Physics – Physics Education
Scientific paper
Jan 2000
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2000phyed..35...77n&link_type=abstract
Physics Education, Volume 35, Issue 1, pp. 77-78 (2000).
Physics
Physics Education
Scientific paper
Many physics students only come across Hooke when they learn his law of stretching springs, which is a pity because it is just one of his contributions to progress in science, and a minor one at that. His, Micrographia, the first great book of microscopical observations, arouses admiration to this day. He was also active in horology, astronomy, geology and surveying, and he took part in biological experiments, transfusing blood between animals. Much of his work was done while he was curator of experiments for the Royal Society, in which he was involved almost from its foundation. This was by no means a full-time occupation, however. After the Great Fire of London, Hooke was appointed one of the three surveyors for the rebuilding of the city. One of the others was Christopher Wren, a lifelong friend. In this role Hooke was responsible for the design of several buildings, including the Monument.
Nichols writes about all these activities, as well as Hooke's childhood, his education at Westminster School, the University of Oxford when Hooke was an undergraduate, and the founding of the Royal Society. The book draws on research for a master's degree. Turning a dissertation into a popular book is risky. The author has avoided the pitfall of making it too academic, but the result is not satisfying. Nichols seems overawed by Hooke and his work, frequently seeming to credit Hooke with a far-reaching influence that he did not necessarily have. There may be a case for lauding Hooke as the father of English microscopy, the father of English meteorology, and the founder of English geology and earth sciences, but it needs to be made much more critically, even in a popular work. Hooke was full of good ideas, but he rarely continued long enough to put them into practice. There is no doubt that Hooke proposed using a balance wheel and spring to improve the timekeeping of a watch, for example, but he did not have a watch made to his design until after Christiaan Huygens had independently devised a similar mechanism and published it. Hooke did propose a marine chronometer to solve the (already well understood) problem of finding longitude at sea, but it was John Harrison, decades later, who built a chronometer, and there is not the slightest reason to believe he owed anything to Hooke.
The book records Hooke's activities, but is devoid of comment or analysis. The casual cruelty (by modern standards) to the animals used in the blood transfusion experiments passes without remark. The chapter about Oxford University reads almost like entries from a biographical dictionary. The purpose of this and the following chapter on the founding of the Royal Society only becomes apparent at the end, if the reader has not lost interest by then. Expert opinion acknowledges that the popular belief that Wren was primarily responsible for the rebuilding of the City of London undervalues Hooke's work, but Nichols, in his unwavering support for Hooke, glosses over the genuine problems of disentangling their contributions. The disputes between Hooke and Newton are well known, and no-one suggests that Newton was a pleasant person, but the unpleasantness was not all on one side. Historians agree that Hooke was a difficult man.
There are no numbered references or notes, a not unusual policy in a popular book, but many sources (most of them secondary) are mentioned in the text. They do not help to make it read well, and the details are incomplete, but so are the details of many of the items listed in the bibliography. An index would be useful, but it is lacking. There are signs in a number of places that the book has not been carefully revised and edited.
This ought to be a book to recommend to young students, but it would fail to inspire them. This is a pity, because there is no doubt that Hooke was one of the towering figures of the beginning of the scientific revolution. The fledgling Royal Society might not have survived without the experiments and demonstrations he provided. Historians know this but it deserves to be more widely recognized.
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