The Man Who Knew Too Much: The Inventive Life of Robert Hooke, 1635-1703

by Stephen Inwood

Robert Hooke was one of the most inventive, versatile and prolific scientists of the late 17th Century, but for 300 years his reputation has been overshadowed by those of his two great contemporaries, his friend Sir Christopher Wren and his rival Sir Isaac Newton. If he is remembered today, it is as the author of a law of elasticity or as amisanthrope who accused Newton of stealing his ideas on gravity. This book, the first life of Hooke for nearly fifty years, rescues itssubject from centuries of obscurity and misjudgement. It shows us Hookethe prolific inventor, the mechanic, the astronomer, the anatomist, the pioneer of geology, meteorology and microscopy, the precursor of Lavoisier and Darwin. It also gives us Hooke the architect of Bedlam and the Monument, the supervisor of London's rebuilding after the Great Fire, the watchmaker, the consumer of prodigious quantities of medicines and purgatives, the candid diarist, the lover, the hoarder of money and secrets, the coffee house conversationalist. This is an absorbing study of a fascinating and unduly forgotten man.

Genres: Biography, History, Science, Nonfiction, History Of Science

512 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Dr Stephen Inwood was educated at Dulwich College and at Balliol and St Antony's College, Oxford. For twenty-six years he was a college and university history lecturer, but he became a professional writer in 1999.

Reviews

[Silvio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book: very good written and about a very interesting time. It's fascinating to learn how the modern scientific thought was formed, and how Robert Hooke contributed to it. I think that the book is about the fragility of ideas, inventions and other "things" from the human culture that can be lost so easily. Robert Hooke and many of his peers were advanced to their times, and many ideas and inventions were lost, to be rediscovered perhaps 100 to 200 years later. But the foundations of modern scientific thinking were laid during this time: peer review, open communication, measurement, review theories against facts and predictions, and the value of intellectual recognition.

[Matt McCormick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would take an earlier reviewer’s comment a step further, it is a lot for any reader. There were interesting moments described in detail and well researched. They came from Hooke’s life and from the historical period. In fact, the description of the rebuilding of London after the fire, along with Hooke’s contribution, was fascinating. Unfortunately too much space was devoted to the the subjects repetitive daily life. Hooke’s a very interesting person, inquisitive, rational, super smart and passionate. I was glad to get a better understanding of him even if I could have taken fewer paragraphs focused on his diary entry’s.

[Lloyd Earickson · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the late sixteenth, and especially into the seventeenth century, Europe was in the process of discarding the Medieval image, stepping away from a rationalist way of interacting with reality, and inquiring more deeply into the assumptions which were previously taken as absolute, unquestionable facts.  Like the nexus of brilliant thinkers in ancient Athens, or the insight of the cluster of Italian renaissance artisans, mid-sixteenth century England witnessed a remarkable convergence of incisive scientific minds wrestling with deep questions and laying the foundations for the successive revolutions of scientific understanding which occurred in subsequent centuries.  Newton is by far the most famous of them, but you would likely recognize many of the other names, too, including the subject of this biography: Robert Hooke.

Most high school students learn Hooke’s law, a statement of the behavior of springs subject to forces and displacements.  I knew little more about him, myself, but I came across a new biography of the man and his work…which I did not read.  The description was lacking in scientific rigor, and many of the reviews said it was a rather shallow treatment.  One review, however, referenced a slightly older biography considered the current “definitive” Hooke biography, so I read that, instead.  Written by Stephen Inwood, a historian of the period, it’s titled The Man Who Knew Too Much, but published as The Forgotten Genius in the US.

Long-time readers of my reviews know that my gold standard for biographers is Chernow.  Inwood doesn’t quite reach that level, but he comes close.  His treatment of Hooke is sympathetic, thorough, generous, and comprehensive, helping to bring Hooke back to life for his readers, but without turning it into sensational semi-historical fiction.  It’s just the approach I appreciate in biographies, and Inwood admirably accounts for the challenges of limited documentation for many aspects of Hooke’s life.  This is especially true of his various medical conditions, some of which may have been caused by his self-medication.

Modern science, as most of my readers will understand the term, is a highly specialized, controlled discipline, and scientists are expected to be, or at least stereotyped as being, removed from their experiments.  This is, while not perfectly reflective of the reality, a fair perception of how science is “supposed” to be conducted today.  It is not the science of Hooke’s day.  Hooke, Newton, and their contemporaries were polymaths, “natural philosophers” who did not draw hard lines between the study of fossils, comets, medicine, and light, who were personally invested in their experiments, and who approached the whole concept of what we today call “science” with a passionate curiosity, varying degrees of rigor, and a possibly reckless (from our perspective) disregard for their personal health.  There is a possibly apocryphal story about Newton stabbing himself in the eye with a needle when he was seeking to better understand optics – I can’t imagine many modern scientists doing the same, and any who did something of that nature would certainly be considered “compromised” in their objectivity as a researcher.

Hooke might have embodied the polymath natural philosopher of this time period more than any of his associates.  His interests were as broad as he could imagine, and he was restless in his efforts, perhaps to a fault – The Forgotten Genius is littered with projects he began which he never finished, and his diary and papers are replete with phrases like “I leave the rest of this effort to someone who has more time.”  This is a frequent fault of polymaths - Da Vinci's works and notebooks are similarly replete with half-finished projects and ideas which were never developed beyond a fragment of a notion. With my own polymathic tendencies, this has long been my fear – that I will spread my interests too thin and thereby start too many projects to ever do them justice and see them to completion.  Perhaps the answer is to have a team of researchers will to see such disparate projects to fruition, but Hooke was not, by and large, a collaborative scientist.

He has a reputation for being cantankerous and secretive, which Inwood implies is a symptom of the nature of the intellectual scene in which he operated.  Patent laws and intellectual property rights existed, but they were anything but clear and objective, and Hooke did not fit the mold of the independently wealthy gentleman pursuing science as a hobby.  Some of his acrimonious and exaggerated priority assertions may have been tied to his attempt to turn his scientific pursuits into a viable income.

For all Hooke’s broad interests – and he provided key insights in fields as disparate as the nature of light and the function of the lungs – there is a unifying aspect to most of his work, which Inwood makes implicit throughout the book.  Hooke’s overarching interest was measurement, enhancing and objectifying the senses to better make inquiry of the environment and its phenomena.  He began his career making scientific instruments for others, and this continued to be core to his science even when he was doing experiments of his own.  In that sense, he was an engineer, working with mechanical joints and systems in innovative and imaginative ways.  His efforts in designing such devices highlight the value of understanding fundamental principles of mechanics which are seemingly neglected in modern engineering education.

History has not always been kind to Hooke, perhaps reflecting the tension still at times extant between engineers and scientists.  His disagreements with Newton are reflective of a deeper argument over the nature of the scientific and experimental enterprise.  On the one hand is Newton, the theoretician with the mathematical insight to develop and fully explain/prove a concept prior to experimental validation.  On the other is Hooke, the experimentalist who designs machines and contrivances to take measurements of the natural world, and then develops explanations based on those measurements.  There remains debate today about this very question, in all the lenses through which it can be viewed.

Where The Man Who Knew Too Much sometimes falls short is in its more technical segments.  Inwood is a historian, so I’ll cut him some slack in the writing, and he does make the effort for Hooke’s key designs.  More importantly, the book would benefit from more diagrams.  A picture isn’t always worth a thousand words, but there are many places in The Forgotten Genius where details could be considerably clarified and better presented with a simple isometric diagram of a joint or other mechanical contraption.  At least, I would appreciate such inclusions, as a both an engineer and a reader.

Before reading The Man Who Knew Too Much, I wouldn’t have necessarily thought to put a Hooke biography on my reading list.  I wouldn’t have sought out such an entry, and there are many scientists and historical figures whose biographies I would have sought out first.  However, I thoroughly enjoyed Inwood's biography of Hooke.  It is informative, interesting, engaging, and, perhaps most importantly, it prompted me along several new avenues of reflection and consideration.  Now, I’m going to try to finish a project, so I don’t end up with a diary that reads like Hooke’s, complaining about not having enough time to finish all of the grand enterprises I try to begin.  While I do that, I hope you consider springing into a biography about a great Forgotten Genius.

[Loretta · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this a lot, but it is not for the casual reader. You have to pay attention to the names and histories of the characters. There is a common thread that runs through the short stories, and dummy that I am, I did not realize it until the mid-point, at which time I had missed out on a few of the clues. And you will want to stop and read over certain passages that almost read like poetry.

[Brian Metters · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first came across Robert Hooke during physics lessons at school, lessons I found particularly boring when compared to the more interesting chemistry lessons with "more visible" practical work in the laboratory. Now 60 years later I find myself reading a book about his life and understanding the unrecognised contribution he made to science generally, a contribution far greater than a mere formula about the relationship between the force applied to a spring and it’s corresponding movement.
Robert Hooke’s life was every bit as significant as his contemporaries, particularly Newton, Boyle, Wren, and Halley. They all knew each other, they all interacted with each other in different ways, all contributing to the revolution of science during the mid to late 1600s in England. Hooke was Boyle’s apprentice and their relationship was a good one throughout their entire lives. Wren and Hooke were colleagues and partners throughout the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire of 1666, Hooke was an accomplished architect for many of their projects as well as being the project manager over the masons, carpenters and labourers. His relationship with Newton was a stormy one, and quite possibly has been the cause of his lack of fame in modern times. It all stemmed from Hooke’s claim to have "invented" the inverse square law of gravity before Newton and having mentioned it during one of his many lectures at the fledgling Royal Society. Newton was furious about this and for quite some time retreated into his writing of Principia Mathematica before publishing in 1687. It was Edmund Halley who persuaded Newton to publish, regularly visiting him and attempting to reduce the animosity with Hooke.
Robert Hooke was no recluse, the exact opposite of Isaac Newton. For many years he was the Curator of experiments at the Royal Society and lectured weekly on a wide range of topics relating to gravity, force, microscopy, telescopes, fluids, astronomy, anatomy, watches and clocks, longitude measurement, floods and earthquakes. He was a practical man and was constantly dabbling in lens grinding for telescopes, improving watch mechanisms. He was extremely sociable and daily met with friends and associates at Jonathan’s coffee house in Change Alley.
There is just so much to learn about Robert Hooke, and this is perhaps the major problem in writing a book about him ……. and unfortunately I fear that it is a trap the author has fallen into. There is so much detail in this book, mostly extracts from Hooke’s own diary, that at times one loses the plot! There are 26 chapters overall and 5-23 are crammed with a great deal of minutiae about Hooke’s experiments and lectures with the chapters organised chronologically. At first this seems logical, but it becomes repetitive with, for example, descriptions of perfecting telescope lenses occurring multiple times across so many chapters. There is similar repetition concerning gravity and force as well as other topics, and it leads me to believe that the book would have been more readable if it had been organised into chapters on a single scientific topic. So, a chapter on his microscopic work, a chapter on rebuilding London, a chapter on telescopes and astronomy etc etc.
My critique about the book’s organisation is NOT to put anyone off buying or reading it, I mean to prepare you for a had slog getting through those middle chapters. However, the book is an important record of the life and times of one of our great scientists of the period, a period in which our eyes were opened to the negative hand of religious and superstitious beliefs preventing our understanding of the natural world. They were ALL giants ……. including Robert Hooke who deserves to be recognised as one, even though there is no contemporary painting of the man in existence. Shame on you Isaac!

[Darren Goossens · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review first appeared at https://darrengoossens.wordpress.com/2016/05/14/the-man-who-knew-too-much-by-stephen-inwood/.

Pan 2003, 497 pages.

 

This is a fascinating book. Sheer detail brings Hooke's remarkable career into sharp focus.

Inwood is not a prose stylist, I would venture to say. Perhaps it is due to the nature of Hooke's career -- he pursued many themes for a long time -- but the text comes to be rather repetitive. List-like. But my interest never flagged because of the subject, because of the pains taken over the research, and because of the enormous significance of Hooke's work.


The cover of The Man Who Knew Too Much by Stephen Inwood.

 

Hooke was one of the key figures of the 17th century, at least in England. He left no field of natural philosophy untouched, yes -- but was also second only to Wren in shaping the rebuilt London that rose after the great fire. His contributions were perhaps rarely fundamental. He was part of the debate that laid the groundwork for Newton's Laws, and stated some of Newton's results before Newton, but from intuition; and without Newton's impeccable mathematical foundations, his comments were more in the form of opinions in a debate, rather than laws carved in stone.

Why is he so often merely a footnote to the Newton story?

There are several reasons.

One is that Hooke was a professional research scientist -- possibly the first in the land. Newton inherited and was gifted enough money to allow him to develop his ideas in a lofty isolation, giving his perfunctory lectures at Cambridge but essentially able to think and dig deep. Hooke was employed by The Royal Society to provide them with demonstrations every week, some titbit to fascinate the dilettantes. One week he was inflating an animal's lungs or evacuating vessels, the next demonstrating a new pendulum or sextant. He did not have the luxury of time and resources for deep, fundamental study. But I suspect Hooke would have thrived in today's scientific environment, where entrepreneurship is all the fashion, though would have found many of us far too narrow for his liking.

Related to that was his need to maintain reputation. Hooke was not poor -- but he relied on his own efforts for his money. Forty pounds a year for this, fifty for that, a fee for designing a mansion, and so on. This meant that again the need to live got in the way of really grappling with the essence of a field. Further, it explains his irritating and ultimately counter-productive mania about priory of various discoveries. Only by ensuring that everybody knew that he was the mind behind various ideas could he be sure that the employment would continue. This lead him to claim he had achieved things he had not -- or to prematurely claim achievements that never came to fruition, or to play odd games like using a code to present results he wanted to claim as his own but was not yet ready to reveal. The end result was a great deal of scepticism toward his every word from certain figures, in particular partisans of other great figures of the time like Newton and Huygens.

But I suspect it was in his nature of flit from topic to topic. His was a restless energy. He did fundamental work in chemistry -- where he was Boyle's right hand man -- and made some statements that presage the ideal gas law; and in physics, where he invented early vacuum pumps, made important strides in time-keeping (work which lead to his most persistent memorial -- Hooke's Law of the force due to the extension of a spring), in astronomy and in optics. In biology he did early work on the nature of respiration and published Micrographia , one of the most important texts of its time and a key work in the history of microscopy and biology. He coined the term 'cell' in biology, by analogy with a monk's cell, when he was looking at the structures of cork under one of his own microscopes. In my own field of crystallography he proposed the idea that crystals were made of stacked identical building blocks, and that this explained the regular facets. Typically, this is rarely mentioned in crystallography texts.

Another reason for Hooke's lower fame is, I suspect, that no portraits of him remain. No little marginal bio with a photo appears in a history or text book. It adds up.

Yet he was in some ways the most modern of all the figures of his time; he was a scientist by career rather than as a gentlemanly pursuit, and a firm believer in the primacy of reason and evidence. Newton explored alchemy and magic, and has aptly been described as an early scientist and a late sorcerer. Hooke saw petrified shells high up in the mountains and, rather than convince himself they were 'figured stones' (what? decoys buried by God?), insisted that they had once been in the sea and the sea bed must have risen, and if that meant that the world was older than the bible indicated then... so be it. He found the conclusions difficult to stomach, but he did not bury his head in the sand, unlike so many around him. And he came to these ideas a century before Hutton came on the scene and two before Lyell. But, typically, he did not bury himself in the work, but threw off ideas, argued in their favour, and moved on. Part of the greatness of Darwin is that he buttressed his theory and made it impossible to ignore. Similarly, Newton underpinned his ideas about gravitation -- most of which had been quoted previously by someone else, Hooke included -- by a unifying mathematical treatment that made them more than a matter for debate. It is remarkable how often figures we venerate for their originality in fact were not as original as we think, but more rigorous. We should not underestimate the importance of this! We all tend to cling onto old ideas as long as we can. They are comfortable, familiar, accepted. To displace them takes fortitude and thoroughness. Especially in earlier times, when religion retained its grip.

He also invented the universal joint.

This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of science, or in Newton or the 17th century. It offers lessons on the parlousness of reputation and legacy, and is testament to Inwood's inkling that there was a story here to be told. Even the workmanlike nature of the prose, which I began by criticising, seems like the only language suitable for the topic; forthright, truthful and putting content above form.

Highly recommended.

 

History of Science.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent and readable biography of a true genius. Hooke excelled in so many ways and Inwood successfully covers them. He was an accomplished scientist (he gave Newton the crucial clue to his theory of gravitation), inventor (sash windows, universal joints etc), artist (his illustrations in Micrographia are stunning), surveyor and arbitrator (after the Great Fire of London he surveyed most of the city and settled disputes over land ownership), architect (designed many post Great Fire churches and Bethlehem (Bedlam) Hospital) and so much more.

Unfortunately for Hooke, Newton who had many disputes with Hooke, outlived him and set about destroying his reputation and erasing his contribution, to the extent that we have no credible portrait of Hooke. Inwood's book goes some way to addressing Newton's damage.

[ErnstG · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating account of the life of a remarkable man -- a scrupulous scientist but also with a lively social life and a wide circle of friends; a practical architect and builder, and also a man with a grudge that his inventions were claimed by others (not without justification, as it seemed to be par for the course for truths to be invented by those who didn't know that this had been done; scientific knowledge spread slowly).

Had either Hooke or Newton had more gracious personalities, the world would have been a better place and Hooke would have been more widely remembered. As it is, he did a lot.

[Chris Kendall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent defense of Hooke who does indeed need defending. More upon request.

[Tlaura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inwood's book is a little slow to get started but highly rewards your patience. It's a well researched, affectingly sympathetic portrayal of Robert Hooke, the Restoration scientist and pivotal member of the early Royal Society. Inwood illuminates Hooke's side of the Newton-Hooke dispute and makes you understand why Hooke identified himself so strongly as the originator of theory of universal gravitation, even if he could never touch Newton as a mathematician. He also shows Hooke the builder, surveyor and architect, the forward-thinking geologist, and the man about town. It's a nice reminder that genius (and Hooke really does seem to qualify) comes in many forms.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although a great read be prepared for a long haul. This is not a short book and this author does not skimp on detail. However, what a great story about Hooke. A true warts and all depiction.

[Alan Stewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good coverage of the topic and well-written. However it would be more accessible to more people if it were less thorough and shorter.