Question

In the late seventeenth century, the physical nature of light was a subject of intense debate among natural philosophers. Isaac Newton championed the corpuscular theory, proposing that light consists of a stream of discrete, material particles emitted by luminous sources. Newton argued that this particle nature explained why light travels in straight lines and casts sharp shadows. Conversely, Christiaan Huygens proposed a wave theory of light, arguing that light is a wave-like disturbance propagating through a hypothetical medium called the luminiferous ether. Huygens demonstrated that his wave model could explain reflection and refraction, but critics pointed out that if light were a wave, it should bend around obstacles—a phenomenon that was not easily observed at the time. While Newton’s prestige kept the corpuscular theory dominant for over a century, subsequent experiments on light interference eventually validated Huygens' wave model.

Based on the passage, the primary contrast between Newton's corpuscular theory and Huygens' wave theory of light lies in whether light is: