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Annals of Science Volume 52, 1995 - Issue 2
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Mechanism and activity in the scientific revolution: The case of Robert Hooke

Mark E. Ehrlich Department of History of Science, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, 53706, USA
Pages 127-151 | Received 14 May 1993, Published online: 23 Aug 2006

  • Westfall , Richard S. 1971 . The Construction of Modern Science 41 – 41 . Cambridge Other landmark works include Marie Boas, ‘The Establishment of the Mechanical Philosophy’, Osiris, 10 (1952), 412–514; Herbert Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science: 1300–1800 (London, 1950); E. J. Dijksterhuis, The Mechanization of the World Picture, translated by C. Dikshoorn (Oxford, 1961).
  • Westfall . 1971 . The Construction of Modern Science 31 – 31 . Cambridge See also Dijksterhuis (footnote 1), 386–501; Butterfield (footnote 1), 103–23.
  • Hutchison , Keith . 1982 . What Happened to Occult Qualities in the Scientific Revolution? . Isis , 73 : 233 – 253 .
  • Millen , Ron . 1985 . “ The Manifestation of Occult Qualities in the Scientific Revolution ” . In Religion Science, and Worldview: Essays in Honor of R. S. Westfall Edited by: Osler , M.J. and Farber , P.L. 185 – 216 . Cambridge
  • Hutchison . 1982 . What Happened to Occult Qualities in the Scientific Revolution? . Isis , 73 : 234 – 234 .
  • Hutchison . 1982 . What Happened to Occult Qualities in the Scientific Revolution? . Isis , 73 : 242 – 242 .
  • Millen . 1985 . “ The Manifestation of Occult Qualities in the Scientific Revolution ” . In Religion Science, and Worldview: Essays in Honor of R. S. Westfall Edited by: Osler , M.J. and Farber , P.L. 190 – 190 . Cambridge
  • Boyle , Robert . 1772 . “ Origin of Forms and Qualities ” . In The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle Edited by: Birch , Thomas . Vol. 6 , 1 – 137 . London [hereafter Works], iii (p. 13)
  • Henry , John . 1986 . Occult Qualities and the Experimental Philosophy: Active Principles in Pre-Newtonian Matter Theory . History of Science , 24 : 335 – 381 .
  • Schaffer , Simon . 1987 . Godly Men and Mechanical Philosophers: Souls and Spirits in Restoration Natural Philosophy . Science in Context , 1 : 55 – 85 .
  • Henry , John . 1989 . “ Robert Hooke, the Incongruous Mechanist ” . In Robert Hooke: New Studies , Edited by: Hunter , Michael and Schaffer , Simon . 149 – 180 . Woodbridge : Boydell Preee .
  • Henry . 1989 . “ Robert Hooke, the Incongruous Mechanist ” . In Robert Hooke: New Studies , Edited by: Hunter , Michael and Schaffer , Simon . 151 – 151 . Woodbridge : Boydell Preee .
  • Gunther , R.T. 1923–1945 . Early Science in Oxford Vol. 14 , 8 – 8 . Oxford x (1935)
  • Gunther , R.T. 1923–1945 . Early Science in Oxford Vol. 14 , 9 – 10 . Oxford
  • This quotation is Newton's English translation of the original Latin passage Newton Isaac Opticks , fourth edition Dover Publications New York 1952 376 376
  • Boyle , Robert . 1772 . “ New Experiments Physico-Mechanical, Touching the Spring of the Air ” . In Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle Edited by: Birch , Thomas . Vol. 6 , 1 – 117 . London i (p. 13)
  • Gunther . 1923–1945 . Early Science in Oxford Vol. 14 , 18 – 19 . Oxford x 24–26
  • Gunther . 1923–1945 . Early Science in Oxford Vol. 14 , 40 – 40 . Oxford 41
  • Henry . 1989 . “ Robert Hooke, the Incongruous Mechanist ” . In Robert Hooke: New Studies , Edited by: Hunter , Michael and Schaffer , Simon . 149 – 149 . Woodbridge : Boydell Preee .
  • Hooke , Robert . 1961 . Micrographia , 16 – 16 . New York : Dover Publications .
  • Henry . 1989 . “ Robert Hooke, the Incongruous Mechanist ” . In Robert Hooke: New Studies , Edited by: Hunter , Michael and Schaffer , Simon . 151 – 151 . Woodbridge : Boydell Preee .
  • Hooke . 1961 . Micrographia , 12 – 12 . New York : Dover Publications .
  • Hooke . 1961 . Micrographia , 12 – 12 . New York : Dover Publications .
  • Hooke . 1961 . Micrographia , 15 – 15 . New York : Dover Publications .
  • Hooke . 1961 . Micrographia , 15 – 15 . New York : Dover Publications .
  • Hooke . 1961 . Micrographia , 15 – 15 . New York : Dover Publications .
  • For an excellent account of Renaissance and seventeenth-century uses of minimism, see Emerton Norma E. The Scientific Reinterpretation of Form Cornell University Press Ithaca 1984 88 125
  • Hooke . 1961 . Micrographia , 15 – 15 . New York : Dover Publications .
  • Penelope Gouk has argued that Hooke's vibratory theory of matter owes much to his music theory; The Role of Acoustics and Music Theory in the Scientific Work of Robert Hooke Annals of Science 1980 37 573 605 Building on Gouk's work, Kassler and Oldroyd have stressed that Hooke's theories of music are entirely mechanical and that he employs them in much of his cosmological work. See J. C. Kassler and D. R. Oldroyd, ‘Robert Hooke's Trinity College “Musick Scripts”, his Music Theory and the Role of Music in his Cosmology’, Annals of Science, 40 (1983), 559–95.
  • Henry . 1989 . “ Robert Hooke, the Incongruous Mechanist ” . In Robert Hooke: New Studies , Edited by: Hunter , Michael and Schaffer , Simon . 159 – 159 . Woodbridge : Boydell Preee . Hooke (footnote 22), 15.
  • Henry . 1989 . “ Robert Hooke, the Incongruous Mechanist ” . In Robert Hooke: New Studies , Edited by: Hunter , Michael and Schaffer , Simon . 159 – 159 . Woodbridge : Boydell Preee . The passage is taken from Robert Hooke, Posthumous Works (1705), edited by Richard Waller (New York: Johnson Reprint, 1969), p. 364.
  • Hooke . 1705 . Posthumous Works , Edited by: Waller , Richard . 364 – 364 . New York : Johnson Reprint . 1969 author's emphasis.
  • Stephen Pumphrey has shown that in 1683 and 1684 Hooke actively pursued experiments designed to demonstrate that magnetism was produced mechanically. Pumphrey argues that Hooke was, in fact, one of the the primary contributors to the triumph of mechanical interpretations of magnetism in the Royal Society, and ultimately the downfall of the ‘magnetic philosophy’ as an independent philosophy of nature. See Pumphrey Stephen Mechanizing Magnetism in Restoration England: the Decline of the Magnetic Philosophy Annals of Science 1987 44 1 22
  • Hooke . 1961 . Micrographia , 16 – 16 . New York : Dover Publications .
  • Hooke . Micrographia , 16 – 16 . New York : Dover Publications .
  • Henry . 1989 . “ Robert Hooke, the Incongruous Mechanist ” . In Robert Hooke: New Studies , Edited by: Hunter , Michael and Schaffer , Simon . 158 – 158 . Woodbridge : Boydell Preee .
  • Hooke . 1961 . Micrographia , 16 – 16 . New York : Dover Publications .
  • Henry . 1989 . “ Robert Hooke, the Incongruous Mechanist ” . In Robert Hooke: New Studies , Edited by: Hunter , Michael and Schaffer , Simon . 149 – 149 . Woodbridge : Boydell Preee .
  • Hooke . 1961 . Micrographia , 31 – 31 . New York : Dover Publications .
  • Hooke . 1961 . Micrographia , 31 – 31 . New York : Dover Publications .
  • Gunther . 1923–1945 . Early Science in Oxford Vol. VIII , 333 – 333 . Oxford 14 vols 1931
  • Gunther . 1923–1945 . Early Science in Oxford Vol. VIII , 339 – 339 . Oxford 14 vols 1931
  • Gunther . 1923–1945 . Early Science in Oxford Vol. VIII , 340 – 340 . Oxford 14 vols 1931
  • Gunther . 1923–1945 . Early Science in Oxford Vol. VIII , 340 – 340 . Oxford 14 vols 1931
  • Henry . 1989 . “ Robert Hooke, the Incongruous Mechanist ” . In Robert Hooke: New Studies , Edited by: Hunter , Michael and Schaffer , Simon . 160 – 160 . Woodbridge : Boydell Preee .
  • Gunther . 1923–1945 . Early Science in Oxford Vol. VIII , 341 – 341 . Oxford 14 vols 1931
  • Gunther . 1923–1945 . Early Science in Oxford Vol. VIII , 345 – 345 . Oxford 14 vols 1931
  • On the relationship between Hooke's spring law and his model of springy bodies, see Moyer Albert Robert Hooke's Ambiguous Presentation of “Hooke's Law” Isis 1977 68 266 275 For an analysis of Moyer's arguments, see Mark E. Ehrlich, ‘Interpreting the Scientific Revolution: Robert Hooke on Mechanism and Activity’ (PhD Dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1992), pp. 140–7.
  • Schaffer . 1987 . Godly Men and Mechanical Philosophers: Souls and Spirits in Restoration Natural Philosophy . Science in Context , 1 : 64 – 64 .
  • Frank , Robert G. Jr. 1980 . Harvey and the Oxford Physiologists , 138 – 138 . Los Angeles : University of California Press .
  • Schaffer . 1987 . Godly Men and Mechanical Philosophers: Souls and Spirits in Restoration Natural Philosophy . Science in Context , 1 : 64 – 64 .
  • Hooke . 1969 . Posthumous Works (1705) , Edited by: Waller , Richard . 165 – 165 . New York : Johnson Reprint .
  • Gunther . 1923–1945 . Early Science in Oxford Vol. VIII , 339 – 339 . Oxford 14 vols 1931
  • J. E. McGuire has shown that at one point Newton held a view somewhat like this. In a draft written around 1716 for an unpublished third edition of the Principia, Newton defines body as ‘every thing which can be moved and touched, in which there is resistance to tangible things, and its resistance, if it is great enough, can be perceived’. McGuire J.E. Body and Void in Newton's De Mundi Systemate: Some New Sources Archive for History of Exact Sciences 1966 3 206 248 (p. 220). There has been some discussion (though less than might be expected) of seventeenth-century theories of matter and man's ability to comprehend the essence thereof. Some useful studies include: Margaret J. Osler, ‘John Locke and the Changing Ideal of Scientific Knowledge’, Journal for the History of Ideas, 31 (1970), 3 16; Margaret J. Osler, ‘Galileo, Motion and Essences’, Isis, 64 (1973), 504–9; Richard H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes (Assen: Koninklijke Van Gorcum & Co., 1960), pp. 131–53; Ivor Leclerc, The Nature of Physical Existence (New York: Humanities Press, 1972); Ivor Leclerc, The Nature of Physical Existence (New York: Humanities Press, 1972); Ivor Leclerc, The Philosophy of Nature (Washington, DC: Catholic University, 1986).
  • Gunther . 1923–1945 . Early Science in Oxford Vol. VIII , 339 – 339 . Oxford 14 vols 1931
  • Gunther . 1923–1945 . Early Science in Oxford Vol. VIII , 339 – 340 . Oxford 14 vols 1931
  • One other possible input into Hooke's idea that matter and motion are the same thing is the writings of Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes's philosophy was by all accounts completely mechanical, although he placed an extremely heavy emphasis on the role of motion in the production of virtually all natural phenomena. The most extensive study of Hobbes's natural philosophy remains Frithiof Brandt, Thomas Hobbes's Mechanical Conception of Nature Levin and Munksgaard Copenhagen 1927 For a briefer treatment, and review of contemporary responses to Hobbes, see S. I. Mintz, The Hunting of Leviathan (Cambridge, 1962).
  • Gunther . 1923–1945 . Early Science in Oxford 340 – 340 . Oxford 14 vols
  • Hooke . 1961 . Micrographia , 55 – 56 . New York : Dover Publications .
  • Hooke . 1961 . Micrographia , 56 – 56 . New York : Dover Publications .
  • Hooke . 1961 . Micrographia , 56 – 57 . New York : Dover Publications .
  • Hooke . 1705 . Posthumous Works Edited by: Waller , Richard . 79 – 79 . New York Johnson Reprint, 1969
  • Hooke . 1705 . Posthumous Works Edited by: Waller , Richard . New York Johnson Reprint, 1969
  • Henry . 1989 . “ Robert Hooke, the Incongruous Mechanist ” . In Robert Hooke: New Studies , Edited by: Hunter , Michael and Schaffer , Simon . 154 – 154 . Woodbridge : Boydell Preee . Charles Webster, ‘Henry Power's Experimental Philosophy’, Ambix, 14 (1967), 150–178
  • Power's views of spirit are most lucidly expressed in the section entitled: ‘Digression on animal spirits’, in his Experimental Philosophy (1664) Johndon Reprint Corp. New York 1966 61 72
  • The nature of spirits, and particularly the relationship between spirits and souls, is a difficult but critical question in determining a philosopher's ontology. D. P. Walker has published a number of studies that both highlight the entirely corporeal nature of spirits in the medical tradition, and also delve into interpretations of spirit as less corporeal entities by certain other thinkers. See Walker D.P. Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella London 1958 D. P. Walker, ‘The Astral Body in Renaissance Medicine’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 21 (1958), 119–31; D. P. Walker, ‘Francis Bacon and Spiritus’, in Science, Medicine and Society, edited by Allan Debus, 2 vols (New York: Science History Publications, 1972), II, pp. 121–31; D. P. Walker, Medical Spirits and God and the Soul’, in Spiritus, edited by Marta Fattori and Massimo Bianchi (Rome: Edizioni dell'Ateneo, 1984), pp. 223–44. Henry has argued that there were an increasing number of seventeenth-century medical writers who rejected strict dualism between spirits and souls: John Henry, ‘Medicine and Pneumatology: Henry More, Richard Baxter, and Francis Glisson's Treatise on the Energetic Nature of Substance’, Medical History, 31 (1987), 15–40; John Henry, ‘The Matter of Souls: Medical Theory and Theology in Seventeenth-Century England’, in The Medical Revolution of the Seventeenth Century, edited by Roger French and Andrew Wear (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 87–113. Surprisingly, Schaffer's ‘Godly Men and Mechanical Philosophers’ (footnote 11) does not critically examine the various seventeenth-century views of the relationship between soul and spirit. For an extremely sophisticated analysis of the relationship between souls and spirits in medieval thought, see James J. Bono, ‘Medical Spirits and the Medieval Language of Life’, Traditio, 40 (1984), 91–130.
  • Hooke . 1705 . Posthumous Works Edited by: Waller , Richard . 115 – 115 . New York Johnson Reprint, 1969
  • Hooke . 1705 . Posthumous Works Edited by: Waller , Richard . New York
  • Hooke . 1705 . Posthumous Works Edited by: Waller , Richard . 115 – 116 . New York
  • Hooke . 1705 . Posthumous Works Edited by: Waller , Richard . 171 – 171 . New York
  • Hooke . 1705 . Posthumous Works Edited by: Waller , Richard . 172 – 172 . New York
  • Hooke's belief that uniformity of motion makes a solid may be related to the Cartesian doctrine that solidity derves from the relative rest of adjacent particles. See Descartes Rene Principles of Philosophy Rodgers Miller Valentine Miller Reese P. D. Reidel Boston 1983 70 70
  • On interpretations of ‘powers’ in seventeenth-century philosophy, see O'Toole Frederick J. Qualities and Powers in the Corpuscular Philosophy of Robert Boyle Journal of the History Philosophy 1974 22 295 315 Peter Alexander, Ideas, Qualities, and Corpuscles; Locke and Boyle on the External World (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 150–67.
  • Hooke . 1705 . Posthumous Works Edited by: Waller , Richard . 172 – 172 . New York
  • Westfall , Richard . 1971 . Force in Newton's Physics , 208 – 208 . New York : American Elsevier .
  • Hooke . 1705 . Posthumous Works Edited by: Waller , Richard . 172 – 172 . New York
  • Henry . 1989 . “ Robert Hooke, the Incongruous Mechanist ” . In Robert Hooke: New Studies , Edited by: Hunter , Michael and Schaffer , Simon . 151 – 151 . Woodbridge : Boydell Preee .
  • Schaffer . 1971 . The Construction of Modern Science 65 – 66 . Cambridge
  • Hooke . 1705 . Posthumous Works Edited by: Waller , Richard . 173 – 173 . New York
  • Waller , Richard , ed. 1705 . Posthumous Works New York
  • Waller , Richard , ed. 1705 . Posthumous Works New York
  • Henry . 1989 . “ Robert Hooke, the Incongruous Mechanist ” . In Robert Hooke: New Studies , Edited by: Hunter , Michael and Schaffer , Simon . 155 – 155 . Woodbridge : Boydell Preee .
  • Hooke . 1961 . Micrographia , 130 – 131 . New York : Dover Publications .
  • Hooke . 1961 . Micrographia , 190 – 190 . New York : Dover Publications .
  • Bacon , Francis . 1960 . New Organon Edited by: Anderson , Fulton H. 122 – 122 . New York (Book II, Aph 2).
  • Two historians who have shown considerable sensitivity to this issue are Bennet J.A. Rossi Paolo Bennet J.A. Cosmology and the Magnetical Philosophy, 1640–1680 Journal for the History of Astronomy 1981 12 165 177 Paolo Rossi, Francis Bacon: From Magic to Science, translated by S. Rabinovitch (London, 1968). One quotation from Rossi may suffice to illustrate the circumspection needed in interpreting seventeenth-century writings: ‘Bacon's atomist and materialist leanings have sometimes led him to use certain alchemical terms in a context that alters their original meaning, and it will be necessary in the course of this study to determine the extent of these alternations’. (p. 14).

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