Robert Hooke at 371

Abstract

Writing in his manuscript treatise “An Idea of Education”, John Aubrey struck the Baconian attitude that to study with the greatest proatability a “few books, but well chosen, thoroughly digested with practice and observation, does the business”. Of those with whom Aubrey had discussed this, Thomas Hobbes and William Petty conaded in him their belief “that had they read as much as other men, they should have known no more than other men”. Further, Aubrey held that “neither are Sir Ch. Wren or Mr. R. Hooke great readers” (Aubrey 1972, 86). We recognize such claims as being of a piece with the Royal Society’s motto, nullius in verba—or, roughly, “take no-one’s word for it”; real knowledge came from the experimental study of nature, not through reliance on established authorities. But that the Royal Society only made bold to proclaim this on the authority of Horace is one clue that its modern students should not take these disavowals of conventional learning at face value. As historians have come to realize, the natural philosophers assembled within the Royal Society’s orbit were every bit as concerned with what they might learn from books as they were with investigating the book of nature. A case in point (indeed, an instance of the angerpost) is Robert Hooke, whose broad ranging scholarly, scientiac and philosophical interests are everywhere attested in Aubrey’s “Idea”, and whose personal library was both sizeable and diverse. To give a by no means systematic (or exhaustive) survey of the areas in which he was active, Hooke was a physicist, engineer, microscopist, meteorologist, horologist, chronologer, geologist, astronomer, psychologist, surveyor, architect, alchemist, mathematician, musicologist, logician, grammarian and bibliophile. When praising him, Aubrey knew whereof he spoke: Hooke was one of his closest friends and, during Aubrey’s increasingly frequent spells of impecuniosity, Hooke lent him support.