Robert Hooke’s Experimental Philosophy

by Felicity Henderson

Robert Hooke was England’s first professional scientist, and a pioneer in the field of science communication. He was also one of the few early scientists to leave a detailed manual describing how others could follow his lead and become ‘experimental philosophers’ themselves. This new biography takes Hooke’s scientific method as its starting point, exploring what Hooke himself saw as the key aspects of a scientific life. It follows Hooke through the shops of instrument makers and craftsmen, into coffee-houses and bookshops, onto building sites and into the king’s audience chamber at Whitehall Palace. It uses new evidence to explain how Hooke’s observations and conversations with workmen, philosophical colleagues, craftsmen and London’s wealthy elite underpinned his scientific research in unexpected but significant ways. Hooke emerges as a champion of the mundane, whose greatest gift was to see the potential for new knowledge in the least promising aspects of everyday life.

Genres: Biography, Science, History

192 pages, Hardcover

Published February 5, 2025

Reviews

[Gordon Ironside · Rating 5 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed this book by Felicity Henderson about Robert Hooke. While less celebrated than some of his contemporaries, such as Isaac Newton, Hooke was a great scientist and polymath of the seventeenth century. The author is editing Hooke’s extensive diaries for the Royal Society of which he was the first paid employee in 1662, doing experiments for the members, and being elected a fellow only a year later; he was a key player in the Royal Society’s work for about forty years. Henderson has used this extensive knowledge of Hooke to write this book focussing on his ‘philosophical algebra’.

The book focuses on the development of his scientific method with some examples from his lectures and notes of the application of that method to his own scientific understanding. He listened closely to tradesmen about the way they did things, observed nature closely, designed and built instruments to make accurate measurements and above all looked at problems with a clear and open mind, determined to find the truth rather than confirm the views of the bible or prominent men of the past.

In his later years he prepared notes on various geological matters like earthquakes and fossils. He tried to persuade the Royal Society fellows that fossils were of organic origin rather than animal shaped rocks. He believed that there was evidence that some animals had become extinct and others appeared later in the history of the earth. He used stories and legends from around the world that he felt were describing earthquakes. He questioned travellers to places he had not visited himself. He used his microscopes to look at the fine structure of rocks, minerals, fossils and water. He visited caves and saw the growth of stalactites and stalagmites. From all of this evidence he developed reasoned lists of arguments to support his views on things like the origin of fossils. He may not have got the detail right but his method was great. When doing experiments he believed in recording everything in his notes, even seemingly irrelevant detail, in case it might be needed to support a developing idea. He believed in repeating experiments to check for consistency and to check the claims made by others. There is so much about his method that I recognise from my own scientific education.

The book is beautifully produced – I often read books on the Kindle but have bought a hard-backed copy of this book which is printed on fine paper with good illustrations and it all adds to the pleasure of reading it.

I see it is part of a series called Renaissance Lives by the publisher Reaktion Books. I shall certainly be looking at some of the other examples if this fine book is typical of the quality of others in the series.

[Nikolas Mavreas]

The year 2003, marking three centuries since Robert Hooke’s death, was greeted with two generous biographies, those by Stephen Inwood and Lisa Jardine. These comprised the popular front of a gradual effort to restore the long maligned scientist’s reputation, that of a quarrelsome wannabe Isaac Newton whose contributions are confined to an elementary law of springs. Inwood’s biography was published as Jardine was writing hers, prompting the latter to slyly remark in her preface that Inwood’s “meticulously detailed book” enabled her to find her own narrative voice and to give her own book “coherence and shape.” Felicity Henderson’s book, Robert Hooke’s Experimental Philosophy, is neither a generous biography nor meticulously detailed, but a coherent, shapely and insightful introduction to the fascinating scientific pioneer.


You can read the rest on Open Letters Review:
https://openlettersreview.com/posts/r...