Hooke introduced the effects of cannabis (“an account of the plant”) to the Royal Society and sometimes I wonder about that. Consider this amazingly dramatic title:
“A General Scheme, or Idea of the Present State of Natural Philosophy, And how its Defects may be Remedied by a Methodical Proceeding in the Making Experiments and Collecting Observations whereby to Compile a Natural History, as the Solid Basis for the Superstructure of True Philosophy.”
(Try saying that title in one breath!)
When it comes to cybernetics— Hooke was a big fan of Cornelis Drebbel who designed and built the first cybernetic system (a self regulating oven) and a functional submarine (which produced oxygen by heating saltpetre), and a compound microscope, and chemical air conditioning, and the telescope that Galileo used to find the moons of Jupiter, and a perpetual motion machine based on harvesting barometric pressure changes, and…
It doesn't particularly matter, but it looks to me as if there are a couple of errors in the fragment of transcript provided by the author.
It says "the regular exercise thereof" where the scan looks to me much more like "the regular course thereof".
And -- this one is smaller but gave me more trouble -- there's a misplaced comma: it should be after "thereof", not after "intercept". (The sentence structure is a bit weird even with the comma in the right place, but having it in the wrong place makes it even more confusing.)
I think this is a cool interpretation of the letter, but it does read a little like one of those books for middle schoolers about how historical figures were actually totally rad or something.
The transcript doesn’t seem to be finished, the part that the author uses to support their thesis is this excerpt in the article
"...especially in all those subjects where use of [such a language] may be free and where interest and authority do not intercept, the regular exercise thereof which I conceive to be the great antagonists which may impede its progress..."
“Hooke had some proto-liberal views” would be a more grounded interpretation.
Yep. But with a slight warning though, it's a lot of pages. Even by Neal Stephenson's standards, it's a lot. Not everybody has the attention span for this one. It's a very dense plot, with lots of side plots, asides, etc. (which is kind of the whole point of Neal Stephenson's books) that spreads over 9 books that originally were published in 3 volumes of ~1200 pages each depending on font size and edition you would have gotten. I've worked my way through that more times than I'd like to admit because it's enjoyable to re-read. Most recently earlier this year. It usually takes me 1-2 months at least.
Highly recommended. What is interesting to me is that he managed to place the Waterhouse family (and Enoch Root, a casual immortal) as some kind of Forrest Gump through history allowing you to see it all through the eyes of someone who could have been there. Anyway, no more spoilers, go read ;) And enjoy!
Hooke in Quicksilver kinda made me mad at my science and physics teachers. He’s just some dude who did things with lenses as far as they would have had me believe.
Some of this book is fantastical but the bones of it are historical fiction.
And springs! They brought up springs, surely. But it is true that Hooke is underrated in popular culture, in part because Newton thought very little of him, unfairly.
>It turns out that, aside from their common interest in antagonising Isaac Newton, Hooke and Leibniz also shared an interest in mechanising scientific reasoning through the invention of a universal language for science. Leibniz called his project the "Characteristica Universalis".
I'm surprised it doesn't mention Leibniz's famous "Let us calculate" quote:
>>In a 1679 letter to one of his patrons, Johann Friedrich, he described his project of the universal language as “the great instrument of reason, which will carry the forces of the mind further than the microscope has carried those of sight”. Later he wrote:
>>>The only way to rectify our reasonings is to make them as tangible as those of the Mathematicians, so that we can find our error at a glance, and when there are disputes among persons, we can simply say: Let us calculate, without further ado, to see who is right.[1]
I'm also kind of surprised that Hooke wrote the letter in English, since I assumed all academic communication across language barriers back then would have been in Latin. But ChatGPT tells me Leibniz was unusually multi-lingual.
> The only way to rectify our reasonings is to make them as tangible as those of the Mathematicians, so that we can find our error at a glance, and when there are disputes among persons, we can simply say: Let us calculate, without further ado, to see who is right.
And then Kurt Gödel forever permanently dashed those dreams.
He didn’t actually base it on the Yiching, he just noticed that it could be expressed neatly in binary. But he had come up with binary code before that.
He was ahead of his time, definitely, and binary logic is one critical step in getting there, but we're a long way from having a formal language to represent all claims that would ever arise in human argumentation to the point that it's simply a matter of calculation to resolve them.
Check out metamath.org I can't fathom any valid argument that couldn't be formalized to mathematical statements. There would still be disagreements on axioms and physical postulates, especially where there are conflicts of interest.
Hooke introduced the effects of cannabis (“an account of the plant”) to the Royal Society and sometimes I wonder about that. Consider this amazingly dramatic title:
“A General Scheme, or Idea of the Present State of Natural Philosophy, And how its Defects may be Remedied by a Methodical Proceeding in the Making Experiments and Collecting Observations whereby to Compile a Natural History, as the Solid Basis for the Superstructure of True Philosophy.”
(Try saying that title in one breath!)
When it comes to cybernetics— Hooke was a big fan of Cornelis Drebbel who designed and built the first cybernetic system (a self regulating oven) and a functional submarine (which produced oxygen by heating saltpetre), and a compound microscope, and chemical air conditioning, and the telescope that Galileo used to find the moons of Jupiter, and a perpetual motion machine based on harvesting barometric pressure changes, and…
It doesn't particularly matter, but it looks to me as if there are a couple of errors in the fragment of transcript provided by the author.
It says "the regular exercise thereof" where the scan looks to me much more like "the regular course thereof".
And -- this one is smaller but gave me more trouble -- there's a misplaced comma: it should be after "thereof", not after "intercept". (The sentence structure is a bit weird even with the comma in the right place, but having it in the wrong place makes it even more confusing.)
I think this is a cool interpretation of the letter, but it does read a little like one of those books for middle schoolers about how historical figures were actually totally rad or something.
>> Cyberpunk is a genre of science fiction about high tech, urban sprawl, and do-it-yourself counterculture.
Those are the superficial signifiers, not a constructive definition of the genre.
Sorry for the dumb question.. where is the transcript? I only see the link to the scanned letter
The transcript doesn’t seem to be finished, the part that the author uses to support their thesis is this excerpt in the article
"...especially in all those subjects where use of [such a language] may be free and where interest and authority do not intercept, the regular exercise thereof which I conceive to be the great antagonists which may impede its progress..."
“Hooke had some proto-liberal views” would be a more grounded interpretation.
While it may be a bit old, this kind of crossover celebrity gossip I can get into
EDIT: Presumably this is Robert Hooke as in the author of Micrographia and an early microscope
If you enjoy Hooke fanfic, he features prominently in Quicksilver.
highly recommend the entire baroque cycle!
Yep. But with a slight warning though, it's a lot of pages. Even by Neal Stephenson's standards, it's a lot. Not everybody has the attention span for this one. It's a very dense plot, with lots of side plots, asides, etc. (which is kind of the whole point of Neal Stephenson's books) that spreads over 9 books that originally were published in 3 volumes of ~1200 pages each depending on font size and edition you would have gotten. I've worked my way through that more times than I'd like to admit because it's enjoyable to re-read. Most recently earlier this year. It usually takes me 1-2 months at least.
Don’t threaten me with a good time!
Highly recommended. What is interesting to me is that he managed to place the Waterhouse family (and Enoch Root, a casual immortal) as some kind of Forrest Gump through history allowing you to see it all through the eyes of someone who could have been there. Anyway, no more spoilers, go read ;) And enjoy!
As does Newton, very quirkily
Hooke in Quicksilver kinda made me mad at my science and physics teachers. He’s just some dude who did things with lenses as far as they would have had me believe.
Some of this book is fantastical but the bones of it are historical fiction.
And springs! They brought up springs, surely. But it is true that Hooke is underrated in popular culture, in part because Newton thought very little of him, unfairly.
Yes. In hindsight I'm more surprised we don't hear more about their interactions due to the common enemy pointed out in the article!
>It turns out that, aside from their common interest in antagonising Isaac Newton, Hooke and Leibniz also shared an interest in mechanising scientific reasoning through the invention of a universal language for science. Leibniz called his project the "Characteristica Universalis".
I'm surprised it doesn't mention Leibniz's famous "Let us calculate" quote:
>>In a 1679 letter to one of his patrons, Johann Friedrich, he described his project of the universal language as “the great instrument of reason, which will carry the forces of the mind further than the microscope has carried those of sight”. Later he wrote:
>>>The only way to rectify our reasonings is to make them as tangible as those of the Mathematicians, so that we can find our error at a glance, and when there are disputes among persons, we can simply say: Let us calculate, without further ado, to see who is right.[1]
I'm also kind of surprised that Hooke wrote the letter in English, since I assumed all academic communication across language barriers back then would have been in Latin. But ChatGPT tells me Leibniz was unusually multi-lingual.
[1] Sorry, ad-heavy site but I wanted one that gave context: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/let-us-calculate-leibni...
> The only way to rectify our reasonings is to make them as tangible as those of the Mathematicians, so that we can find our error at a glance, and when there are disputes among persons, we can simply say: Let us calculate, without further ado, to see who is right.
And then Kurt Gödel forever permanently dashed those dreams.
Leibniz invented binary — so he kind of succeeded in his quest.
He based it on the Chinese iching, interestingly enough…
He didn’t actually base it on the Yiching, he just noticed that it could be expressed neatly in binary. But he had come up with binary code before that.
He was ahead of his time, definitely, and binary logic is one critical step in getting there, but we're a long way from having a formal language to represent all claims that would ever arise in human argumentation to the point that it's simply a matter of calculation to resolve them.
Check out metamath.org I can't fathom any valid argument that couldn't be formalized to mathematical statements. There would still be disagreements on axioms and physical postulates, especially where there are conflicts of interest.
if we could find characters or signs appropriate for expressing all our thoughts
Precursor to De Quincy's Confessions of an English Opium Eater as axiomatic Euclidean geometry.
[1]:https://archive.org/details/confessionsofeng01dequ/page/n2/m...