Micrographia

Image: Schem. XXXIV - Engraving of a Flea in Micrographia, 1655

Robert Hooke, England 1665

In 1665 Robert Hooke opened up the world of sub-visible structures to the general reading public. With Micrographia: or Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses he published the first significant work on microscopy, and triggered public curiosity for the wonders of the microworld that lasts to this day. The immediate impact the publication had on its large audience is in part ascribed to Hooke’s accessible writing style and the detailed illustrations through which he shared his observations. Micrographia elevated objects that might have otherwise been dismissed as too trivial or repulsive for deeper exploration (edge of a razor, point of a needle; urine, lice and fleas) to a level of aesthetic wonder by comparing their structures at micro scale to their known expression at visible scale.

Beyond its popular success in communicating the power of the microscope, Micrographia is also considered a foundational work of modern optical physics, and it has made significant contributions to the instrumental development of the microscope. Robert Hooke devised a compound microscope and illumination systems, which allowed him to study, in more detail than ever before, organisms such as insects, sponges, bryozoans, forams, and bird feathers. He famously coined the term ‘cell’ as it is used in biology today, when he observed the micro-structures of cork and other plants that reminded him of the arrangement of cells in a monastery. In Micrographia Hooke also analyzed microscopic fossils and described their organic origin, which led him to become an early proponent of biological evolution.

Next to Isaac Newton, Robert Hooke is considered the most versatile 17th century English scientist; he was not only a pioneer in microscopy, but also as an astronomer, biologist, inventor, mapmaker and architect. After the Great Fire of London in1666, Hooke became one of the city surveyors appointed to help the city in its rebuilding process, inspecting and mapping the ruins and developing new building regulations. In his map of the fire damage to London (Figure 6) he adds below the commissioned survey plan his own vision for the city, a Cartesian grid system made up of similar-sized blocks. “Descartes is the author to whom Hooke most frequently refers in Micrographia, and the Principia Philosophiae is the work he cites most often.”1

The microscope and the field of microscopy as it was established by Robert Hooke, Anton van Leeuwenhoek and others in the seventeenth century, significantly expanded the world of direct human perception, and with it the role procedure-driven and observational methods play in early modern science. It is argued that the microscope profoundly shaped the conception of science as an objectifying mode of inquiry that is based in an atomistic, mechanistic and human-centric view of the world, which considers nature as an empirical field for investigation.2 [see Nature View]

Suggested readings:

Hooke, Robert. Micrographia or some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies made by magnifying glasses. [With Observations and Inquiries thereupon.]

Lawrence R. Griffing (2020). “The lost portrait of Robert Hooke?”. Journal of Microscopy. 278 (3): 114–122. doi:10.1111/jmi.12828. PMID 31497878.

Chapman, Alan (1996). “England’s Leonardo: Robert Hooke (1635–1703) and the art of experiment in Restoration England”. Proceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. 67: 239–275. Archived from the original on 6 March 2011.

Howard Gest, “The discovery of microorganisms by Robert Hooke and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, Fellows of The Royal Society”, Notes Rec R Soc Lond, 2004 May;58(2):187–201.

O’Connor, J J & Robertson, E F (August 2002). “Hooke biography”. School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St. Andrews, Scotland. Archived from the original on 16 July 2010. Retrieved 9 March 2010.

Wilson, Catherine. The Invisible World, Early modern philosophy and the invention of the microscope. Princeton University Press 1995. Figure 3 (top): Scheme XXXV of Micrographia Figure 4 (bottom): Scheme XXXIV of Micrographia.

Figure 1 (top): Drawings of a Microscope devised by Hooke. Figure 2 (bottom): Cell structure drawings.

Figure 3 (top): Scheme XXXV of Micrographia Figure 4 (bottom): Scheme XXXIV of Micrographia.