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Optics   Listen
noun
Optics  n.  That branch of physical science which treats of the nature and properties of light, the laws of its modification by opaque and transparent bodies, and the phenomena of vision.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Optics" Quotes from Famous Books



... when they will cross each other in the exact moment of their several bisections—my aspiring half-crown tending gradually towards the fixed stars, so that perhaps it might be right to make the man in the moon trustee for that part of the accumulations which rises above the optics of sublunary bankers; whilst the Ceylon pillar is constantly unweaving its own granite texture, and dwindling earthwards. It is probable that each of the parties will have reached its consummation about the same time. What is to be done with the mustard- ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... 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 ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... 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 she ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... Before reaching our ground, we experienced one of the most tremendous thunderstorms that I ever witnessed. A sheet of lightning struck the head of our column, where I happened to be riding, and deprived me of the use of my optics for at least ten minutes. A great many of our dragoon horses broke from their piqueting during the storm, and galloped past us into the French lines. We lay by our arms on the banks of the river, and it continued to rain in torrents the whole of ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid

... brain and leg. But when it came to the delicate finish, when the last touches were to be made, his hand shook a little, and the more delicate members went awry. It was thus that instead of the power of seeing every colour properly, one man came out with a pair of optics which turned everything to green, and this verdancy probably transmitted itself to the intelligence. Another, to continue the allegory, whose tympanum had slipped a little under the unsteady fingers of the man-maker, heard everything in a wrong sense, and his life ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... external stimuli depends primarily on the organization of our senses. This is the fundamental law of perception, of modern psychology, variously expressed, but axiomatic in all physiological psychology.''[1] In this direction Helmholtz[2] has done pioneer work. He treats particularly the problem of optics, and physiological optics is the study of perception by means of the sense of sight. We see things in the external world through the medium of light which they direct upon our eyes. The light strikes the retina, and causes a sensation. The sensation brought ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... a gesture; so alone in fashion, able to render the face of any statesman living; and to speak the mere extraction of language, one that hath now made the sixth return upon venture; and was your first that ever enrich'd his country with the true laws of the duello; whose optics have drunk the spirit of beauty in some eight score and eighteen prince's courts, where I have resided, and been there fortunate in the amours of three hundred and forty and five ladies, all nobly, if not princely descended; ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson

... the discourses and systems of human 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 down at great length, ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... rigorously, at times, from all but purely vegetable food, and from all drinks but water; and it is also stated that some of his important labors were performed at these seasons of strict temperance. While writing his treatise on Optics, it is said he confined himself entirely to bread, with a little sack and water; and I have no doubt that his remarkable equanimity of temper, and that government of his animal appetites, throughout, for which he was so distinguished to the last ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott

... of the circumstances, and the disagreeable sensation produced by it returned. I determined to go home and place myself in the same position—as regards the mirror—and if the same effect was produced, I would make up my mind that it was the natural result of some principle of refraction or optics, which I did not understand, and dismiss it. I tried the experiment with the same result; and as I had said to myself, accounted for it on some principle unknown to me, and it then ceased to trouble me. But the God who works through the laws ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... Electro-optics. The branch of natural science treating of the relations between light and electricity. Both are supposed to be phenomena of or due to the luminiferous ether. To it may be ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... digital metropolitan network and 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 Fiber-Optic ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... by it. Where there is mortification there ought to be 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 ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... in that country, but I gained no credit by it. 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 me as a man-monster." Shortly after his arrival in Switzerland he contracted an intimacy with Miss Clairmont, a daughter of Godwin's second wife, and consequently ...
— Byron • John Nichol

... then he was forced to come up. I steered my queer steeds in a curious way. When I wanted my turtle to turn to the left, I simply thrust my foot into his right eye, and vice versa for the contrary direction. My two big toes placed simultaneously over both his optics caused a halt so abrupt as almost to unseat me. Sometimes I would go fully a mile out to sea on one of these strange steeds. It always frightened them to have me astride, and in their terror they swam at a tremendous pace until compelled ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... 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

... direction, atmospheric electricity, sunshine when the sun did shine, and the elements of terrestrial magnetism. Thanks to Simpson, we also had investigations of the upper air currents, aurora observations, atmospheric optics, gravity determination and what is more, some fine practical teaching that enabled the various sledging units properly to observe and collect data of meteorological importance. Simpson's place was essentially at the base station; and his consequent work as physicist and meteorologist prevented him ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans

... 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 ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... grandeur.[65] Another reason, no 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 ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley

... 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

... Panton, "only 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 startling word that the doctor had disappeared. Apparently when on the very verge of announcing his discovery he had been swallowed by the very force that he had loosened. There was nothing in known science outside of optics, that could in any way be blended with the Blind Spot. There were but two solutions; either the professor had been a victim of a clever rogue, or he had been overcome by the rashness of his own wisdom. At any rate, it was known from that minute on ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... allowed 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 is only by experience that he infers the greatness of the object ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... difficulty holding on), walking the streets, seeing old friends, and delighted with everything. His old friend and class fellow, Whiteside, gave him a dinner to which I attended him, where was the late Dr. Lloyd, the Provost of the College, a learned man, whose works on "Optics" are well known. It was pleasant to note how Forster, like his prototype, the redoubtable Doctor, here "talked for ostentation." "I knew, sir," he might say, "that I was expected to talk, to talk suitably to my position as a distinguished visitor." And so he did. It ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald

... eye, Mary's happiness did not appear in so dazzling a light as to the weaker optics of ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... 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 ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... of education if a good foundation were not first laid by the mother? For the first six years of his life, said Comenius, the child must be taught by his mother. If she did her work properly she could teach him many marvellous things. He would learn some physics by handling things; some optics by naming colours, light and darkness; some astronomy by studying the twinkling stars; some geography by trudging the neighbouring streets and hills; some chronology by learning the hours, the days and the months; some history ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... 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 eyesight ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman

... Dr. Kitchiner's name. He was an M. D. of Glasgow, who, having been left a handsome fortune by his father, abandoned the active practice of his profession, and devoted himself to science, notably to that of optics, as well as to gastronomy, being himself eminent as a gourmet. He was the author of a once famous Cookery Book, The Cook's Oracle; and an improved kitchen ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... But what was the agency which enabled me to see the figures and flowers, and trees and gravel, all transferred, as by the cunning act of some magician, from the right to the left? Simply a swinging pane of perfectly transparent glass. To those who have neither studied the laws of optics nor seen the phenomenon in question, it must seem impossible that a pellucid window-pane could transfer so faithfully that which happened at one end of the garden to the other as to cause it to be mistaken for reality. ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead

... and passions than to the reason and judgment of the army. The author of the piece is entitled to much credit for the goodness of his pen, and I could wish he had as much credit for the rectitude of his heart; for, as men see through different optics, and are induced, by the reflecting faculties of the mind, to use different means to attain the same end, the author of the address should have had more charity than to mark for suspicion the man who should recommend ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... 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

... 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 at ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip

... once? No human being can tell. He did not like the "sulphur and treacle" of "our Scotch connoisseurs;" but what colours has he not added here to his sulphur—colours, too, that we fear for the "idea of truth" cannot coexist! And how, in the name of optics, could it be possible for any painter to take in all this, with the "fathomless intervals," into an angle of vision of forty-five degrees? It is quite superfluous to ask "who is likest this, Turner or Poussin?" There ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... lecture course in which the theoretical aspects of electromagnetism, the classical theories, and the equations that represent transitory and equilibrium conditions in complex circuits are discussed. In optics, likewise, there is ample material of great importance: physical, geometrical optics, spectroscopy, photography, X-ray crystallography, etc. The advanced student in these fields finds more elasticity and opportunity for cultivating a special interest in having a large number of limited ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... temperature. That it acts directly to 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 a cameo into ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... fact, that the ethership was that close: Luke had not the faintest notion of the vast distances of the universe or of the absence of air in space which permitted the full intensity of the dazzling rays to strike into his optics unfiltered save by the thick but clear glass which covered the port. He knew only that the sun, evidently very near, was many times its usual size and of infinitely greater brilliance. And he was painfully aware of the fact that the ...
— Vulcan's Workshop • Harl Vincent

... certain laws of optics and ingenuities of composition which may palliate this effect, but the fact remains that the floor should be covered in a way which will leave the mind tranquil and the eye satisfied, and this is hard to accomplish with what is commonly known ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler

... was there?' said Lake, in rather a changed tone. Larkin looked up, and Lake laughed in his face quietly the most impertinent laugh he had ever seen or heard, with his yellow eyes fixed on the lawyer's pink little optics. 'I was there, and Hockley was there, and Mark Wylder was there—was not he?' and Lake stared and laughed, and the attorney stared; and Lake added, 'What a d—d cunning fellow you are; ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... 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 ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al

... and senna, rhubarb and magnesia, and that sort of thing; but natural science, heat and light, and the wonders of optics." ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... are not often cut and polished, whereas all the transparent and coloured varieties are in great demand. To describe adequately their characteristics with relation to light would alone require the space of a complete volume, and the reader is referred to the many excellent works on physics (optics) which are obtainable. This stone is doubly refracting, exhibiting extremely strong dichroism, especially in the blue and the green varieties. It polarises light, and when viewed with the dichroscope shows a remarkable variety of twin colours. It will be remembered that in Hogarth's ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin

... 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 ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely

... "Optics!" enthusiastically. She produced a large magnifying-glass from her pocket. "All we have to do is to show Dulnop—he's something of a mineralogist—how to grind and polish a piece ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint

... such a standard legitimate and reasonable? We shall gain nothing by unanalysed phrases. But I think surely it is merely the natural standard of any philosophical historian. Suppose it is argued that an average optician at the present day knows more optics than Roger Bacon, the inventor of spectacles; suppose it is argued that therefore he is, as far as optics go, a greater man, and that Roger Bacon has nothing to teach us; what is the answer? It is, I suppose, that Roger ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... noticed that 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 ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath

... the presence of Judith Buck, although they could not help seeing her, since her blue cotton dress and her red gold hair made a spot of color that would surely have affected the optics of a stone blind person. Her color was naturally high, and frying chicken over a hot wood stove and sprinting for the trolley had added to it. Nan did worse than ignore the presence of her neighbor, as she openly nudged ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson

... constructed upon the recognised rules of hydraulics, and with its great tubes is furnished with common mechanical contrivances, valves; when it was discovered that the eye has been arranged on the most refined principles of optics, its cornea, and humours, and lens properly converging the rays to form an image—its iris, like the diaphragm of a telescope or microscope, shutting out stray light, and also regulating the quantity admitted; when it was discovered that the ear is furnished ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... 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 ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • 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 teaches us the causes of things. Mysteries, ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... more distinct when seen in succession are called opposite colours by Sir Isaac Newton in his optics, Book I. Part 2, and may be easily discovered by any one, by the method above described; that is by laying a coloured circle of paper or silk on a sheet of white paper, and inspecting it some time with steady eyes, and then either gently closing them, or removing them on another part of ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... Spinoza's accomplishment in his chosen trade was not merely practical. Many looked forward, with warranted confidence, to the time when Spinoza would make a distinguished contribution to the science of optics. But the only strictly scientific work Spinoza left behind (long considered to have been lost) was a short treatise on ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza

... which truly belongs to its vastness, and which is always formed from attentively reading or listening to a correct verbal or written description of it. Even the most faithful drawings cannot awaken an adequate conception of the majesty, the greatness of NIAGARA. Now the law of optics will serve to convince us that this must ever be so, since the image formed in the dark chamber of the eye is exceedingly small; and as the Falls are always approached gradually from a distance, the surrounding landscape occupies by far the largest portion of the field ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... form any distinct idea; of which, notwithstanding it may be a truth, we cannot, by any means we possess, demonstrate the existence. As, therefore, these must be at best but speculative points of belief, which each individual, by reason of its obscurity, may contemplate with different optics, under various aspects, they surely ought to be left free for each to judge after his own fashion: the Hindoo can have no just cause of enmity against the Christian for his faith: this has no moral right to question the Mussulman ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... shall be gazed at now The more; be pointed at, There goes the monster! Nor have I hid my horrors from myself; For, though corporeal light be lost for ever, The bright reflecting soul, through glaring optics, Presents in larger size her black ideas, Doubling the bloody prospect of my crimes; Holds fancy down, and makes her act again, With wife and mother:—Tortures, hell and furies! Ha! now the baleful offspring's brought to light! In horrid form, they rank themselves before ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... and 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 and Mineralogy; (4) Zoology; (5) Botany. I cannot ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain

... countenance, of a man well stricken in years, a pale, thin, scholar-like visage, with eyes dim and bleared by the lamplight 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 ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... now although those rills are in fact a thousand years old and, invisible to our unaided eye, have been falling upon mankind from the beginning of life on this globe, trying to get an entrance to consciousness. It was, however, only when, by evolution of thought, the knowledge of optics had produced the telescope that it became possible not only for that star to make itself known to us but to declare to us its distance, its size, and conditions of existence, and even the different elemental ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein

... 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 feature ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... Purging optics from its onlooker-concepts. The role of foregone conclusions in the physical conception of light. The true aspect of the so-called velocity ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... perfectly understood what I was writing' about - 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 had ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... anxious to get an insight into knowledge. He studied optics before he had any teaching. Then he tried to turn his knowledge to account. While at Kirpenbeck he made his first object-glass out of a thick tumbler bottom. He ground the glass cleverly by hand; then he got a piece of tin and soldered ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... with half an eye What stands before him may espy; But optics sharp it needs, I ween, To see what ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... have not had 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 have the misfortune ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter

... telegraph, special messenger, or telephone, with the supposed drawer of the check, and in this way turn doubt into certainty. During the last three years not a single wrong check has passed our vigilant optics, and, though I say it who should not, I do not believe there is a cleverer set of experts any where than ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay

... 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, some of ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley

... Mersenne to take care of himself "till I find out if there is any means of getting a medical theory based on infallible demonstrations, which is what I am now inquiring."[14] Astronomical inquiries in connexion with optics, meteorological phenomena, and, in a word, the whole field of natural laws, excited his desire to explain them. His own observation, and the reports of Mersenne, furnished his data. Of Bacon's demand for observation and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... these are thoughts which have consequences. Instead 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 ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore

... 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 ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... ornamental as a modern grass lawn; and the same expense incurred to make the ground a laboratory of sweets, might suffice to render it agreeable to the palate as well as to the olfactory nerves, and that even without offending the most delicate optics. It is only in accordance with our plan to give the hint and to put before the reader such novel points as may facilitate the proposed arrangement. It is one objection to the formation of a kitchen garden in front of the dwelling, or in sight of the drawing-room and parlour, ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... to come out of the man. I myself once saw one coming out: it was of a dark, smoky complexion.' 'Ah, that is nothing for you,' I replied; 'your eyes can discern those ideas which are set forth in the works of Plato, the founder of your school: now they make a very faint impression on the dull optics ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... and how after we grow old can we read the Bible without a little helpful science? Just think, father, you cannot read your Bible without spectacles, and millions of others are in the same fix; and spectacles cannot be made without some knowledge of the science of optics." ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir

... for she opened the door personally to Lucian, who was quite amazed when he beheld her monstrous bulk blocking up the doorway. Her face was white and round like a pale moon; she had staring eyes of a china blue, resembling the vacant optics of a wax doll; and, on the whole, appeared to be a timid, lymphatic woman, likely to answer any questions put to her in a sufficiently peremptory tone. Lucian foresaw that he was not likely to have much trouble with this ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume

... certain sciences, we may anticipate the revelation of 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 ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... him the world is indebted for the 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, with the exception of Leibnitz and Galileo. ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... itself is a hypothesis. Then, as to the other 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 the subjective assumption of an ethereal ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel

... works 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 by. If we destroy our eyes in the hope of ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock

... 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 ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson

... 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 were not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... frisky in its motions as the nervous monsieur who commanded it. At a little distance, the square-shouldered Antwerper, sitting on the elevated poop of his galliot, was enjoying, with his crew, a glorious smoke. You could almost see them (and that, too, without very keen optics) put care into their tobacco-pipes, anxiety curled in fume over their heads. A not unfrequent sight was the star-spangled banner floating in beauty over the bosom of the wave. The serenity of the atmosphere, the ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... existence. Hence the misery of the imaginative man!—hence his little sympathy with the mass, who, tame and soulless, look upon life and the things of life, not through the refining medium of ideality, but through the grossly magnifying optics ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... penne, quil, or fether" (Cooper), while pencil is from Old Fr. pincel (pinceau), a painter's brush, from Lat. penicillus, a little tail. The modern meaning of pencil, which still meant painter's brush in the 18th century, is due to association with pen. The older sense survives in optics and in the expression "pencilled eyebrows." The ferrule of a walking-stick is a distinct word from ferule, an aid to education. The latter is Lat. ferula, "an herbe like big fenell, and maye be called fenell giant. Also a rodde, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... physical science one of the most important of the Arabian scientists was Alhazen. His work, published about the year 1100 A.D., had great celebrity throughout the mediaeval period. The original investigations of Alhazen had to do largely with optics. He made particular studies of the eye itself, and the names given by him to various parts of the eye, as the vitreous humor, the cornea, and the retina, are still retained by anatomists. It is known that Ptolemy had studied the refraction of light, and that he, in common with his immediate ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... Divine 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

... history of every science marks many eminent men, of superior intelligence, who have been arrested in the way of progress by a wholly contrary opinion, and have very innocently supposed that science had uttered to them her last word. In astronomy, in physics, in chemistry, in optics, in natural history, in physiology, in anatomy, in medicine, in botany, in geology, in all branches of human knowledge, it would be easy to fill several pages with the names of celebrated men who believed science would never pass the limits reached in their own time, and that nothing ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various

... 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 ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... search the mystery to 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 credit, that he discovered the scientific principle of this ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... and affection, were so glorious a thing after all; if a tempering, not of human frailty, but of charity for the shortcomings, sympathy for the needs, of ordinary mortals, would not subdue the effulgence of his talents and virtues into mild lustre, more tolerable to the optics of fallible beholders ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... two velocities exactly agree. Faraday's original experiment as to the relation between light and magnetism is thus again experimentally demonstrated; and, Maxwell's electro-magnetic theory of light now resting on experimental fact, optics becomes a branch of electricity. A curious consequence was pointed out by Maxwell as a result of his theory; namely, that a necessary relation exists between opacity and conductivity, since, as he showed, electro-magnetic disturbances could not be propagated ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... the question," said the president. "I should not like to state that of itself mere paralysis need incapacitate a professor. Dr. Thrum, our professor of the theory of music, is, as you know, paralysed in his ears, and Mr. Slant, our professor of optics, is paralysed in his right eye. But this is a case of paralysis of the brain. I fear it is incompatible with ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock

... some important respects varying from, Aristotle's De Anima. The anatomy of the eye is next described; this is done well and evidently at first hand, though the functions of the parts are not given with complete accuracy. Many other points of physiological optics are touched on, in general erroneously. Bacon then discusses vision in a right line, the laws of reflection and refraction, and the construction of mirrors and lenses. In this part of the work, as in the preceding, his reasoning ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... starving—that old rascal, perhaps, in his capacity as a magistrate, sentences to jail an unfortunate man whom hunger has driven into the "crime" of stealing a loaf of bread! Bah! ladies and gentlemen, take the beams out of your own eyes before you allude to the motes in the optics of your fellow beings. That's my advice, free ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson

... observed 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 afterward I took this method: I always climbed the rocks first to get above them, and then had frequently a fair mark. The first shot I made among these creatures I killed a she-goat, which ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan

... trebled—that is, on each side of him a double had taken its place, imitating faithfully his movements and gestures. I do not remember ever before to have seen such a phenomenon, and I leave it to those who are more learned than I am to decide what law of optics disclosed it to our ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... and both men hastened to examine the prisoner's hand. After a single glance their eyes met and each set of optics ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... 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 ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... 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 or upon ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells

... his reputation were always in demand, but also other writings which probably did not pay so well. In 1604 he published "A Supplement to Vitellion," containing the earliest known reasonable theory of optics, and especially of dioptrics or vision through lenses. He compared the mechanism of the eye with that of Porta's "Camera Obscura," but made no attempt to explain how the image formed on the retina is understood ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant

... maturity he carried anatomy further than Delia Torre; he invented machinery for water-mills and aqueducts; he devised engines of war, discovered the secret of conical rifle-bullets, adapted paddle-wheels to boats, projected new systems of siege artillery, investigated the principles of optics, designed buildings, made plans for piercing mountains, raising churches, connecting rivers, draining marshes, clearing harbours.[238] There was no branch of study whereby nature through the effort of the inquisitive ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... them, had contracted a concentrated stare, as though they were eternally gazing at some object in space, and this appearance was rendered the more marked by an apparently permanent puckering of the skin of the forehead. The moment, however, that they came under the fire of anybody else's optics, and, oddly enough, more particularly those of his own daughter, the stare vanished, and they grew shifty and uncertain to ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... variation in the number visible at 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 ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... be aware that he was standing at the foot of one leg of the glowing arch is to me a mystery. When I see a rainbow, it is always immediately in front of me. I am standing exactly between the highest point of the arch and the sun, and the laws of optics ordain that it can be seen in no other way. You can never see a rainbow at an angle. It always faces you squarely. Hence no two persons see exactly the same bow, because no two persons can occupy exactly the same place at the same time. The bow you see is directed to you alone. ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... Juvenile hit the Fresh Air the second Defendant came into The Dock, taking long sneaky Strides and undulating like a Roller Coaster. She was a tall Gal and very Pale, with Belladonna Optics and her Hair shook out and a fine rhythmical Bellows Movement above ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade

... 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 any ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler

... century, Roger Bacon was charged with witchcraft on account of his discoveries in optics, chemistry, and astronomy; and, although he did what he could to circulate and explain his own acquirements, he could not escape a papal denunciation, and two long and painful imprisonments. In 1305, Arnold de Villa Nova, a learned physician and philosopher, was burned at Padua, by ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... 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 the best short statement of the principles involved which I have seen is Lord Rayleigh's ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall

... remarked of Newton, that several of his slight hints, some in the modest form of queries, have been ascertained to be predictions, and among others that of the inflammability of the diamond; and many have been eagerly seized upon as indisputable axioms. A hint at the close of his Optics, that "If natural philosophy should be continued to be improved in its various branches, the bounds of moral philosophy would be enlarged also," is perhaps among the most important of human discoveries—it gave rise to Hartley's Physiological Theory of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... mine ears. They would sometimes alight upon my victuals, and leave their loathsome excrement, or spawn behind, which to me was very visible, though not to the natives of that country, whose large optics were not so acute as mine, in viewing smaller objects. Sometimes they would fix upon my nose, or forehead, where they stung me to the quick, smelling very offensively; and I could easily trace that viscous matter, which, our naturalists tell us, enables those creatures to walk with their ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift

... Young (1773-1829), physician and physicist, sometimes called the founder of physiological optics. He seems to have initiated the theory of color blindness that was later developed by Helmholtz. The attack referred to was because of his connection with the Board of Longitude, he having been made (1818) ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... cause which we have hitherto found to determine progress holds in these cases also. Instances might be given proving how, in Science, an advance of one division presently advances other divisions—how Astronomy has been immensely forwarded by discoveries in Optics, while other optical discoveries have initiated Microscopic Anatomy, and greatly aided the growth of Physiology—how Chemistry has indirectly increased our knowledge of Electricity, Magnetism, Biology, Geology—how Electricity has reacted on Chemistry and ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... sufficiently striking of the laws on which this seemingly mysterious power depends. They are purely structural laws, and relate not to the mind, but to the eye,—not to the province of the metaphysician, but to that of the professor of optics. The lens of the camera obscura transmits the figures to the prepared paper, on quite the same principle on which in vision the crystalline lens conveys them to the retina. In the centre of the field in both cases there is much distinctness, while all around its circumference the images ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... metaphysician. On my return I would commence a school for either young men at L105 each, proposing to perfect them in the following studies in this order:—1. Man as an Animal;—including the complete knowledge of anatomy, chemistry, mechanics, and optics:—2. Man as an intellectual Being;—including the ancient metaphysics, the system of Locke and Hartley—of the Scotch philosophers—and the new Kantean system:—3. Man as a Religious Being;—including an historic summary of all religions, and of the arguments for and against natural and revealed ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull

... psychological 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 show-window, and the laboratory results ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg

... beginning of this chapter. It is a statement made by Roger Bacon, the greatest of Oxonian scholars of the thirteenth century, who, long before the Renascence, did much to restore the study of science, especially in geography, chronology, and optics. In his Opus Majus, the ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson

... white, black, and grey. According to the laws of Optics, the two first comprise all other colours synthetically, and afford them all by analysis. These are sometimes called "extreme" colours, ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... ere you're heard below. Whatever changes there may greet your eyes, Let not your looks proclaim the least surprise; It's not your business by your face to show All that your patient does not want to know; Nay, use your optics with considerate care, And don't abuse your privilege to stare. But if your eyes may probe him overmuch, Beware still further how you rudely touch; Don't clutch his carpus in your icy fist, But warm your fingers ere you take the wrist. ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... of the books an explanation of this beautiful spectacle, all the more pleasing because it generally presents itself in delightful summer weather. It is not mentioned in the part of Moigno's great Repertoire d'Optique which treats of meteorological optics, nor in any other work which I have consulted. It seems desirable, therefore, to make an attempt to search out what appears to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various

... not the foundations or first principles of geometry, from which all the other truths of the science are synthetically deduced (as the laws of motion and of the composition of forces in dynamics, the equal mobility of fluids in hydrostatics, the laws of reflection and refraction in optics, are the first principles of those sciences); but are merely necessary assumptions, self-evident indeed, and the denial of which would annihilate all demonstration, but from which, as premises, nothing can be demonstrated. In the ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... Englishman, Saunderson, who in 1683, in his first year, was deprived of sight after an attack of small-pox. In spite of his complete blindness he assiduously studied the sciences, and graduated with honor at the University of Cambridge in mathematics and optics. His sense of touch was remarkable. He had a collection of old Roman medals, all of which, without mistake, he could distinguish by their impressions. He also seemed to have the ability to judge distance, and ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... 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 ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro

... in proportion like a portly, Daniel-Lambert sort of man put by the side of a starving street urchin of seven. The only advantage the thresher apparently possessed was in its eyes, which, when one could get a glimpse of them, looked like those of a hawk; while the unwieldy cetacean had little tiny optics, not much bigger than those of a common haddock, which were placed in an unwieldy lump of a head, that seemed ever so much bigger than its body, with a tremendous lower jaw containing a row of teeth, each one of which ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... said of him, that he could accurately distinguish, in this manner, the virtuous from the vicious. He was much devoted to the study of natural philosophy; and, among other things, had undertaken to oblige the world with precepts on the sense of smelling, like those we have on optics and acoustics, by distributing into certain classes a great number of smells, to all of which he had given names; but an untimely death cut him off in the midst ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various

... went down town. i have been away a long time but the town looks about the saim. Kelley and Gardners have sole 2 gnifes and Fogg and Fellows have sole sum pipes and a cuppy Olliver Optics magazene and old Luke Langly has sole a gointed comb and a tin horn and wagon but in other respecks things look about the saim. i am glad i wasent away long enuf for the place to chainge. that wood be dreadful. i herd of a man onct whitch was sent to jale ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute

... assumed and 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 of the evidence that has been adduced as indicating a certain ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... evidence; And whoso desires to penetrate Deeper, must dive by the spirit-sense— No optics like yours, at ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... 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 opposite mountain ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... but never part with. Next, As in a more conspicuous text, Thy forehead, let therein be sign'd The maiden candour of thy mind; And under it two chaste-born spies To bar out bold adulteries, For through these optics fly the darts Of lust which set on fire our hearts. On either side of these quick ears There must be plac'd, for seasoned fears Which sweeten love, yet ne'er come nigh The plague of wilder jealousy. Then let each cheek of thine entice His soul as to a bed ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... la mode, are never artistic, and no dicta can make them so. A fashion framer should needs be a natural philosopher, and hold the rudiments of all science in her grasp. Botany, mineralogy, conchology should walk as handmaidens to philosophy; optics should steer the rudder of color's bark when launched upon ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... and 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 ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... 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 ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes

... letter proportionately more extended or condensed, and lighter or heavier in face, than the pattern. All these variations are necessary for the production of a properly graded modern series containing the usual sizes. In fact, on account of the laws of optics, which cannot be gone into here, only one size of a series is cut in absolutely exact proportion to ...
— The Building of a Book • Various

... (it was the family Missal) Was ornamented in a sort of way Which ancient mass-books often are, and this all Kinds of grotesques illumined; and how they, Who saw those figures on the margin kiss all, Could turn their optics to the text and pray, Is more than I know—But Don Juan's mother Kept this herself, and gave her ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... epic boldness 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

... white light; that is the province of wisdom. We get beautiful effects from wit,—all the prismatic colors,—but never the object as it is in fair daylight. A pun, which is a kind if wit, is a different and much shallower trick in mental optics throwing the SHADOWS of two objects so that one overlies the other. Poetry uses the rainbow tints for special effects, but always keeps its essential object in the purest white light of truth.—Will you allow me to pursue ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... 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

... little, although 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 one ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne

... 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

... Ruhlmann, of the Elektrotechnische Zeitschrift, gives a still more remarkable example yet of such confusion. The word polarization, borrowed from optics, where it has an unequivocal sense, serves likewise to designate the development of the counter electro-motive force of galvanic elements, and also that essentially different condition of badly conducting substances that is brought about by the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various

... Aristotelian approaches and in comparison | to the Ramist approaches of Bacons day. | He rejected them both. | | Scholars then look beyond Bacon and | evaluate his logic machine in contrast to the | "classical mechanics" of Newtonian Optics | (physics): linear time-sequence prediction. | | Bacon was not seeking that type of | "cause/prediction"science. He was seeking | hidden, "unwritten" "laws" of nature, | more on the model of Pasteur than of | Newton. | | Any treatment that tries to interpret ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon

... the city's din: "I've got to get a wig," sez he, "to cover up my sin. It's growin', growin' night an' day; it's most amazin' hair"; An' when he looked at it that night, he shuddered with despair. He shuddered an' suppressed a cry at what his optics seen — For on my word of honour, boys, that hair wuz ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service

... storms that he approached that of meteorology at large. Many who knew him not otherwise, knew - perhaps have in their gardens - his louvre-boarded screen for instruments. But the great achievement of his life was, of course, in optics as applied to lighthouse illumination. Fresnel had done much; Fresnel had settled the fixed light apparatus on a principle that still seems unimprovable; and when Thomas Stevenson stepped in and brought to a comparable perfection the revolving ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Astronomy, Chronology, Hydrostatics, Meteorology, Logic, Pneumatics, Geology, Ontology, Electricity, Mineralogy, Mathematics, Galvanism, Physiology, Mechanics, Literature, Anatomy, Magnetism, Music, Zoology, Navigation, Painting, Botany, Optics, Poetry; ...
— Percy - A Tragedy • Hannah More

... 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

... her 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 ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... too confused have been put on one side, as have a few others which form an important collection for a special study to be possibly made later. Thus, as regards electrical phenomena, the relations between electricity and optics, as also the theories of ionization, the electronic hypothesis, etc., have been treated at some length; but it has not been thought necessary to dilate upon the modes of production and utilization of the current, upon the phenomena ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare

... 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. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... (whole generations 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 lives by Belief (as it ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... met with among venerable forests, where innumerable blasted and weather-beaten trunks and stems occur, I have repeatedly been in doubt as to the presence of a troop of them until I had recourse to my spy-glass; and on referring the case to my savage attendants, I have known even their optics to fail, at one time mistaking these dilapidated trunks for camelopards, and again confounding real camelopards with these aged ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various



Words linked to "Optics" :   refract, astigmatism, stigmatism, electron optics, reflect, catoptrics, resolve, astigmia, collimate, property, aspheric, fiber optics, fibre optics, aspherical



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