Unfortunately, it seems like all of the easily-obtainable copies of Micrographia are in facsimile, making them difficult to wrestle with. The GSU library has a cool facsimile copy that I'll bring to class with me. In the mean time, I read A. Rupert Hall's commentary on Hooke's book. Here are some highlights:
"Hooke was not the first microscopist, nor was Micrographia the first book devoted to microscopy...[however' it outclassed its predecessors, raising the whole business to a new level of performance and criticism.
...
I do not think it could be said that, compared with his contemporaries and immediate successors, Hooke had any conspicuous advantage in the instrument he used. But it should be said at once that...[Micrographia] had one splendid advantage, almost one might say an original invention: its engravings...How can one explain the force--and hence the fame and today the price--of a really well-illustrated book, one that reveals a whole new visual world?
...
In fact very few of Hooke's subjects for examination were quite unprecedented. What's new, rather, is the accuracy and completeness of Hooke's description.
...
It seems to me that Hooke used the term "cell" in a simple descriptive sense, and more more than that; it is not for him a technical term, and therefore it is misleading to say that Hooke used the word "cell" in our sense of the word.
...
If one my hazard the generalization that the microscope has been the indispensable tool of modern biology, then one might say that it was with Micrographia that modern biology began."
Thanks, Zack, for the enthusiasm on this, and the the excerpts here and below. Little of what the Royal Society was doing was wholly unprecedented; what was, was the systematic empiricism and the international nature of the discourse.
Unfortunately, it seems like all of the easily-obtainable copies of Micrographia are in facsimile, making them difficult to wrestle with. The GSU library has a cool facsimile copy that I'll bring to class with me. In the mean time, I read A. Rupert Hall's commentary on Hooke's book. Here are some highlights:
ReplyDelete"Hooke was not the first microscopist, nor was Micrographia the first book devoted to microscopy...[however' it outclassed its predecessors, raising the whole business to a new level of performance and criticism.
...
I do not think it could be said that, compared with his contemporaries and immediate successors, Hooke had any conspicuous advantage in the instrument he used. But it should be said at once that...[Micrographia] had one splendid advantage, almost one might say an original invention: its engravings...How can one explain the force--and hence the fame and today the price--of a really well-illustrated book, one that reveals a whole new visual world?
...
In fact very few of Hooke's subjects for examination were quite unprecedented. What's new, rather, is the accuracy and completeness of Hooke's description.
...
It seems to me that Hooke used the term "cell" in a simple descriptive sense, and more more than that; it is not for him a technical term, and therefore it is misleading to say that Hooke used the word "cell" in our sense of the word.
...
If one my hazard the generalization that the microscope has been the indispensable tool of modern biology, then one might say that it was with Micrographia that modern biology began."
Thanks, Zack, for the enthusiasm on this, and the the excerpts here and below. Little of what the Royal Society was doing was wholly unprecedented; what was, was the systematic empiricism and the international nature of the discourse.
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