Concept
Christiaan Huygens
Overview
Christiaan Huygens, Lord of Zeelhem (14 April 1629 – 8 July 1695) was a Dutch mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer, and inventor who is regarded as a key figure in the Scientific Revolution. In physics, Huygens made seminal contributions to optics and mechanics, while as an astronomer he studied the rings of Saturn and discovered its largest moon, Titan. As an engineer and inventor, he improved the design of telescopes and invented the pendulum clock, the most accurate timekeeper for almost 300 years. A talented mathematician and physicist, Huygens authored the first modern treatise where a physical problem was idealized using mathematical parameters, while his work on light contains the first mathematical and mechanistic explanation of an unobservable physical phenomenon.
Huygens first identified the correct laws of elastic collision in his work De Motu Corporum ex Percussione, completed in 1656 but published posthumously in 1703. In 1659, Huygens derived geometrically the formula in classical mechanics for the centrifugal force in his work De Vi Centrifuga, a decade before Isaac Newton. In optics, he is best known for his wave theory of light, which he described in his Traité de la Lumière (1690). His theory of light was initially rejected in favour of Newton's corpuscular theory of light, until Augustin-Jean Fresnel adapted Huygens's principle to give a complete explanation of the rectilinear propagation and diffraction effects of light in 1821. Today this principle is known as the Huygens–Fresnel principle.
Huygens invented and patented the pendulum clock in 1657, which was manufactured in Paris by Isaac II Thuret. Huygens's horological research led to an extensive analysis of the pendulum in Horologium Oscillatorium (1673), regarded as one of the most important 17th-century works on mechanics. While it contains descriptions of clock designs, most of the book is an analysis of pendular motion and a theory of curves. In 1655, Huygens began grinding lenses with his brother Constantijn to build refracting telescopes. He discovered Saturn's biggest moon, Titan, and was the first to explain Saturn's strange appearance as due to "a thin, flat ring, nowhere touching, and inclined to the ecliptic". In 1662, he developed what is now called the Huygenian eyepiece, a telescope with two lenses to diminish the amount of dispersion.
As a mathematician, Huygens developed his theory of evolutes and wrote on games of chance and the problem of points in Van Rekeningh in Spelen van Gluck, which Frans van Schooten translated and published as De Ratiociniis in Ludo Aleae (1657). The use of expected values by Huygens and others would later inspire Jacob Bernoulli's work on probability theory.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
For generally, not he that hath skill in geometry, or any other science speculative, but only he that understandeth what conduceth to the good and government of the people, is called a wise man. Now that no author of sedition can be wise in this acceptation of the word, is sufficiently proved, in that it hath been already demonstrated, that no pretence of sedition can be right or just.
Thomas Hobbes, The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 04
States what Christiaan Huygens is; the author is tied to Christiaan Huygens in the knowledge graph.
For this system, which is called that of _occasional causes_ (because it teaches that God acts on the body at the instance of the soul, and _vice versa_), besides introducing perpetual miracles to establish communication [157] between these two substances, does not obviate the derangement of the natural laws obtaining in each of these same substances, which, in the general opinion, their mutual influence would cause.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Theodicy Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil
States what Christiaan Huygens is; the author is tied to Christiaan Huygens in the knowledge graph.
The which adorned and embellished as it was by Eudoxus, Aratus who had no knowledge of astronomy, but a certain poetical faculty, many years afterwards extolled in his verses. The mechanism of this sphere, however, on which the motions of the sun, moon, and those five stars which are called wandering and irregular, are shown; could not be illustrated on that solid sphere. But what appeared very admirable in this…
Marcus Tullius Cicero, The republic of Cicero
States what Christiaan Huygens is.
Philosophers who discussed Christiaan Huygens
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Netherlands
- William Kingdon Clifford
- Baruch Spinoza
- Blaise Pascal
- Julien Offray de La Mettrie
Related ideas
- History
- Force
- Game theory
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Cartesianism
- Isaac Newton
- Ancient Greek mathematics
- John Wilkins
- John Locke
- Nicolas Malebranche
- Sidereus Nuncius
- Luminiferous aether
- Archimedes
- Mathematics
- Music
- Axiomatic system
- Geography
- Classical mechanics
- Mechanics
- Theoretical physics
- Mercury (planet)
- Dutch language
- Squaring the circle
- Mathematical model
Place in the tradition
Part of British philosophy.