Robert Hookes Micrographia

James L. Kelley

History of Science 5523 Professor Crowther February 11, 2009

Biographical Sketch Robert Hooke was born at Freshwater in the Isle of Wight on the I8th of July I635. After a career at Oxford he became Robert Boyles assistant. Hooke designed and operated experimental apparatuses for Boyle, most notably the famed air-pump, which perhaps should be called Hookes air-pump rather than Boyles. In 1662 the Royal Society received its charter from Charles II, and Hooke was made Curator of Experiments. This position entailed the building of apparatuses and the operating of them at weekly meetings of the Society. Between 1662 and 1665 Hooke compiled reports on all of his experiments, and these became the Micrographia, published in January 1665 by Joseph Martyn and James Allesiry, under the auspices of the Royal Society. With its amazing fold-out plates and insightful text, the Micropgraphia was an instant classic, the plates in particular being reprinted in various contexts for the next two centuries. One commentator quipped that, had it not been for Newtons Principia, we would be singing the praises of the Micrographia as the greatest scientific work of its time. Micrographia and Hookes Algebra In the Preface to his Micrographia, Hooke makes the startling assertion that by the scientific utilization of artificial Instruments and methods, there may be, in some manner, a reparation made for the mischiefs, and imperfection, mankind has drawn upon itselfwhereby every man, both from a derived corruptionis subject to slip into all sorts of errors.1 What follows in the body of the great work is a series of plates engravings made from Hookes drawings of insects, crystals, and organic cellswhich gave the seventeenth century reader a glimpse into a previously invisible world. But what does the undoing of Adams Original Sin have to do with looking through a microscope? Was Hooke a religious man? These questions have been given halting, unsure answers by scholars. For example, Catherine Wilson sees Hookes claim that the scientist must call upon a sincere Hand and a faithful Eye rather than exactness of Method as an indication of Hookes Baconian rejection of theory.2 Another indication that not only the theological, but in fact the entire theoretical basis of Hookes science is being discounted by scholars is found in Brian Vickers English Science, Bacon to Newton. There Vickers informs us that Hooke was not theorist but a practitioner, who had not advanced far in mathematics, and tended to work by intuitive understanding rather than sustained thought.3 This being a brief lecture and for that reason not at all suited to a full discussion of Hookes religious philosophy, we will aspire to do no more than indicate a few directions for further inquiry. Let us start with a simple fact: Though the Micrographia
1

Robert Hooke, Micrographia, or some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies made by Magnifying Glasses. With Observation sand Inquiries thereupon (Joseph Martyn and James Allesiry, 1665), 5. Qu. in Catherine Wilson, Visual Surface and Visual Symbol: The Microscope and the Occult in Early Modern Science, Journal of the History of Ideas 49.1 (1988), 85-108, at 99. 2 Hooke Micrographia, 9. Qu. in Wilson 99. 3 Brian Vickers, (ed.). English Science, Bacon to Newton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 99-100. Qu. in Michael Hunter and Simon Schaffer, Introduction, in Michael Hunter and Simon Schaffer, (eds.), Robert Hooke: New Studies (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1989), 1-19, at 2.

consists of a series of plates replete with commentaries, the latter does not consist in disinterested comments from a writer with no interpretive or theoretical agenda, but rather in the Micrographia we meet a scientist who is trying to build an algebraor systematic approachto the deepest concerns of humanity. As the quotations from the preface indicate, Hooke believed that scientific observation can lead man not just to see the scales and mandibles of fleas and ants, but can serve as the path to salvation, the curing of the corruption of the body and the mind which resulted from the Fall in the Garden of Eden. A clue to how we should look at the illustrations in the Micrographia in light of Hookes soteriological science is provided by a quotation from Francis Bacon, who was idolized by Hooke and whose work Hooke had an exhaustive knowledge: Bacons view of the scientific method was a withdrawing [of ones] intellect from [observed images] no further than may suffice to let the images and rays of natural objects meet in a point.4 I contend that the twin notions of point and (light) ray are the heretofore unknown keys to Hookes religious worldview: 1) Hooke believed that there was only a single operative theological/cosmological category: light. Light was not an inert, material being, but rather an activity which is experienced or perceived variously as a property, a conscious idea or thought, a motion of a body which can be recorded as a vibration, or as the self-transcendence of one who becomes more illuminated by climbing the light-rungs of reality to a more complete and perfect experience of the light. 2) Because all is light, there is no neo-Platonic or Hermetic Book of Nature to provide the observer with a system of symbols which indicate certain textual or linguistic truths. All we have is light, which is experienced by sentient beings in a greater or lesser degree, depending upon their ontological state. This light travels in a straight line from God to the cosmos, and this light is utterly simple, since there is no composition or variance in that which is perfect. All of creation is created to commune with the light, and this light can only be indicated properly by an iota, a pointthe simplest sign conceivable. This point, however, is posited by scientific observers who have not attained to the perfection of the perfect point. Thus, the observer must look for perfect geometrical forms in nature which correspond to the steps on the ontological chain to God, the Light. Such forms are the circle, the line, and the angular or bent line. A line bent to a ninety degree angle can form a sharp point, and four such angles can form a closed square. Of greater interest is the triangle, which seems to point to the sky and which indicates a transcendence of duality and multiplicity, the two lower angles which rest on the ground being resolved into a sharp point above. Thus Hookes theory of light as the energy which moves throughout the cosmos and which originates from the Divine is related to the temporal and the practical through his algebra of geometric forms, which leads him to privilege circles, triangles, and above all points found in nature above the irregular, the jagged, and the asymmetrical. Notice that in the first Observation in the Micrographia, the one about the point of a needle, Hooke relishes his revelation that a man-made point is less sharp and pointy as is the
4

Wilson, 96. She is quoting from Francis Bacon,Works IV, 19. Italics mine.

hairs, and bristles, and claws of multitudes of insects.5 Add to this another insight: Hooke begins and ends his great book with two points: The head of a needle and, at the end of the book, the dots in the skystars and planets. In between we are told about light rays, vibrations, angles, and polygonal forms found in common substances. In light of the foregoing discussion of Hooke and his Micrographia, I offer the following theory: Hooke was influenced by his reading of Bacon, Paracelsus and other anti-Scholastic (and in Paracelsus case, a somewhat nominalistic, and thus anti-Platonic view of forms, since he posited Archons at the center of all bodies) writers to reject the standard version of analogia entis. This standard analogy of being as propounded by those in the universities by and all of those influenced by the main currents of Christian theology put forth that the phenomenal world was a Book of Nature which contained a system of spiritual symbols which the seeker must discern in order to ascend to God. Hookes quarrel with Henry More, the Cambridge Platonist, about Platonic forms proves that Hooke, though certainly being influenced by Platonism in other obvious ways, rejected the Renaissance neo-Platonism of More and others like him, who believed in a realm of ghostly forms which were supposedly more real than the material world. Indeed, for Hooke it seems that the opposition between material and spiritual, far from being an opposition which divides mans soul from his body and from the phenomenal world, is actually an ontological distinction. One becomes more real by ascending the steps of the chain of being, at the top of which is God, the source of all light. However, there is no indication in Hooke that the material is forsaken as one goes up the ladder. Further research will look further into this apparent Hookean realism of glory, with due attention being given to Hookes fascinating theory of the materiality of memory and its destiny to be made incorrupt and imperishable. Let us close with a quotation from the insightful Catherine Wilson which illustrates Hookes cosmological algebra as a geometrical chain of being: Thus Hooke attempts by way of compensation to transform microscopical observation into something else: into geometry or grammar. In his Preface he suggests, for example, that the microscope will result in an "alphabet" for the expression of complex forms: "As in geometry we begin with bodies of the most simple nature," he writes, "so we need begin with letters before we try to write sentences or draw pictures." Beginning with "Fluidity, Orbiculation, Fixation, and Angularization, or Crystalization," we may proceed all the way to "Germination ... Vegetation, Plant Animation, Animation, Sensation and finally ... Imag- ination. " From the forms of crystals we may move to those of mushrooms, thence to plants in general and so on, "these several inquiries having no / less dependence on one another than any select number of propositions in Mathematical Elements may be made to have.6

5 6

Hooke, Micrographia, 2. Wilson, 100-101.

Robert Hooke: A Bibliography (1635-1703) Prepared by James L. Kelley (February, 2009)

I.

A List of Writings Either Constituting or Including Extensive Bibliographies on the Life and Works of Robert Hooke. (One work here cited--Bennett et al.is repeated in section III. owing to its substantial non-bibliographic content which is of great import to Hooke studies.)

Ayres, F.H. Robert Hooke, 1635-1703: A Bibliography (Thesis submitted for Part III of the London University Diploma of Librarianship, 1951). Bennett, Jim, et al. (eds.) Londons Leonardo: The Life and Work of Robert Hooke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Keynes, Geoffrey. A Bibliography of Robert Hooke (Oxford, 1960). Pugliese, P.J. The Scientific Achievement of Robert Hooke: Method and Mechanics (Harvard University Ph.D., 1982). II. Primary Sources

Bacon, Francis. Works, vols. ed. J. Spedding, R.L. Ellis, D.D. Heath (London, 1860) Hooke, Robert. Micrographia, or some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies made by Magnifying Glasses. With Observation sand Inquiries thereupon (Joseph Martyn and James Allesiry, 1665). III. Selected Secondary Sources

Andrade, E.N. da C., Robert Hooks, F.R.S., Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 15 (1960), 137-45. Bennett, J.A., Robert Hooke as Mechanic and Natural Philosopher, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 35.1 (1980), 33-48. Bennett, Jim, et al. (eds.) Londons Leonardo: The Life and Work of Robert Hooke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Centore, F.F., Copernicus, Hooke and Simplicity, Philosophical Studies 17 (1968), 185-96. Dear, Peter, Totius in Verba: Rhetoric and Authority in the Early Royal Society, Isis 76 (1985), 145-61. Dilworth, C., Boyle, Hooke, and Newton: Some Aspects of Scientific Collaboration, Memorie di Scienze Fishiche e Naturali 103 (1986), 329-331. Espinasse, Margaret. Robert Hooke (London: Heinemann, 1956). Feisenberger, H.A., The Libraries of Newton, Hooke and Boyle, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 21.1 (1966), 42-55. Harwood, John T., Rhetoric and Graphics in Micrographia, in Michael Hunter and Simon Schaffer (eds.). Robert Hooke: New Studies (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1989), 119-47.

Henry, John, Henry More versus Robert Boyle: The Spirit of Nature and the nature of Providence, in Sarah Hutton (ed.). Of Mysticism and Mechanism: Tercentenary Studies of Henry More, 1614-1687 (Dordrecht, 1989), 55-76. ---. Robert Hooke, The Incongruous Mechanist, in Michael Hunter and Simon Schaffer (eds.). Robert Hooke: New Studies (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1989), 149-80. Hunter, Michael (ed.). Establishing the New Science: The Experience of the Early Royal Society (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1989). Jardine, Lisa. The Curious Life of Robert Hooke: The Man Who Measured London (New York: HarperCollins, 2004). Jones, Everett L., Robert Hooke and the Virtuoso, Modern Language Notes 66.3 (1951), 180-82. Koyr, Alexandre, An Unpublished Letter of Robert Hooke to Isaac Newton, Isis 43.4 (1952), 312-37. Rivington, Charles A., Early Printers to the Royal Society, 1663-1708, Notes and Records of the Royal Society 39 (1984), 1-27. Shapin, Stephen, Pump and Circumstance: Robert Boyles Literary Technology, Social Studies of Science 14 (1984), 481-520. Shapin, Stephen, and Simon Schaffer. Leviathan and the Air-pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985). Slaughter, M.M. Universal Languages and scientific Taxonomy in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). Smith, Cyril Stanley, Art, Technology, and Science: Notes on Their Historical Interaction, Technology and Culture 11.4 (1970), 493-549. Vickers, Brian. Analogy vs. Identity: The Rejection of Occult Symbolism, 1580-1680, in Brian Vickers (ed.). Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 95-163. ---. Francis Bacon and Renaissance Prose (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968). ---. The Royal Society and English Prose Style: A Reassessment, in Rhetoric and the Pursuit of Truth: Language Change in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1985), 3-76. Vickers, Brain (ed.). English Science, Bacon to Newton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Wattie, Margaret, Robert Hooke on His Literary Contemporaries, RES 8 (1937), 21216. Wilson, Catherine, Visual Surface and Visual Symbol: The Microscope and the Occult in Early Modern Science, Journal of the History of Ideas 49.1 (1988), 85-108. Withrow, G.J., Robert Hooke, Philosophy of Science 5.4 (1938), 493-502. Wood, Paul B., Methodology and Apologetics: Thomas Sprats History of the Royal Society, British Journal for the History of Science 13 (1980), 1-26. Below: Hookes famed illustration of a louse, from the Micrographia, fold-out following p. 211.