Micrographia (1665) [pdf]
arhipa.org

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62 points

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andsoitis

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12 days ago

23 comments

hermitcrab ・ 12 days ago

Fun fact:

Robert Hooke was rather short of stature. His great rival, Isaac Newton, was petty and vindictive. So when Newton said:

"if I have seen further [than others], it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

Rather than being humble, he may have actually been having a sly dig at Hooke.

  • dr_dshiv ・ 11 days ago

    Hooke was a somewhat lower class than the other gentlemen in the Royal Society. He was put in charge of actually producing the demonstrations for the society as “Chief Curator.” His lower class status was useful because he could engage with builders/craftsmen and be present in the pubs and meeting houses to pick up information that was otherwise unavailable to the upper class gentlemen.

    It was for this reason that he could introduce things like cannabis (“the account of the plant”) to the royal society. Yet, we was also very much into esoteric philosophy and occult wisdom — much of which came from his upper class access with Boyle (an alchemist)

    He also assisted sir Christopher Wren as chief surveyor in rebuilding London after the great fire.

    An astonishing career. Total polymath.

  • MrDrDr ・ 11 days ago

    Newton also (allegedly) lost Hooke’s portrait when the Royal Society moved. The two did not get on.

    • hermitcrab ・ 11 days ago

      Newton also used (abused) his position as head of the Royal Society to wage a long and bitter feud with Leibnitz over who invented calculus.

      Newton was undoubtedly:

      a) One of the greatest geniuses who ever lived.

      b) A total shit.

  • mellosouls ・ 12 days ago

    Possibly a later myth; the saying predates Newton - also the perceived slight was actually against Hooke's supposed curved spine rather than his height I think.

    • troymc ・ 11 days ago

      Here's a quote that predates Newton by some centuries:

      "We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size." -- John of Salisbury, The Metalogicon (1159)

      https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/978019...

    • hermitcrab ・ 11 days ago

      >Possibly a later myth

      It is apparently in one of his letters - to Hooke.

      • mellosouls ・ 10 days ago

        Not him saying it; its possibly a myth that it was intended as a slight.

system2 ・ 12 days ago

That intro page is wild.

> Your Majesties most humble and most obedient Subject and Servant, ROBERT HOOKE.

  • caporaltito ・ 12 days ago

    > I do here most humbly lay this small Present at Your Majesties Royal feet.

    That guy REALLY needed another royal grant for his research

  • pixelpoet ・ 12 days ago

    I thought you'd made a typo with "Majesties" but no, it's really spelt that way. "Accompany'd", too. Time to go read up on that, apparently playing the Ultima games wasn't enough to learn this aspect of Old English...

    And yeah, wild that this is the Hooke of Hooke's law!

    • Sabacak ・ 12 days ago

      It's early Modern English not Old. Old English is the language of Beowulf.

      Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum, þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

      • troymc ・ 11 days ago

        Micel mē þynceð þanc, þæt þū gemanst

        mǣl-gespreca ealdra.

        Wæs þū hāl.

    • alessivs ・ 11 days ago

      Ultima games incorporate archaic language constructs in their dialogues and texts, but they are fictionalized rather than historically informed. I call it "langfic" (as in "fanfic"). The French edition of U7 is also notorious for featuring old vocabulary, but does so mixing up constructs from different eras and reforms. While the effort on the English edition is much more convincing, I wouldn't bank on it as a reference of its use; instead, I would turn to more scholarly sources that examine Early Modern English in depth.

    • incognito124 ・ 12 days ago

      Also known as a royal plural

      • satiric ・ 11 days ago

        It's a possessive, right? I.e. "Your Majesty's most humble and most obedient servant and subject"?

andsoitis ・ 12 days ago

This books marks publishing of discovery of the cell.

Mr_Minderbinder ・ 11 days ago

Is there a resource that identifies every species that Hooke examined in this work? There were a few that I could not identify and was curious about.

dgctbu ・ 12 days ago

[dead]