Newton’s foundational Opticks encoded whiteness as the standard of light.

Evidence

As he rose in stature over the next forty years to become one of the most influential scientists of all time, Isaac Newton took it upon himself to substantiate Boyle’s color law: light is white is standard. In 1704, a year after he assumed the presidency of the Royal Society, Newton released one of the most eminent books of the modern era, Opticks. “Whiteness is produced by the Convention of all Colors,” he wrote. Newton created a color wheel to illustrate his thesis. “The center” was “white of the first order,” and all the other colors were positioned in relation to their “distance from Whiteness.” In one of the foundational books of the upcoming European intellectual renaissance, Newton imaged “perfect whiteness.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 108

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: how the founding texts of modern science — not just racist tracts — baked whiteness into ‘objective’ natural law. Follows the reader’s interest in policy/idea causation by showing science as a vehicle for racial ideas.