scholarly journals An experimental ‘Life’ for an experimental life: Richard Waller's biography of Robert Hooke (1705)

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
NOAH MOXHAM
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Adult Life ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Biographical Sketch ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
Experimental Philosopher ◽  
Inverse Square Law ◽  
Law Of Gravity

AbstractRichard Waller's ‘Life of Dr Robert Hooke’, prefixed to his edition of Hooke's Posthumous Works (1705), is an important source for the life of one of the most eminent members of the early Royal Society. It also has the distinction of being one of the earliest biographies of a man of science to be published in English. I argue that it is in fact the first biography to embrace the subject's natural-philosophical work as the centre of his life, and I investigate Waller's reasons for adopting this strategy and his struggle with the problem of how to represent an early experimental philosopher in print. I suggest that Waller eschews the ‘Christian philosopher’ tradition of contemporary biography – partly because of the unusually diverse and fragmentary nature of Hooke's intellectual output – and draws instead upon the structure of the Royal Society's archive as a means of organizing and understanding Hooke's life. The most quoted phrase from Waller's biography is that Hooke became ‘to a crime close and reserved’ in later life; this essay argues that Waller's biographical sketch was fashioned in order to undo the effects of that reserve. In modelling his approach very closely on the structure of the society's records he was principally concerned with making Hooke's work and biography accessible, intelligible and useful to the fellowship in a context familiar to them, a context which had provided the institutional framework for most of Hooke's adult life. I argue that Waller's ‘Life’ was also intended to make the largest claims for Hooke's intellectual standing that the author dared in the context of the enmity between Hooke and Isaac Newton once the latter became president of the Royal Society. However, I also adduce fresh manuscript evidence that Waller actually compiled, but did not publish, a defence of Hooke's claim to have discovered the inverse square law of gravity, allowing us to glimpse a much more assertive biography of Hooke than the published version.

The Mariner’s Sextant and the Royal Society

1978 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-36 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Practical Problem ◽  
Heavenly Body ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
Experimental Philosopher ◽  
Measuring Devices ◽  
Physical Principles

ONE would be hard pressed to name a device superior to the mariner’s sextant by which physical principles are better adapted to solve a relatively simple practical problem. The sextant, an instrument superbly elegant in its simplicity, designed merely to measure accurately the altitude of a heavenly body from a platform as unstable as the heaving deck of a ship at sea, is ideal for its purpose. The first part of this paper describes the principal altitude measuring devices employed during the Golden Age of Discoveries. It covers a period of about a quarter of a millennium from the time when Portuguese mariners under the sponsorship of Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460) first struck out to navigate the open Atlantic, to the time when Robert Hooke (1635-1703), the eminent experimental philosopher of the seventeenth century, first described, in 1666, a reflecting instrument for measuring altitudes at sea.

Creating Science: The Royal Society and the New Literatures of Science

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret J. M. Ezell
Keyword(s):  
Direct Observation ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Scientific Instruments ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
Robert Boyle ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
Language Of Science ◽  
John Wilkins ◽  
Thomas Sprat

An overview of the founding of the Royal Society of London and early members, including Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton, John Wilkins, Robert Boyle, and Henry Oldenburg, who first published the Philosophical Transactions. In addition to the creation and improvement of scientific instruments, including microscopes and telescopes, as recorded by their historian Thomas Sprat, the members of the Royal Society wished to create a language of science free from distorting images and metaphor and to base science on empirical experiments and direct observation. Although challenged by many for promoting an atheist understanding of the natural world, members such as Robert Boyle defended science as complementary with theology. The Society promoted publications and established networks of scientific correspondence to include members outside London and on the Continent.

Essay review. Robert Hooke under the microscope

2004 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 299-302
Author(s):  
J. Friesen
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Essay Review ◽  
Founding Father ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
The Status ◽  
Four Books ◽  
Century Thought

Three centuries after Hooke's death his contributions to late seventeenth–century thought are only beginning to be examined in their totality. Hooke's reputation as a leading experimentalist and founding father of The Royal Society has been obscured by the success of his rival Isaac Newton and pro–Newtonian historiography that has portrayed him as the man who thought of the grand idea second, an innovative figure who vindictively accused Newton and others of plagiarism despite his own failures to publicize his discoveries or to carry his many projects to completion. These four books attempt to rescue Hooke from historical neglect. As Jardine in her biography explains, the goal is ‘to retrieve Hooke and his genius, and give him back the status he undoubtedly deserves today, as a groundbreaking thinker and brilliant experimentalist, a founding figure in the European scientific revolution’.

Robert Hooke’s family and his youth: some new evidence from the will of the Rev. John Hooke

1994 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-16
Keyword(s):  
Early Life ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Academic Journals ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
Sir Isaac Newton ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
Sources Of Knowledge ◽  
Substantial Progress ◽  
The Will ◽  
New Evidence

During the 1980s, there was substantial progress in research on Robert Hooke (1635-1703), the first curator of experiments of the Royal Society and the rival of Sir Isaac Newton. About 20 papers appeared in academic journals and, at the end of the 1980s, a distinguished work, Robert Hooke: New Studies was edited by M. Hunter and S. Schaffer. Though the amount of research on Hooke is not yet comparable with the ‘Newtonian Industry’, we have reached a new stage of research on this prolific man of science. Hooke’s activities at Gresham College and at the Royal Society have now been increasingly analysed not only through his printed works but also through his manuscripts, which are scattered among various libraries. By comparison, Hooke’s early life, especially before his appearance at Oxford, is relatively unknown. The main sources of knowledge have been restricted to two contemporary descriptions: Aubrey’s manuscripts, published as Brief Lives , and Waller’s introductory biography to Hooke’s Cutlerian Lectures.

scholarly journals Notas epistemológicas en torno a las investigaciones newtonianas sobre la luz y el color

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (10) ◽  
pp. 69
Author(s):  
Leonardo Ruíz
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
Isaac Newton

El presente artículo pretende hacer, en primer lugar, un análisis de los primeros textos donde Isaac Newton presenta sus experimentos y reflexiones en torno a su teoría de la luz y el color. Mostraré que en estos textos hay problemas hermenéuticos que no pueden ser resueltos sin la consideración de principios extra-fenoménicos en el pensamiento newtoniano. Para ello, haré referencia principalmente a la carta de 1672 dirigida a la Royal Society intitulada «New Theory about Light and Colours». A partir del análisis de ese texto, tomaré en consideración el problema de la división que hace Newton en el espectro de colores y la controversia con la teoría modificacionalista encarnada en la figura de Robert Hooke. Mis conclusiones apuntan a la consideración de una lectura no meramente funcionalista de los principios extra-fenoménicos en el pensamiento newtoniano.

Richard Waller, S.R.S.: ‘In the pursuit of nature`

1984 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-233 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
Sir Isaac Newton ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
Cotton Mather ◽  
History Of ◽  
Multiple Challenges ◽  
Samuel Pepys

There is no puzzle more tantalizing than the fragments of a forgotten A life. Richard Waller (1660?—1715), linguist, artist, and amateur scientist, offers multiple challenges. A member of the Royal Society from 1681 and its Secretary from 1687-1709, 1710-1714, under the presidencies of Samuel Pepys and Sir Isaac Newton, Waller was a man of considerable standing during an important era in the history of science. His associates included Robert Hooke, Edmond Halley, James Pettiver, and Sir Hans Sloane. He conducted correspondence with some of the leading scientific figures and personalities abroad, such as van Leeuwenhoek, Malpighi, and Cotton Mather. History, however, has turned Waller into a footnote in the biographies of his more illustrious, or notorious, contemporaries.

On the Shoulders of Giants

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David D. Nolte
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
Least Action ◽  
New Science ◽  
Principle Of Least Action ◽  
Parabolic Trajectory ◽  
Leonhard Euler ◽  
New Generation

Galileo’s parabolic trajectory launched a new approach to physics that was taken up by a new generation of scientists like Isaac Newton, Robert Hooke and Edmund Halley. The English Newtonian tradition was adopted by ambitious French iconoclasts who championed Newton over their own Descartes. Chief among these was Pierre Maupertuis, whose principle of least action was developed by Leonhard Euler and Joseph Lagrange into a rigorous new science of dynamics. Along the way, Maupertuis became embroiled in a famous dispute that entangled the King of Prussia as well as the volatile Voltaire who was mourning the death of his mistress Emilie du Chatelet, the lone female French physicist of the eighteenth century.

The Curious Eye

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Webster
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Human Vision ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
Robert Boyle ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
Johannes Kepler ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Historical Moment

The Curious Eye explores early modern debates over two related questions: what are the limits of human vision, and to what extent can these limits be overcome by technological enhancement? Today, in our everyday lives we rely on optical technology to provide us with information about visually remote spaces even as we question the efficacy and ethics of such pursuits. But the debates surrounding the subject of technologically mediated vision have their roots in a much older literary tradition in which the ability to see beyond the limits of natural human vision is associated with philosophical and spiritual insight as well as social and political control. The Curious Eye provides insight into the subject of optically mediated vision by returning to the literature of the seventeenth century, the historical moment in which human visual capacity in the West was first extended through the application of optical technologies to the eye. Bringing imaginative literary works by Francis Bacon, John Milton, Margaret Cavendish, and Aphra Behn together with optical and philosophical treatises by Johannes Kepler, René Descartes, Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton, The Curious Eye explores the social and intellectual impact of the new optical technologies of the seventeenth century on its literature. At the same time, it demonstrates that social, political, and literary concerns are not peripheral to the optical science of the period but rather an integral part of it, the legacy of which we continue to experience.

Newtonian Gravity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Wittman
Keyword(s):  
Surface Gravity ◽  
Newtonian Gravity ◽  
Acceleration Field ◽  
Source Mass ◽  
Inverse Square Law ◽  
Average Acceleration ◽  
Law Of Gravity ◽  
Tidal Acceleration

Having developed a framework for subsuming gravity into relativity, we examine how gravity behaves as a function of the source mass (Earth, Sun, etc.) and distance from that sourcemass.We develop Newton’s inverse‐square law of gravity, and we examine the consequences in terms of acceleration fields, potentials, escape velocities, and surface gravity. Chapter 17 will build on these ideas to show how orbits are used to probe gravity throughout the universe.We also develop a tool for exposing variations in the acceleration field: the tidal acceleration field in any region is defined as the acceleration field in that region minus the average acceleration. This enables us to restate Newton’s lawof gravity as: the acceleration arrows surrounding any point show a net convergence that is proportional to the density of mass at that point. Chapter 18 will use this to develop a frame‐independent law of gravity.

Hooke recommemorated

1996 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-140
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Domestic Life ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
Arts And Sciences ◽  
Personal Interaction ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Christ Church ◽  
History Of

Richard Nichols, The Diaries of Robert Hooke, The Leonardo of London, 1635-1703 . Lewes, Sussex: The Book Guild, 1994, Pp. 185, £15.00. ISBN 0- 86332-930-6. Richard Nichols is a science master turned historian of science who celebrates in this book Robert Hooke’s contributions to the arts and sciences. The appreciation brings together comments from Hooke’s Diaries , and other works, on each of his main enterprises, and on his personal interaction with each of his principal friends and foes. Further references to Hooke and his activities are drawn from Birch’s History of the Royal Society, Aubrey’s Brief Lives , and the Diaries of Evelyn and of Pepys. The first section of the book, ‘Hooke the Man’, covers his early years of education at home in Freshwater, at Westminster school and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he soon joined the group of experimental philosophers who set him up as Curator of the Royal Society and Professor of Geometry at Gresham College, Bishopsgate. Hooke’s domestic life at Gresham College is described - his intimate relationships with a series of housekeepers, including his niece, Grace Hooke, and his social life at the College and in the London coffee houses.

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