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We identified 85 articles on the history of optics, of which 55 concern our period (seventeenth to twentieth centuries). Limiting our study to physical and geometrical optics, sometimes in connection with astronomy, we have selected 37 articles expressing a plurality of points of view, although they all aim to account for the progress of the science of optics. By analyzing their content, we show that the approach to optics through its history is essentially conceptual and instrumental and, more rarely, social.