1) Chemistry, including Heat; (2) Electricity and Magnetism; (3) Geology ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... projects (including aviation, communications, computer-aided design and manufactures, medical electronics, fiber optics), wood and paper products, potash and phosphates, food, beverages, and tobacco, caustic soda, cement, construction, metals products, chemical products, plastics, diamond ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... ordinary pains to acquaint himself with the real nature of either Kepler's or Newton's work could have written them. That the labours of Kepler, of all men in the world, should be called "mere observation and record," is truly wonderful. And any one who will look into the "Principia," or the "Optics," or the "Letters to Bentley," will see, even if he has no more special knowledge of the topics discussed than I have, that Newton over and over again insisted that he had nothing to do with gravitation ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... difference. I remember having for a pupil a young lady who had been taught to hold her bow at the extreme tips of her fingers. Naturally she gained no facility and every attempt at semiquavers sent the bow flying across the room to the imminent danger of the teacher's optics. I surmised the cause of this eccentricity and was ultimately able to verify my conjectures. The master who had been so conscientious in making her hold the bow in this strained and ungainly position was blessed with an abnormally ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... 111:12 is God; the practice of divine metaphysics is the utiliza- tion of the power of Truth over error; its rules demon- strate its Science. Divine metaphysics reverses perverted 111:15 and physical hypotheses as to Deity, even as the ex- planation of optics rejects the incidental or inverted image and shows what this inverted image ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... free-will, the absolute mind, spirit instead of matter, have for their sole meaning a better promise as to this world's outcome. Be they false or be they true, the meaning of them is this meliorism. I have sometimes thought of the phenomenon called 'total reflexion' in optics as a good symbol of the relation between abstract ideas and concrete realities, as pragmatism conceives it. Hold a tumbler of water a little above your eyes and look up through the water at its surface—or better still look similarly through the flat wall of an aquarium. ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... pick'd up Discreetly, and carefully nursed; Loose teeth by the sponge are soon lick'd up, And next time you MAY get home first. Still I'm not sure you'd like it exactly (Such tastes as a rule are acquired), And you'll find in a nutshell this fact lie, Bruised optics are ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... contemplation of one dear, dazzling, but distant object, experienced on this occasion by Mr. Titmouse. No, no; I don't mean seriously to pretend that so grand a thought as this could be entertained by his little optics intellectual; you might as well suppose the tiny eye of a black beetle to be scanning the vague, fanciful, and mysterious figure and proportions of Orion, or a kangaroo to be perusing and pondering over the immortal Principia. I repeat, that I have no desire ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... produced by the workings of conscience when harassed by guilt; let them be taught the effects produced by lively dreams, by strong doses of opium, by drunkenness, hysteric passions, madness, and other disorders that affect the mind. Let the experiments of optics, and the striking phenomena produced by electricity, galvanism, magnetism, and the different gases, be exhibited to their view, together with details of the results which have been produced by various mechanical contrivances. ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... influence which this Treatise has exercised in the development of the Science of Optics, it seems strange that two centuries should have passed before an English edition of the work appeared. Perhaps the circumstance is due to the mistaken zeal with which formerly everything that conflicted with the cherished ideas of Newton was denounced by his followers. The ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens
... still under guides. What a boy turns out for himself, as he rummages the bookshelves, is the real test and pleasure. My father's library was a spot of some austerity: the proceedings of learned societies, some Latin divinity, cyclopaedias, physical science, and, above all, optics, held the chief place upon the shelves, and it was only in holes and corners that anything really legible existed as by accident. The "Parent's Assistant," "Rob Roy," "Waverley," and "Guy Mannering," the "Voyages of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Satan, but "white magic," bringing into service the laws of nature—the precursor of applied science. His book on meteorology was the first in which sound ideas were broached on this subject; his researches in optics gave the world the camera obscura, and possibly the telescope; in chemistry he seems to have been the first to show how to reduce the metallic oxides, and thus to have laid the foundation of several important industries. He did much to change natural philosophy from a black art to a vigorous ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... increase or decrease magnetic force, is not yet proved; and the interesting experiments made by Dr. Draper, in Virginia, go to show that it is without magnetic influence. The discussion of this subject forms, the branch of optics, touching physical science on the one side, the most refined, and the highest range of mathematics on the other. Rittenhouse first suggested the true explanation of the experiment, of the apparent conversion of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... a perfect knowledge of optics and be a skilful stone-cutter. The numerous planes or faces which he cuts on the surface of the diamond are called facets. In the treatment three distinct processes are utilized—cleaving, cutting, and polishing. The lapidary ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... disease by addressing the disturbed 400:21 mind, giving no heed to the body, we prove that thought alone creates the suffering. Mortal mind rules all that is mortal. We see in the body 400:24 the images of this mind, even as in optics we see painted on the retina the image which becomes visible to the senses. The action of so-called mortal mind must be 400:27 destroyed by the divine Mind to bring out the harmony of being. Without divine control there ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... copied. These impressions are all strong and sensible. They admit not of ambiguity. They are not only placed in a full light themselves, but may throw light on their correspondent ideas, which lie in obscurity. And by this means, we may, perhaps, attain a new microscope or species of optics, by which, in the moral sciences, the most minute, and most simple ideas may be so enlarged as to fall readily under our apprehension, and be equally known with the grossest and most sensible ideas, that can be the object of ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... optics of a good many of my future subjects grew long and cozening, like gipsies', when they beheld their queen-to-be; there was many a "flatteringly protracted, but never a wiltingly disapproving gaze," and those who liked ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... is not anatomy only that Master Albert studies. He has a taste for optics also; and knows all about refraction and reflection. What with his knowledge of the skull inside, and the vitreous lens outside, if any man in the world is to draw an eye, here's the man to do it, surely! With a hand ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... His discoveries in optics were in his own time almost equally famous, while in his later life he shared with Leibnitz the honor of inventing the infinitesimal calculus, a method which lies at the root of all the intricate marvels of modern ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson |
