“Les Corps Agissent Sur La Lumière.” Émilie Du Châtelet’s Deliberations on the Nature of Light in Her Essai Sur l’optique - Fritz Nagel

„When Du Châtelet dealt with the phenomena of optics, two different traditions
faced each other trying to explain the nature of light and its properties.² One tradi-
tion saw light as an outflow of material particles emitted by the light source and
propagating through the space to the objects or to our eye. We call it the emission
tradition. Within this tradition, light is conceived as a substance of its own character.
The other main tradition assumes that a light source first acts on a potentially trans-
parent medium that is present everywhere in the space, which then becomes actually
transparent and thus creates light. Within this tradition, light is perceived not as a
substance of its own but as a stimulated excitation of the medium. […]“ (Nagel, 2022, S. 220)

Nagel, F. (2022). “Les Corps Agissent Sur La Lumière.” Émilie Du Châtelet’s deliberations on the nature of light in her Essai sur l’optique. In R. E. Hagengruber (Ed.), Époque Émilienne (pp. 219–233). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89921-9_10