Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T22:10:20.910Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Self-Scrutiny and the Study of Nature: Robert Hooke's Diary as Natural History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Lotte Mulligan
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Robert Hooke's intellectual life was steadfastly dedicated to the pursuit of natural philosophy and the formulation of an appropriate method for studying nature, His daily life, however, was seemingly fragmented—an energetic rush in and around the city of London, with him acting now as curator (and later secretary) of the Royal Society, now as Cutlerian Lecturer in the History of Nature and Art, now as Geometry Professor at Gresham College, now as architect and surveyor of postfire London, and forever as a member of a number of intersecting social, intellectual, and professional circles that made up London's coffeehouse culture. Such a range of activities was perhaps wider than that of many of his contemporaries, though other diarists, most notably Samuel Pepys, recorded similarly crammed lives. Yet despite the apparently unsystematic nature of his daily round he was, also like Pepys, a methodical man who hated to waste time, and for long periods he kept a diary that helped him account for how he spent it.

I argue here that his diary keeping was an integral part of his scientific vision reflecting the epistemological and methodological practices that guided him as a student of nature. The diary should be read, I propose, not as an “after-hours” incidental activity removed from his professional and intellectual life; both its form and its content suggest that he chose to record a self that was as subject to scientific scrutiny as the rest of nature and that he thought that such a record could be applied to producing, in the end, a fully objective “history” with himself as the datum.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , July 1996 , pp. 311 - 342
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Hooke's scientific achievements have had a mixed press, even among modern authors. 'Espinasse, Margaret, in Robert Hooke (London, 1956)Google Scholar, gives what is still a balanced, sympathetic, and useful account of them, while Westfall's, Richard “Introduction” to The Posthumous Works of Dr Robert Hooke, MS, SRS, ed. Waller, Richard (London, 1705Google Scholar; facsimile ed. New York, 1969), is rather negative in the inevitable comparison of Hooke's work with Newton's. For a more recent assessment, see Pugliesi, Patri, “The Scientific Achievement of Robert Hooke” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1982)Google Scholar. Most recent studies of him in Hunter, Michael and Schaffer, Simon, eds., Robert Hooke: New Studies (Woodbridge, Sussex, 1989)Google Scholar, give positive assessments of his contributions.

2 See extracts from The Diary of Robert Hooke, ed. Robinson, Henry and Adams, Walter (London, 1935Google Scholar; reprint, London, 1968) (henceforth Diary, followed by the date of entry): e.g., “At Jonathans [Coffeehouse] Hoskins, Hill, Colwall, Tison, Pappin. Little Philosophical” (October 30, 1679); “At Jonathans, nothing” (September 18, 1680); on a coach trip returning from Oxford: “Returned Wensday night with a twittle twattle company in coach” (May 8, 1678); “At Garways [Coffeehouse] Little sayd or done this Day [a Sunday]” (March 5, 1676).

3 One folio-sized volume of Hooke's diary from 1672 to 1683, “The Diary of Robert Hooke,” is held at the Guildhall Library, London, MS 1758 (henceforth called “Diary,” followed by the date of entry and folio number). Another pocket-book-sized volume from 1688 to 1693, miscataloged as “The Diary of James Petiver,” is in the British Library (BL), London, Sloane MSS 4024. This volume has been published in Gunther, R. T., ed., Early Science at Oxford (London, 1935; reprint, London, 1969), 10:69–265Google Scholar. Some pages from a period between these are in BL, London, Sloane MSS 1039, fols. 152–58.

4 Another contemporary diarist and friend of Hooke's, Samuel Pepys, is described by his modern editors as “a man of system, and one to whom the keeping of records was necessary to the art of living.” See The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. Latham, Robert and Matthews, William, 9 vols. (London, 1970–1983), 1:xxviiGoogle Scholar.

5 Hooke, Robert, A General Scheme, or Idea of the Present State of Natural Philosophy, in Waller, , ed., p. 62Google Scholar.

6 Wilkins, John, Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language (London, 1668)Google Scholar; Bacon, Francis, The Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon, ed. Robertson, John M. (London, 1905), pp. 409–12Google Scholar. See also Hooke's own attempts at universal classification in A General Scheme, pp. 22–24.

7 See Mulligan, Lotte, “Robert Hooke and Certain Knowledge,” Seventeenth Century 1 (1992): 151–69Google Scholar.

8 For example, see, among many other works, Boyle, Robert, Certain Physiological Essays, in The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, 5 vols., ed. Birch, Thomas (London, 1744), 1:300–313Google Scholar (Royal Society, Boyle Papers, xxxviii).

9 See The Works of John Locke, 4 vols. (London, 1767), 4:248–61Google Scholar.

10 See Hooke's “Diary” (n. 3 above), fol. 1.

11 The issue of priority and the style in which such claims were made have been well discussed by Iliffe, Rob, “‘In the Warehouse’: Privacy, Property and Priority in the Early Royal Society,” History of Science 30 (1992): 29–68Google Scholar. Others who discuss the issue of intellectual property include Merton, R. K., “Priorities in Scientific Discovery,” in The Sociology of Science, ed. Storer, N. W. (Chicago, 1973)Google Scholar; and, in regard to Hooke and the seventeenth-century context, Shapin, Steven, “Who Was Robert Hooke?” in Hunter, and Schaffer, , eds. (n. 1 above), pp. 253–86Google Scholar, and “The House of Experiment in Seventeenth-Century England,” Isis 79 (1983): 373–404Google Scholar. For the conventionality of the rhetoric of a claim to priority for scientific discovery, see Shuster, J. A. and Yeo, R. R., eds., The Politics and Rhetoric of Scientific Method (Dordrecht, 1986), pp. 34–59Google Scholar.

12 See Mulligan, “Robert Hooke and Certain Knowledge”; Hesse, Mary, “Hooke's ‘Philosophical Algebra,’” Isis 7 (1966): 69–82Google Scholar; Oldroyd, D. R., “Robert Hooke's Methodology of Science as Exemplified in His ‘Discourse of Earthquakes,’” British Journal of the History of Science 6 (1972): 109–33Google Scholar, The Arch of Knowledge (New York: Methuen, 1986), pp. 66–68Google Scholar, “Some Writings of Robert Hooke on Procedures for the Prosecution of Scientific Enquiry Including His ‘Lectures of Things Requisite to a Nat'ral History,’” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 41 (1987): 145–67Google Scholar; and Pugliesi (n. 1 above), pp. 50 ff.

13 See Hooke's, Diary (n. 2 above), October 8, 1674Google Scholar; August 22, 1678. This claim was satirized, to Hooke's chagrin, by Shadwell, Thomas, in The Virtuoso, ed. Nicholson, M. H. and Rodes, D. S. (London, 1966), 2:iiGoogle Scholar.

14 See Hooke's entries for March 1672 to April 1673 in the “Diary,” passim, fols. 1, 3, 5, 7.

15 See the Royal Society Library, London, Royal Society Classified Papers, 1667–1740, vol. 20, no. 2, “For the better making of a History of the Weather”, no. 24, “For more accurate History of Changes in the Weather”; and in Sprat, Thomas, The History of the Royal Society (London, 1667), facsimile ed., ed. Cope, Jackson I. (St. Louis, 1959), pp. 173–79Google Scholar.

16 See, e.g., Hooke, A General Scheme (n. 5 above), the “Preface” to Micrographia, in Gunther, , ed. (n. 3 above), vol. 13 (London, 1938; reprint, London, 1968)Google Scholar, pt. 5, and Discourse of Earthquakes in Waller, , ed. (n. 1 above), pp. 329–30Google Scholar.

17 See pp. 332–33 below.

18 See Mulligan, Lotte, “Robert Hooke's ‘Memoranda’: Memory and Natural History,” Annals of Science 49 (1992): 47–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 See Ong, Walter, “The Writer's Audience Is Always a Fiction,” in Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness, ed. Ong, Walter (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977), pp. 53–81Google Scholar; Fothergill, Robert A., Private Chronicles: A Study of English Diaries (London, 1974)Google Scholar; Allport, Gordon W., The Uses of Personal Documents in the Psychological Sciences (New York, 1942)Google Scholar, chap. 5; The Diary of Samuel Pepys (n. 4 above), 1:cvi–cxiiGoogle Scholar; Foisil, Madeleine, “The Literature of Intimacy,” in A History of Private Life, vol. 3, The Passions of the Renaissance, ed. Chartier, Roger (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), pp. 327 ff.Google Scholar

20 “Slept with Grace,” Diary (June 14, 1676)Google ScholarPubMed.

21 “Brouncker a dog for belying me to the King,” Diary (April 29, 1675)Google ScholarPubMed.

22 For example, the duchess of Newcastle wrote and published her fragment when she was forty-seven; Lady Mary Rich, countess of Warwick, wrote hers in her last year at age fifty-nine; John Bunyan was forty-eight; Hieronimo Cardano a hoary seventy-five; Lord Herbert of Cherbury, sixty-one. For the duchess of Newcastle, see Margaret, , duchess of Newcastle, The Life of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, to which is added the True Relation of my Breeding and Life, ed. Firth, C. H. (London, 1667; reprint, London, n.d.), pp. 155–78Google Scholar; for Mary Rich, duchess of Warwick, , see Some Specialities in the Life of M. Warwicke, Early English Poetry, Ballads, etc., Percy Society (London, 1848), 22:1–48Google Scholar; for Bunyan, see Bunyun, John, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (London, 1969), pp. 1–102Google Scholar; for Cardano, see Cardan, Jerome, The Book of my Life, ed. Stoner, Jean (New York, 1962)Google Scholar; for Edward, Lord Cherbury, The Life of Edward, Herbert, Lord Cherbury written by Himself, ed. Shuttleworth, J. M. (London, 1976)Google Scholar.

23 See Mulligan, “Hooke and Certain Knowledge” (n. 7 above).

24 Matthews, William, British Diaries: An Annotated Bibliography of British Diaries (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950)Google Scholar.

25 For example, Roger Lowe, an apprentice mercer, used his diary to record his daily life and his religious reflections, tracing his too slow advance in the world but leaving his fate to God: “I went to Thomas Holly's and William Chaddocke's to buy swines grasse, which I did and when I came home I was very pensive and sad in consideration of my povertie and I sunge the 24th psalme, and after I was very hearty. God will comfort and supply the wants of his poor servants, and God at present deny worldly things, yet if in the meane while God put comfort into huts, this is better” (see The Diary of Roger Lowe, ed. Sachse, William L. [London, 1938], p. 15Google Scholar). Lady Sarah Cowper daily poured into her diary her disappointments at not being able, by her husband's tyranny and lack of “proper” family government, to fulfill her God-appointed place as stewardess of His plenty and as appropriate female guide and controller over her “inferiors”: “A sad Brawl among the servants in our ill-governed family. It grieves me that I have no more power to do good, but I comfort myself with the hope yt God will not lay the Sin to my Charge, since he hath not allowd me the means to redress it” (“The Diary of Sarah Cowper,” 1703, Hertford Record Office, D/EP F29, fol. 8).

26 The Diary of the Reverend Robert Meeke, ed. Morehouse, H. J. and Hulbert, C. A. (London, 1874)Google Scholar; The Diary of Ralph Josselin, 1616–1683, ed. Macfarlane, Alan (London: British Academy, Oxford University Press, 1976)Google Scholar; The Dyurnall of Adam Eyre, ed. Morehouse, H. J., Surtees Society, vol. 65 (York, 1875)Google Scholar; The Memorandum Book of Sir Walter Calverley, Kt., ed. Margerison, S., Surtees Society, vol. 77 (York, 1886)Google Scholar.

27 I will discuss this more fully in my forthcoming book on the diary of Robert Hooke.

28 The Diary of Samuel Pepys (n. 4 above), 7:36–37Google Scholar.

29 Hooke's, Diary (n. 2 above), September 30, 1678Google Scholar; December 19, 1676.

30 Ibid., August 1, 1678.

31 Guildhall Library, MS 1758.

32 Hooke's “Diary” (n. 3 above), fol. 1.

33 See “Diary” extract below, on pp. 321–23.

34 “Lent Batchellor 2 Bookes … of raritys …. Vomit to take …. To paint windows … to observe taile of the great Beare … to take Picula coch. Thursday.” Ibid., fol. 1.

35 Ibid., fol. 21.

36 Ibid., fol. 1.

37 For example, see the entries for March 17, 1672; May 12, 1672; and February 9, 1673, in ibid., fols. 1, 19.

38 For example, “Invention of polishing specular spectacles” (in ibid., fol. 6); “August 27 [1672] discoursed to Dr Wren of my invention to make a hand move in the shadow by the help of glass threds set in a cylinder concave to make to switch by an upward cylinder of glasse vist. solid or filled with water serving instead of a burning glasse. Dr Wren discoursed his way of rectifying the hand by the help of glasse at noon. Both ways are very practicable” (ibid., fol. 4.); “Sept. 1 [1672] Invention of making a setting musical cylinder. Invention of instrument to find the eclipse of the Starrs by the Moon” (ibid., fol. 4); “Etching upon Home with a needle and presently printing off with a Rowle presse …. Morris saw tempering of Springs by heating them till tallow burns. Ginger the life of cider” (ibid., fol. 14); “Lent to Mr Croon by his maid Alexander Marchettis Exercitationes Mechanics …. Oldenburgh keeps his booke. M[emo] to ask him …. Mr Haux assured me that the powder or sawdust of beechwood made very fine and strewn upon any wound was a most excellent Balsam. Paid for bringing skull from Sir Robert Morays by coach from Arundel 1st funnell 4d retort 1s” (ibid., fol. 18).

39 See the “Diary” entries: “Binding 8s” (April 4, 1673); “lent Dr Croon Marchetti de Resistentia Solidorum” (April 8, 1673); “Blackburne now paid me 9 half crowns which with 7 I had before made 16 for 16 weeks from the 5th of December 1672” (April 19, 1673); “Received from Mr Boyle £20 for turret” (April 24, 1673); “Read Sr. J. Cutlers Lecture” (July 3, 1673); “Hired Dol Lord” (October 17, 1673).

40 “Nells cousin came out of country called. Bridget Taylor” (August 29, 1673); “Account cleered with Nell” (August 30, 1673); “Hired Dol Lord” (October 17, 1673).

41 For example, “Dr Wren knighted and gone to Oxford” (November 14, 1673); “THE BISHOP OF LONDON DIED 83” (October 7, 1675); “MAY DAY” (May 1, 1676); “R. SOCIETY ADJOURNED” (June 22, 1676); “VALENTINE DAY” (February 14, 1677); “42” [in large letters] (July 18, 1677); “XXXXV. Deo Gratias” (July 18, 1680).

42 For example, the opening entry on March 10, 1672, includes “News of 3 empty Dutch ships taken by ye Monmouth”; “Smyrna fleet reported taken” and “Hawks with news of Dutch. Smyrna fleet escaping. Toleration Declared” (March 16, 1672, fol. 1). The later diary, begun on November 1, 1688, notes on the next day, “At John, affidavits for the Prince of Wales [James II's five-month-old son]”; on the following day, “Proclamation against Declaration”; and on November 4, “More confused news of Dutch Landing near Portsmouth: Forces marched that way early this morn.” On November 5, “Dutch said to be landed at Pool.” These entries are interspersed with Hooke's usual round of meeting people, noting ill health, books lent and borrowed, architectural work, lectures, and experiments. See Gunther, ed. (n. 3 above), 10:69–71.

43 BL, London, Sloane MSS 1039, fol. 179, includes notes in Hooke's hand from the Dutch newspapers. He referred to the “Dutch Gazet” reporting the discovery of longitude (see his Diary [n. 2 above], January 24, 1673), and he studied “High Dutch” with his tenant Mr. Blackburn (ibid., January 1, 1673).

44 For example, from the “Diary” entries (n. 3 above): “Carpenter measuring roof” (May 20, 1672); “Paint window curtain” (May 28, 1672); “Howett brought me £10 from Brfother] John Hook” (March 10, 1672); “Walked with Grace [Hooke's niece]” (May 12, 1672); “paid Feme for 4 pr. of shoos and goloshoos” (April 23, 1672).

45 For example, “With Dr Wren viewing churches” (March 19, 1672); “Fitch [brick-layer] Holborne Bridge” (March 10, 1672); “Howards ditch sewer viewed” (May 13, 1672).

46 For example, “Paid Brown 25s for Mathematical Books” (May 6, 1672); “Lent Mr. Haux Virginian Grammar (March 22, 1672); “Lent Bp. Chester 2 Bookes of Basles Raritys” (March 18, 1672); “Bought Dr. Lower De Cattarhi” (March 30, 1672).

47 For example, “Black hole in bubbles shewed at Arundel. Account of flame delivered” (March 14, 1672); “I carryed in account of Bubble experiment to Arundel house” (March 20, 1672).

48 For example, “I Wrote defence of Liquor of Flame” (March 13, 1672); “I told Mr. Wild a way to make a watch like a celestial globe which being thrown into water should set itself north and south and should swim half above water, should have the Sun and Starrs rise as in the heavens” (January 28, 1674; this item appears on the verso page in isolation, opposite the entry for this date). “I observed the hollowness of the flame of a candle” (October 19, 1675); “I revived my old contrivance for a Pocket watch by cutting the balance in two and inserting the half joined by two side pieces—see figure” (June 13, 1675); “Show Dr. Wren my way of coyling cable, hoysting anker” (May 30, 1672).

49 For example, “Mr More here” (March 17, 1672); “Cox dined with me” (March 24, 1672); “At Lord Chesters … dined at Lord Ranelagh … at Dr. Goddards” (March 25, 1672); “Sir W. Jones, Dr. Tillotson, Coxes, Guys, Mr. Boyles, Storys, Dr. Wrens” (March 17, 1672); “Sir J. Lawrence, Mr. Littleton at coffee house” (March 31, 1672); “Mr. Haux, Mr. Newbury Garways (Garraways coffee-house)” (March 31, 1672).

50 For example, “I took a purge” (March 17, 1672); “I took last night Laudanum 1½ Gr's” (March 20, 1672); “I sweat this morn with warm posset drink” (March 22, 1672). See also Beier, Lucinda McCray, “Experience and Experiment: Robert Hooke's Illness and Medicine,” in Hunter, and Schaffer, , eds. (n. 1 above), pp. 235–52Google Scholar.

51 See discussion below, on pp. 332–33.

52 For example, “I took notice of a very pretty property in the Elliptical compasses the one of a Crank whose centre made a double revolution whilst the Hand went Round once” (June 20, 1672); “Discovered the fabrick of the muscles of a crabb” (May 24, 1675); and especially see his notation on the theory of the spring—e.g., “wrote theory of spring” (July 21, 1678); “Wrote of spring” (July 22, 1678); “wrote of theory of spring” (July 28, 1678); “Read my theory of spring and showed experiments to illustrate. All were pleased” (August 1, 1678).

53 For example, “At Paules with Sir Chr. Wren …. At Garways with Sir Chr. Wren, Gale and others …. To Garways” (June 6, 1676); “With Sir Jonas More and Mr. Brittain to Joes coffee house …. With Dr. Holder, Sir R. Redding, Sir Ch. Wren, Mr. Barrington, Mr. Colwall, Aubrey and I at Blagraves” (April 20, 1676); “At Crown, Henshaw, Hill, Hoskins, Barrington, Whistler, Whichcot. With Hoskins and Hill to Garways” (June 7, 1677).

54 For example, “Jonathans O” (August 14, 1678).

55 For a discussion of Hooke's position in London society and his tenuous social status, see Shapin, Steven, “Who was Robert Hooke?” (n. 11 above), pp. 256–85Google Scholar; and Pumfrey, Stephen, “Ideas above His Station: A Social Study of Hooke's Curatorship of Experiments,” History of Science 29 (1991): 1–43Google Scholar.

56 For example, from the “Diary” entries (n. 3 above): “Found cellar door open and Pettis with Grace [by then his lover and housekeeper]. Tom [his apprentice] asleep, Mary [the servant] out” (July 20, 1677); “Dined on Graces goos. Mary forgot filling” (November 2, 1675); “Began to read Algebra to Graces and Tom” (June 30, 1676); “Tom, Mary and Grace all out” (December 4, 1676).

57 From the “Diary,” February 20, 1680. On many occasions, especially on Sundays, he recorded: “At home all day till Garways” (e.g., March 1, 1674; March 8, 1674); and sometimes “Noone at Garways” (e.g., August 29, 1675).

58 “Mercury stood at 185 a very cleer but cold morn. Wind south but gentle. It grew thick and very cold about 11. [Sign of mercury] falling” (March 11, 1672); “A raining morning [Mercury] 170.W WNW and very full. Afternoon v. clear. Moonshiny night [mercury] 175” (March 31, 1672).

59 Royal Society, Classified Papers, vol. 20, no. 24; see Sprat (n. 15 above), pp. 173–79.

60 See Sprat, p. 176. “Tabby” refers to taffeta, named after a quarter of Baghdad, Tabayah. See the Oxford English Dictionary.

61 Royal Society, Classified Papers, vol. 20, no. 24; see Sprat, pp. 173–79.

62 Words like “cloudy,” “blustery,” “lowring,” and “black frost,” defined by the prescriptive paper, appeared throughout in Hooke's weather descriptions.

63 Sprat, p. 175.

64 Royal Society Classified Papers, vol. 20, no. 24. While a “history of the weather” would need massive observational data, Hooke believed that particular hypotheses about the weather could be formed and tested by one man's observations. In a 1664 paper he described a thunder clap and noted that “red commotions in the air” often preceded thunder. He went on to offer reasons and to test a previous hypothesis about thunder acting like a flint to make fire (Royal Society, Classified Papers, vol. 20, no. 29).

65 Hooke, , Micrographia, Preface c3, in Gunther, , ed. (n. 3 above), vol. 8Google Scholar.

66 For Hooke's interest in creating ever-more-complex weather devices, see Birch, Thomas, History of the Royal Society of London (London, 1756–1757; reprint, New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1968), 3:222, 364–65, 487–88Google Scholar. For his concern to extend their uses to come up with more general hypotheses about the weather, see ibid., pp. 365, 371.

67 Royal Society Classified Papers, vol. 20, no. 54.

68 Royal Society Classified Papers, vol. 20, no. 58.

69 After April 1673 no separate column for weather observations appeared, though fairly regular entries were shown along with the personal memoranda. But after 1673 they no longer appeared regularly, though continuing sporadically. See the “Diary” (n. 3 above), pp. 21 ff.

70 “Dr Hook's Method of Making Experiments” is found in Philosophical Experiments and Observations of the late Eminent Sr. Robert Hooke, ed. Derham, William London (1726; reprint, London: Frank Cass & Co., 1967), pp. 16–18Google Scholar. See also nn. 11 and 18 above.

71 Hooke, , A General Scheme (n. 5 above), p. 64Google Scholar.

72 See Mulligan, , “Hooke's “Memoranda” (n. 18 above), pp. 59–60Google Scholar.

73 For example, “DH” for “dined at home,” “s1” for “sleep”; the sign of mercury for “mercury,” the sign of pisces for “orgasm.”

74 A General Scheme, p. 64.

75 In the manuscript the moon's phases were inked in for the first few months; see the “Diary,” fols. 1, 3, 5 ff.; drawings of machines and mechanical operations abound throughout the text.

76 See his comment that “good wits have ill memories” in A General Scheme, p. 5.

77 Aubrey, John, Brief Lives, Chiefly of Contemporaries, 2 vols., ed. Clark, Andrew (Oxford, 1898), 1:411Google Scholar.

78 For example, see his “Diary” entries for March 18, 1672; November 8, 1672; January 21, 1675, and elsewhere. Also he wrote, “I have forgot most of the particulars of this week” when he switched to weekly entries; see July 12, 1675.

79 See Mulligan, “Hooke's “Memoranda,” for a detailed discussion of his interest in, and model for, the memory and the relationship of the diary to its augmentation.

80 See Hooke's, discussion in “Lectures on Light,” in Waller, , ed. (n. 1 above), pp. 138–148Google Scholar, and his “Philosophical Scribbles,” Trinity College Library, Cambridge, MS 0 11a 128. See also Oldroyd, D. R., “Some ‘Philosophical Scribbles’ Attributed to Robert Hooke,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 35 (1980): 17–32Google Scholar.

81 Hooke's papers are full of lists kept for various purposes—books borrowed and lent, his own contributions to the Royal Society, lists of recipes, and a scheme setting out all the branches of natural philosophy; see the “Diary” back pages, unfoliated; Royal Society Library Classified Papers, vol. 20, nos. 1, 50, 54, 65, 70; BL, London, Sloane MS 1039, fols. 139, 143–53.

82 See Pumfrey (n. 55 above).

83 See esp. the prefaces of Micrographia, Discourse of Earthquakes, “Lecture about the Improvement of Natural Philosophy” (Guildhall MS 1757, no. 11), “Mr Hooke's Algebra Lecture” (Royal Society Classified Papers, vol. 20, no. 39), “Lecture on Natural and Artificial History (of Salterns),” (in ibid., no. 42), “lectures of things requisitive for Nat'ral Philosophy, (in ibid., no. 50a), “Of Hydrography” (in ibid., no. 70), “Of Penetration of Bodys” (in ibid., no. 78), “Remonstrance concerning Hooke's Experiments” (in ibid., no. 77), “Of the Arithmetic of the Brahmins” (in ibid., no. 79), and “An Account of the Felt-makers Trade” (in ibid., no. 96). Also see letters of Hooke to Leibniz, Royal Society, Early Letters, H3, nos. 63, 64,; letter on “Hermeticall Philosophy” (in ibid., no. 65), “An account of some tryals made about the mixture of metalls,” BL, London, Sloane MS 1039, fol. 120. For an extended discussion of Hooke's Cutlerian lectureship, see Hunter, Michael, “Science, Technology and Patronage: Robert Hooke and the Cutlerian Lectureship,” in Establishing the New Science: Experience of the Early Royal Society, ed. Hunter, Michael (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1989)Google Scholar.

84 See esp. his account in A General Scheme (n. 5 above).

85 See esp. ibid., pp. 6 ff.

86 Ibid., pp. 9–10.

87 Ibid., p. 10.

88 For example, when Hooke was ill at the end of 1672: “Blood let by Gidley, blood windy and melancholy” (December 22, 1672); “the worst night I ever yet had, melancholy and giddy” (December 24, 1672); “I was melancholy but upon drinking ale strongly enlivened” (December 6,1672); “Miserere mei Deus [when troubled with Royal Society factions]” (December 4, 1674); “Tu with Grace [sign of pisces] a great fit of melancholy” (June 17, 1677). Splenetic outbursts can be illustrated by “At committee of city lands a Pack of knaves” (July 7, 1674); “Oldenburgh a villain” (September 25, 1674); “Oliver a villain” (October 14, 1674); “Sir J. Cutler a villain” (January 4, 1675); “Brouncker a dog for belying me to the king” (April 29, 1675); “The insolent beggarly ignorant French dog here” (May 13, 1675).

89 Letter from Hooke to Hopkins, Royal Society Early Letters, H3, no. 70.

90 For example, “Saw lying Dog Oldenburg Transactions. Resolved to quit all employments and seek my health” (November 8, 1675); “Began to take tobacco again” (September 25, 1674); “Left off taking tobacco” (October 16, 1674); “Grace out all day. I discharged her” (August 21, 1677). But a week later he noted: “Grace out” (August 30, 1677).

91 A General Scheme, p. 10.

92 He certainly rejected the alternative theories of the hermetics and was scathing about their claims; see, e.g., Royal Society Early Letters, H3, no. 65. For his vibration theory, see Gouk, Penelope, “Acoustics in the Early Royal Society,” of the Royal Society 36 (1982): 155–69Google Scholar, “The Role of Acoustics and Music Theory in the Scientific Work of Robert Hooke,” Annals of Science 37 (1980): 573–605Google Scholar; Kassler, J. C. and Oldroyd, D. R., “Robert Hooke's Trinity College ‘Musick Scripts,’ His Music Theory and the Role of Music in His Cosmology,” Annals of Science 40 (1983): 559–95Google Scholar.

93 Royal Society Classified Papers, vol. 20, no. 50A, fol. 99.

94 See A General Scheme, p. 20.

95 See Kroll, Richard W. F., The Material Word: Literate Culture in the Restoration and Early Eighteenth Century (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), p. 188Google Scholar and passim; Vickers, Brian, “The Royal Society and English Prose Style,” in Rhetoric and the Pursuit of Truth, ed. Vickers, Brian and Struever, Nancy (Los Angeles: University of California, William Andrews Memorial Library, 1985)Google Scholar. For a contemporary parallel, see Sir Kenelm Digby on the topic: “how to give life and motion to what we say … that so we may persuade our Auditory, such passions raigne in us, as we seek to stir up in them … whatsoever passion we exhibit in ourselves, the same stealeth insensibly upon those we speake unto …. Hence grow those increases by metaphores, and other tropics and figures … which when they are fitly placed they carry the Auditor even against his will.” See Digby, Kenelm, Two Treatises (Paris, 1644; reprint, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1970), p. 381Google Scholar.

96 Shadwell, , The Virtuoso (n. 13 above), 4:iiiGoogle Scholar. See also the topics “Generation,” “Production,” “Augmentation,” “Perfection,” “Virtue,” “Power,” “Activity,” “Operation,” “Effect,” “Conservation,” and “Transformation,” as a list of nature's “motions” in Hooke's, Discourse of Earthquakes, in Waller, , ed. (n. 1 above), p. 279Google Scholar.

97 Royal Society Classified Papers, vol. 20, no. 39.

98 Guildhall Library, MS 1757, no. 11.

99 A General Scheme (n. 5 above), pp. 11–12.

100 See ibid.; and “Lecture of things Requisite for Nat'ral Philosophy,” Royal Society Classified Papers, vol. 20, no. 50a.

101 For example, “it will be altogether necessary I say that he should Indeavour to be very knowing and well versed in the Mechanicks and other Mathematical learning for without them it will be almost impossible to Answer many very substantial Querys.” See Hooke, , “Lecture of things Requisite for Nat'ral Philosophy,” Royal Society Classified Papers, vol. 20Google Scholar, no. 50a, fol. 105.

102 Micrographia, Preface, A2V, in Gunther, ed. (n. 3 above).

103 “Lecture of Things Requisite for Nat'ral Philosophy,” Royal Society Classified Papers, vol. 20Google Scholar, no. 50a, fol. 107.

104 A General Scheme, p. 62.

105 See Hooke's, “Diary” (n. 3 above), May 15, 1672Google Scholar.

106 Ibid., August 21, 1680.

107 A General Scheme, p. 8.

108 See Waller, Richard, “The Life of Dr. Robert Hooke” in Waller, , ed. (n. 1 above), p. iGoogle Scholar.

109 Ibid., p. iii.

110 Aubrey (n. 77 above), 1:410.

111 Micrographia, Preface A2v, in Gunther, ed. For the methodological prescription this entailed and its ramification for drawing and art, see Alpers, Svetlana, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), pp. 72–116Google Scholar.

112 For example, his architectural drawings and notes in BL, London, Sloane MSS 5239; letters to Richard Levett and Sir Robert Southwell, Bodleian Library, Oxford, Bodl. Rawl. B 363, fol. 1; BL, London, Sloane MS 1039, fols. 132, 168.

113 Mulligan, “Hooke's ‘Memoranda’” (n. 18 above).

114 Words Made Visible (1678), pp. 98–99Google ScholarPubMed. I wish to thank Susan Leslie for drawing my attention to this reference.