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Experiment, Theory, Representation: Robert Hooke’s Material Models

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Beyond Mimesis and Convention

Part of the book series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science ((BSPS,volume 262))

Abstract

Robert Hooke’s Micrographia of 1665 is an epochal work in the history of scientific representation. With microscopes and other optical devices, Hooke drew and then oversaw the engraving of Micrographia’s plates, images that amount to little less than revelations from beneath the range of human vision (Fig. 1). In bristling detail, molds flower into putrid bloom, crystals protrude like warts from mineral skins and, for the first time in history, cells are brought to the eyes of a general viewership. So historical scholarship has shown us, Hooke was especially well equipped to make these wondrous images. A product of Oxford’s lively scientific community of the 1650s and a protégé of the chemist Robert Boyle, he possessed intimate knowledge of the “new sciences” of the seventeenth century and a particular gift as an experimentalist.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Interesting variations upon this direction are Freedberg (2002) and Daston and Galison (2007).

  2. 2.

    For a revision of this argument, see Gibson-Wood (2002).

  3. 3.

    On these points more broadly, see my (2010).

  4. 4.

    For a recent application of this approach with a useful bibliography, see Heering (2008).

  5. 5.

    On these topics, see respectively Elkins (1999, 13–30); Wilson (2002); and Freedberg (2002).

  6. 6.

    Even if we have no specific endorsement of this line from Hooke for the crystallization model, this style of thinking certainly finds support in his contemporaneous writing. Earlier in Micrographia, Hooke had noted: “It seldom happens that any two natures have so many properties coincident or the same … and to be different in the rest” (1665, 14). Therefore, he continues, “I think it neither impossible, irrational, nay nor difficult to be able to predict what is likely to happen in other particulars also … if the circumstances that so often very much conduce to the variation of the effects be duly weigh’d and consider’d” (1665, 14). Appealing to classical induction, in other words, patterns observable in the bullets and numerous other vibrating phenomena the encourage inference about the properties of those imperceptible physical structures undergirding them all.

  7. 7.

    Further pursuit of these points could productively engage with the stimulating reading of thought experiments and fictions proposed by David Davis (see “Learning through Fictional Narratives in Art and Science” in this volume).

  8. 8.

    For Hooke’s broader understanding of the internal motion of planetary bodies, see Hooke’s Lectures and Discourse of Earthquakes in Hooke (1705, 149–190).

  9. 9.

    For a critique, see Giere (1999).

  10. 10.

    I thank David Tirrell and Tony Jia for discussing this action with me.

  11. 11.

    Hooke did not know that the earth too possesses an antisolar ion tail; see Yeomans (1990, 352).

  12. 12.

    In 1682, Hooke described a revised version of this material model that could produce light; see Hooke (1705, 167).

  13. 13.

    A rare exception here is Iliffe (1995, esp. 293–299).

  14. 14.

    For extended discussion, images and further bibliography, see Hunter (2007).

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Moti Feingold, Tarja Knuuttila and, especially, to Roman Frigg for comments on previous drafts of this essay.

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  1. California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Matthew C. Hunter

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  1. Political Science, Dept. Philosophy, Logic &, London School of Economics &, Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom

    Roman Frigg

  2. Courtauld Institute of Art, Strand, London, WC2R 0RN, United Kingdom

    Matthew Hunter

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Hunter, M.C. (2010). Experiment, Theory, Representation: Robert Hooke’s Material Models. In: Frigg, R., Hunter, M. (eds) Beyond Mimesis and Convention. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 262. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3851-7_9

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