Jim Bennett, Michael Cooper, Michael Hunter, Lisa Jardine. London's Leonardo: The Life and Work of Robert Hooke. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. xii + 224 pp. $34.50 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-852579-0.
Reviewed by Larry Stewart (Department of History, University of Saskatchewan)
Published on H-Albion (December, 2004)
There is an unfortunate tendency in the history of science endlessly to publish books about its heroes. The obsession with the "greats" such as Nicholas Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Charles Darwin, lately James Watt, and especially Isaac Newton (an industry in itself) fills entire shelves. Perhaps the burgeoning market for popular science demands them, but biographers often offer up a strange reflection of and identity with their subjects. Psychologists might have a field day. Perhaps one solution is biographies of those all too often left out of the grand narrative. Those frequently eclipsed by the greatest achievements, or just by the greatest luck, get little attention much to the detriment of truly understanding the evolution of the scientific enterprise. Moreover, many of those artisans, instrument makers, and laboratory assistants, who actually did the work, men relegated to a third league, rate little glance if any. In an attempt to redress this historiographical imbalance, there have recently appeared biographies of those who, like Robert Hooke, were highly regarded in their own lifetime but since eclipsed by Newton's reputation. For Hooke, there are now The Curious Life of Robert Hooke: The Man Who Measured London by Lisa Jardine (2004), and The Man Who Knew Too Much: The Strange and Inventive life of Robert Hooke 1635-1703 by Stephen Inwood (2002). In addition, to mark the three-hundredth anniversary of Hooke's death, we find the four long essays in _London's Leonardo: The Life and Work of Robert Hooke, all of which clearly reveal sides of Hooke that are not well known. In the shadow of the Newton industry, the effort here is commendable.
Lisa Jardine, in the essay on "Hooke the Man: His Diary and His Health," slyly describes Hooke as "Never at Rest," the title likewise of Sam Westfall's exhaustive biography of Newton (1990). But Hooke was Newton's nemesis, and Hooke was not shy about it or much else. As all the essays here reveal, Hooke was a man on the make, who relied on patronage and connection as anyone of humble origins might in a society encrusted with privilege. Hooke was an immense talent, born to a minor curate, apprenticed to a portrait painter, yet was able to attend both Westminster School, where he apparently "was not often seen there at lessons" (p. 3) and ultimately Christ Church, Oxford, where he was befriended by the inimitable John Wilkins. Michael Cooper's sympathetic assessment of Hooke's career likewise shows him cropping up in all kinds of circumstances fundamental to the renaissance of English science in the Restoration. Jim Benne further grasps the mettle of Hooke's attitude as a "passionate optimist" (p. 63), but as one not given to dissembling or to backing down, as demonstrated by his numerous conflicts with his erstwhile patron Sir John Cutler, with Henry Oldenburg in the Royal Society, with Christian Huygens over watches, and especially with Newton over the determination of universal gravitation. Much to his detriment, Hooke believed in speaking his mind and standing on principle. Even so, contemporaries like Robert Boyle and Christopher Wren had ample reason to rely on him.
The striking thing about Hooke's career is that he was involved in many of the great scientific and technical achievements of the seventeenth century, yet he never seems to have had his due. Cooper, for example, explores the appointment of Hooke as a surveyor to work with Wren in the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire. They seemed to have achieved a friendship and were able to accomplish much together. Hooke's advice was sought on a wide range of issues from streets to churches but, frequently in those years, he often had problems collecting payment. That was also the case with his salary as Gresham Professor although much of the dispute arose because his benefactor, Sir John Cutler, was dissatisfied when Hooke exhibited much less interest in the history of trades than Cutler had desired. Even more complicated was Hooke's relationship with the Royal Society which consistently demanded Hooke provide experiments and demonstrations, but generally ignored his irritation with Henry Oldenburg over patents or his gripes that his ideas were either ignored or stolen by others. He developed a strong grudge against Newton for what Hooke thought was his own discovery of the inverse square law of universal gravitation. Even amidst all the work Hooke clearly did for the Royal Society, and given its general lack of support for his complaints, he appeared to make less total salary as their curator than from any other source of income that his expertise afforded him.
The theme that emerges most strongly from these essays regards Hooke's remarkable achievements as a designer and operator of instruments, especially as assistant to Boyle. But as Stephen Pumfrey has asked, "Who did the work" is rather more crucial than might once have been appreciated.[1] Hooke was, in a number of respects, a true Baconian. Michael Hunter points out that both Hooke and Bacon believed that "the pursuit of knowledge would be necessarily cooperative, involving the activity of a whole group of individuals working together" (p. 121). Notably this was also the approach taken by his contemporary Sir William Petty who proposed that the Royal Society establish a cabinet of instruments, so that experimental philosophy might become "collaborative, public, and accessible" (p. 82). Consequently, Hooke was crucial to Boyle's work moving beyond mere technical issues into natural philosophy. It was Hooke's instrumental expertise that resonated, of course, and Jim Bennet provides an excellent account of Hooke's belief that new "artificial Instruments and methods" were the answer to the "depriv'd corruption" of the human senses (p. 64). But Hooke also cultivated skilled workmen who could produce devices and upon whom the instrumental investigations and promotion of experimentation would come increasingly to rely. Indeed, as Hunter shows, Hooke's famous Micrographia was a brilliant demonstration not only of microscopical discoveries, but likewise of the instrumental "Foundation of Experiments" (p. 125). Artificial improvements and philosophical observations were closely interwoven. Instruments were far more than illustrative; they provided an opportunity for the "enhanced observation and acute examination of nature" (p. 68). It is intriguing, therefore, that while Newton moved toward the mathematical description of motion, and Hooke sought to provide experimental evidence of the motion of the earth, it was Hooke's approach that ultimately served to enhance the victory of Newtonian mechanics and the experimental agenda of his disciples in the eighteenth century. Indeed, as Jardine also points out, Hooke notoriously engaged in enough self-experiment in medication that it most likely weakened his already vulnerable physical state brought on by the many demands upon him. Like John Wilkins before him, it is more than likely that Hooke's medications exacerbated his insomnia and the numerous symptoms "which may have been the side-effects of the preparations he was consuming" (p. 183). Self-physic was natural to an experimentalist including the habitual application of laudanum. In the end, these experiments may well have done him in, even before his relatives picked his substantial pockets as he lay dying.
Note
[1]. Stephen Pumfrey, "Who did the Work?: Experimental Philosophers and public demonstrators in Augustan England," British Journal for the History of Science 28 (1995): pp. 131 156.
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Citation:
Larry Stewart. Review of Bennett, Jim; Cooper, Michael; Hunter, Michael; Jardine, Lisa, London's Leonardo: The Life and Work of Robert Hooke.
H-Albion, H-Net Reviews.
December, 2004.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=10025
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