Book Note

Michael Cooper; Michael Hunter, Editors. Robert Hooke: Tercentennial Studies. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. xii + 335 pp. $99.55.

Reviewed by Stephen D. Snobelen

The 2003 tercentenary of Robert Hooke's death generated three academic conferences in the United Kingdom, each leading to publications. The first of these volumes to be published were London's Leonardo: The Life and Works of Robert Hooke (2003) and Robert Hooke and the English Renaissance (2005). The most recent and substantial volume in size and scope is Robert Hooke: Tercentennial Studies. The volume's 16 essays are arranged in 5 parts: celestial mechanics and astronomy, natural philosophy instruments, speculative philosophy, architecture and construction, and life and reputation. Taken together, the contributions provide a corrective to common misperceptions of Hooke as having played a subservient role in natural philosophy and having stood in the shadow of men like Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton. Hooke emerges from this work (and the two earlier volumes) as a true Renaissance man remarkable for his energy and originality and for the breadth of his endeavors. Architect, astronomer, earth theorist, engineer, experimentalist, horologist, instrument-maker, microscopist, professor of geometry, surveyor, and much more, Robert Hooke can now rightfully take his place in the pantheon of the Scientific Revolution