He demonstrates how the appearance of color arises from selective absorption, reflection, or transmission of the various component parts of the incident light. In this book Newton sets forth in full his experiments, first reported to the Royal Society of London in 1672, on dispersion, or the separation of light into a spectrum of its component colours. Rather, the Opticks is a study of the nature of light and colour and the various phenomena of diffraction, which Newton called the "inflexion" of light.
That is, this work is not a geometric discussion of catoptrics or dioptrics, the traditional subjects of reflection of light by mirrors of different shapes and the exploration of how light is "bent" as it passes from one medium, such as air, into another, such as water or glass.
Opticks is largely a record of experiments and the deductions made from them, covering a wide range of topics in what was later to be known as physical optics. The publication of Opticks represented a major contribution to science, different from but in some ways rivalling the Principia.
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