What happens when you take the idea of the biblical Adam—the first human—and apply it to insects? You create an origin story for Nature’s tiniest creatures, one that gives them 'a Pedigree as ancient as the first creation'. This the naturalist Robert Hooke argued in his treatise, the Micrographia (1665). In what follows, I will retrace how Hooke endeavoured to show that insects—then widely believed to have arisen out of the dirt—were the products of an ancient lineage. These genealogies, (...) while constructed from empirical observation, were conjectures of the imagination. Section 2 shows how Hooke introduced the concept of a 'prime parent' (an Adam-insect) to explain the anatomical similarities between 'mites'. Section 3 demonstrates how Hooke defined the family of 'gnats' as tiny machines built from the same components and relates Hookean genealogies to contemporary ideas about Noah’s Ark. Section 4 shows how Hooke outlined the morphology of 'insects' (delineating what we now call arthropods). Section 5 explores how Hooke used fossils to study these animals in the distant past. In sum, Hooke was turning natural history—collecting and describing insects—into natural history: reconstructing their origins. (shrink)

The ArugmentThis essay answers a single question: what was Robert Hooke, the Royal Society's curator of experiments, doing in his well-known 1665 work,Micrographia?Hooke was articulating a “universal cure of the mind” capable of bringing about a “reformation in Philosophy,” a change in philosophy's interpretive practices and organization. The work explicated the interpretive and political foundations for a community of optical instrument users coextensive with the struggling Royal Society. Standard observational practices would overcome the problem of using nonstandard instruments, while (...) inherent inrepresentation– the interpretive practice championed in the text – were important theological and political meanings. Hooke's kind of experimental philosophy undermined the claims made by “atheists” and “enthusiasts” – the enemies of the restored church and state – while also producing useful knowledge. Equally important, Hooke modeled the community described inMicrographiaupon the classicalres publica, but his community made important concessions to Restoration political realities, especially the growing role of commercial or transactional relationships. (shrink)

It is well known that Hooke's wave theory of light, set forth in his Micrographia of 1665, is viewed as a step towards Huygens's famous theory of light. This view depends mostly on some short remarks given by Huygens in his Traité de la Lumi`ere and the earlier Projet du Contenu de la Dioptrique . Huygens's personal copy of Micrographia was believed to be lost until found at Braunschweig University Library by the author three years ago. It is (...) annotated at Observ. IX only, where Hooke deals with his wave theory of light and colours. This article provides a short review of Hooke's theory, and an interpretation of Huygens's annotations, which show clearly the first steps towards the opinions he was to express in his Traité de la lumi`ere, particularly methodological ones. Furthermore, a short comparison is here drawn with Huygens's annotations in his copy of Ango's L'optique divisée en trois livres, which show similar patterns of reasoning. (shrink)

Since Robert Hooke published Micrographia, scientists have been expanding the boundaries of science to new scales, giving rise to questions about epistemology and ontology and challenging perceptions of objectivity, life, and artifact. Recent developments in areas such as nanotechnology and synthetic life have not only pushed these boundaries, but have called their very existence into question. In this issue, Spontaneous Generations examines science at the nanoscale from ten perspectives...

In 1665–1666, both Margaret Cavendish and Robert Hooke wrote about the beard of a wild oat. After looking through the microscope at the wild oat, Hooke describes the nature of what he is seeing in terms of a “small black or brown bristle” and believes that the microscope can improve the human senses. Cavendish responds to him regarding the seeing of the texture of a wild oat through the microscope and critiques his mechanistic explanation. This paper takes up the controversy (...) between Cavendish and Hooke regarding the wild oat as two forms of a broadly Baconian enterprise. Challenging Lisa Walters and Eve Keller, who suppose that Cavendish was against the “Baconian enterprise as a whole,” the argument in this paper is that Cavendish is opposed to Hooke’s defense of instruments as recovering Edenic glory in the Micrographia, but not to the Baconian enterprise as a whole. (shrink)

Tato studie pojednává o rané fázi mikroskopického zkoumání přírody, které ve svém díle Micrographia představil Robert Hooke. Vzhledem k obsáhlosti díla se zaměřuje na pasáže, které Hooke věnoval výzkumu hmyzu. Předmětem analýzy je především metodologie Hookova výzkumu: způsob, jakým tento experimentátor využíval mikroskop ke zkoumání mravenců, much, komárů a jiného hmyzu. Dále je pozornost věnována způsobu, jakým Hooke představoval výsledky svého pozorování, tedy popisům a ilustracím hmyzu. A konečně, příspěvek se také pokouší vyložit vybrané záznamy mikroskopických pozorování v Micrographii (...) a objasnit jejich vazbu na filosofickou a náboženskou interpretaci přírody sedmnáctého století. (shrink)

Résumé En 1665, Robert Hooke fait paraître son grand ouvrage de microscopie, _Micrographia_, véritable défense et illustration de la philosophie expérimentale. L’année suivante, Margaret Cavendish, duchesse de Newcastle, publie à compte d’auteur un traité et un roman qui attaquent les fondements mêmes de cette science nouvelle. La dispute qui s’engage à l’initiative de la duchesse s’inscrit dans le contexte d’une plus vaste controverse sur la légitimité et l’efficacité des instruments optiques en philosophie naturelle. Toutes les figures de la controverse scientifique (...) y sont déployées. Toutes, sauf une : la riposte. Car Margaret Cavendish est seule dans l’arène. Peut-on parler de duel lorsque seule l’une des deux parties attaque? C’est ce cas particulier de dispute qui s’achève faute de combattant que cet article propose d’étudier. (shrink)

V této studii se pokouším předložit postoj Margaret Cavendishové (1623-1673) ke zkoumání přírody ve druhé polovině 17. století. Pro tento účel jsem analyzovala především dílo Observations upon Experimental Philosophy (1666), které představuje nejucelenější filosofický výklad přírody této autorky. Prostřednictvím něho postihuji ontologické i epistemologické námitky Cavendishové k charakteru zkoumání přírody členy nově založeného vědeckého společenství – Royal Society. Z tohoto důvodu se zaměřuji rovněž na dílo Micrographia (1665) Roberta Hooka, který pro autorku tuto společnost reprezentuje. Cílem studie není rehabilitovat (...) osobu a dílo Margaret Cavendishové, nýbrž charakterizovat způsob, jímž se pokusila zhodnotit myšlenky nové experimentální, tj. zkušenostní vědy. (shrink)

“The present book,” acknowledges Wilson in her Preface, “owes its origins to a study of the preface to Robert Hooke‘s Micrographia undertaken in a seminar on reappraisals of the scientific revolution under the direction of Robert S. Westman.” It is in that very preface that Hooke proclaims: “my ambition is, that I may serve to the great Philosophers of this Age, as the makers and grinders of my Glasses did to me”, and it seems that for Wilson, the reappraisal (...) of paragraphs like this have served to erode Westman’s conception of the scientific revolution as a “long-term event–some one hundred fifty years in the making”. From Wilson’s perspective, this time frame does not appear as an ‘event’ at all. (shrink)