Question

Creativity relates to coming up with a new idea. Logic relates to reasoning. How did Newton use creativity and logic in his approach to investigating light?

Answer 1

Isaac Newton was creative in his use of prisms to show how white light is actually made up of multiple colors.  He used logic in the way he presented his arguments rhetorically in order to convince readers of the correctness of his conclusions.

Newton was not the first to experiment with passing light through prisms to determine how light works.  French philosopher Rene Descartes had done prism experiments of his own.  But Descartes had thought that passing through a prism actually modified the light in order to produce the color spectrum.  Newton correctly understood that when light refracted through the prism, it revealed the range of colors that were naturally in the light.  He then used a second prism, blocking all but one color, to show that a single color passing through a prism was not modified in color. He also showed--by positioning the second prism differently--how the multiple colors of light could be recombined into white light again.

Newton's 1672 paper on light refracting through prisms established his reputation as a scientist.  He continued to study light throughout his scientific career, publishing a larger work in 1704 on Opticks (as they spelled optics then).

Answer 2

He came up with a way to find out if his hypothesis was correct. Also, his logic was sound and he used is logic to come up with a hypothesis.