The elements that make up all other bodies, these must be bodies that are perfectly inelastic, undeformable and unchangeable. - Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis

May we not say that, in the fortuitous combination of the productions of Nature, since only those creatures could survive in whose organizations a certain degree of adaptation was present, there is nothing extraordinary in the fact that such adaptation is actually found in all these species which now exist? Chance, one might say, turned out a vast number of individuals; a small proportion of these were organized in such a manner that the animals' organs could satisfy their needs. A much greater number showed neither adaptation nor order; these last have all perished.... Thus the species which we see today are but a small part of all those that a blind destiny has produced.

When a change occurs in Nature, the quantity of action necessary for that change is as small as possible.

The first law is the same for both light and material bodies; they both move in a straight line, as long as they are not deflected by an outside force.
The second law is also the same as that governing the reflection of an elastic ball from an impenetrable surface. Mechanics shows that such a ball is reflected from such a surface so that its angle of reflection equals its angle of incidence, as observed for light.
But the third law still requires a plausible explanation. The passage of light from one medium to another exhibits behavior that is totally different from a ball moving through different media.