Use of Hamilton's canonical equations to rectify Newton's corpuscular theory of light: A missed opportunity

Abstract

The erroneous prediction of the speed of light in dispersive media has been looked upon historically as unequivocal proof that Newton's corpuscular theory is incorrect. Examination of his arguments shows that they were only directly applicable to the momentum of photons, however, leaving open the possibility that the cause of his mistake was the unavailability of a suitable mechanical theory to enable a correct light speed prediction, rather than his use of a particle model. It is shown that Hamilton's canonical equations of motion remove Newton's error quantitatively, and also lead to the most basic formulas of quantum mechanics without reference to any of the pioneering experiments of the late nineteenth century. An alternative formulation of the wave-particle duality principle is then suggested which allows the phenomena of interference and diffraction to be understood in terms of statistical distributions of large populations of photons or other particles.