Robert Hooke’s Experimental Philosophy
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Reaktion Books
Published:25th Nov '24
Should be back in stock very soon
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.
Robert Hooke is one of the less accessible geniuses from the age of Isaac Newton (he invented microscopic science), so I pounced on Robert Hooke’s Experimental Philosophy by Felicity Henderson, the latest in the publisher’s refulgent Renaissance Lives series (they also publish the equally admired Critical Lives series). -- Duncan Fallowell * The Spectator 'Books of the Year 2024' *
Seventeenth-century English polymath Robert Hooke played a pivotal role in developing scientific methodology, according to this enlightening debut history . . . The history illuminates the formative early years of science as a scholarly discipline, and Henderson makes a strong case that Hooke’s role in building that discipline has been unjustly overlooked. This intrigues. * Publishers Weekly *
In this absorbing and wide-ranging study, Felicity Henderson charts the vast range of activities pursued by the virtuoso Robert Hooke, natural philosopher and architect, master of ingenious instruments and visionary projects. Hooke’s remarkable enterprises are here used with great skill and wit to explore the effective methods of inquiry and innovation developed in early modernity, and to illuminate the vivid and active worlds of commerce, knowledge and controversy that flourished in Restoration London. * Simon Schaffer, Professor of History of Science, University of Cambridge *
In her splendid myth-busting account, Felicity Henderson searches out the true Robert Hooke, scrutinising his own words to reveal an inspired researcher who drew up the blueprint for modern science. Beautifully written and illustrated, this penetrating book explores the thoughts and activities of a man who profoundly influenced the future. * Patricia Fara, Emeritus Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, and author of Life after Gravity: Isaac Newton's London Career *
Felicity Henderson’s book provides a fresh and engaging view of Robert Hooke, giving a vivid sense of his milieu in the workshops and coffee-houses of Restoration London, exploring the new world that he brought to light in his Micrographia and other writings, and filling out the ambitions for knowledge outlined in his intriguingly entitled “philosophical algebra”. * Michael Hunter, Emeritus Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London, and author of The Decline of Magic: Britain in the Enlightenment *
ISBN: 9781789149548
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
184 pages