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Robert Hooke's Methodology of Science as exemplified in his ‘Discourse of Earthquakes’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

D. R. Oldroyd
D. R. Oldroyd
Affiliation:
School of History and Philosophy of Science, University of New South Wales, P.O. Box 1, Kensington, New South Wales 2033, Australia.
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Extract

A number of authors have drawn attention to the contributions to geology of Robert Hooke, and it has been pointed out that in several ways his ideas were more advanced than those of Steno, who is sometimes taken to be the founder of geology as a scientific discipline. Moreover, it has been argued that in a number of instances Hooke should receive the credit for ideas which are usually believed to have originated in the work of James Hutton. This recognition of the significance of Hooke's work is regarded by the present writer as being well founded. But, by contrast, the relationship between Hooke's geological ideas and his views on the proper methods for conducting scientific enquiries has been largely overlooked, and his views on the methodology of science, as revealed in his Posthumous works, have received little discussion. Moreover, on one of the few occasions on which they were discussed, by William Whewell, they were belittled. Whewell regarded Hooke's methodological contribution as merely ‘an attempt to adapt the Novum organon to the age which succeeded its publication’, 5 and he implied that the ‘same imperfections’ were to be found in the writings of both Hooke and Bacon. The influence of Bacon is, to be sure, most obvious in Hooke's general philosophy. Nevertheless, it will be argued that Hooke had a much clearer idea than did Bacon of the importance of so-called ‘hypothetico-deductive’ methods in science, and that in many ways his methodological views represent a significant advance on those of Bacon.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , December 1972 , pp. 109 - 130
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1972

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References

1 The notices of Hooke's work given by Lyell and Geikie are well known: Lyell, C., Principles of geology, being an attempt to explain the former changes of the earth's surface, by reference to causes now in operation (1st edn., 3 vols., London, 1830–1833), 1. 31–5Google Scholar; and Geikie, A., The founders of geology (2nd edn., London, 1905), pp. 68–73.Google Scholar The standard biography of Hooke ('Espinasse, M., Robert Hooke [London, 1956])Google Scholar deals with his geological contributions, although not in great detail. A number of papers have also commended the enlightened character of Hooke's geological thought, including: Rossiter, A. P., ‘The first English geologist Robert Hooke (1635–1703)’, Durham University journal, xxix (1935), 172–81Google Scholar; Edwards, W. N., ‘Robert Hooke as geologist and evolutionist’, Nature, cxxxvii (1936), 96–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Andrade, E. N. da C., ‘Wilkins Lecture. Robert Hooke’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Section A, cci (1950), 439–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Ibid., Section B, cxxxvii (1950), 153–87; Davies, G. L., ‘Robert Hooke and his conception of earth-history’, Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, London, lxxv (1964), 493–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Davies's views have been restated in his The earth in decay: a history of British geomorphology 1578–1878 (London, n.d.). Hooke's evolutionary views attracted attention in: Pavlov, A. P., ‘Robert Hooke, un évolutioniste oublié du xviie siècle’, Palaeobiologica, i (1928), 203–10.Google Scholar His influence on the work of Raspe has recently been emphasized by Carozzi, A. V.: ‘Robert Hooke, Rudolf Erich Raspe, and the concept of earthquakes’, Isis, Ixi (1970), 85–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Hooke's work is also noticed in several places in: Schneer, C. J. (ed.), Toward a history of geology (Cambridge, Mass., 1969)Google Scholar, and in R. S. Westfall's introduction to the recent reprint of Hooke's Posthumous works (see note 4, below). Hooke's methodology of science has been discussed in two valuable papers by Hesse, M. B.: ‘Hooke's development of Bacon's science’, Actes du Dixième Congrès International d'Histoire des Sciences; Ithaca 1962 (Paris, 1964), 1. 265–8Google Scholar; and Hooke's philosophical algebra’, Isis, Ivii (1966), 67–83, but without particular reference to his geological theories.Google Scholar

2 For example: Davies, 1964, op. cit. (1), 397.Google Scholar

3 Ibid.

4 Waller, Richard, The posthumous works of Robert Hooke, M.D. S.R.S. Geom. Prof. Gresh., etc., containing his Cutlerian Lectures, and other discourses, read at the meetings of the illustrious Royal Society (London, 1705).Google Scholar A facsimile of this volume, with an introduction by R. S. Westfall, has been published by the Johnson Reprint Corporation (New York and London, 1969). The six sections are:

I The present deficiency of natural philosophy is discoursed of, with the methods of rendering it more certain and beneficial.

II The nature, motion and effects of light are treated of, particularly that of the sun and comets.

III An hypothetical explication of memory; how the organs made use of by the mind in its operation may be mechanically understood.

IV An hypothesis and explication of the cause of gravity, or gravitation, magnetism, etc.

V Discourses of earthquakes, their causes and effects, and histories of several; to which are annext, physical explications of several of the fables in Ovid's Metamorphoses, very different from other mythologick interpreters.

VI Lectures for improving navigation and astronomy, with the descriptions of several new and useful instruments and contrivances; the whole full of curious disquisitions and experiments. The titles for the six sections, as they appear in the text, differ substantially from the above, which are cited from the title page. In the text, section V is entitled: ‘Lectures and discourses of earthquakes, and subterraneous eruptions. Explicating the causes of the rugged and uneven face of the earth; and what reasons may be given for the frequent finding of shells and other sea and land petrified substances, scattered over the whole terrestrial superficies’.

5 Whewell, W., The philosophy of the inductive sciences, founded upon their history (2nd edn., 2 vols., London, 1847), ii. 267.Google Scholar

6 See note 4. The lectures usually referred to as the ‘Discourse of earthquakes’ occupy pp. 279–328 of the Posthumous works.

7 These additional lectures were published by Waller in the Posthumous works as follows:

(a) Undated, pp. 329–45.

(b) Undated, pp. 346–50.

(c) 2 February 1686/7, PP– 350–4.

(d) 9 February 1686/7, PP– 355–60.

(e) 16 February 1686/7, pp. 360–2.

(f) 9 March 1686/7, PP– 363–4.

(g) ‘Of the standing of the mercury in the tube to the height of 75 inches, read May the 28th, 1684’, pp. 365–70.Google Scholar

(h) Undated, pp. 371–84.

(i) ‘A copy of Dr. Thomas Gale's paper concerning giants’, pp. 384–403.Google Scholar

(j) 15 February 1687/8, pp. 403–10.

(k) 29 February 1688, pp. 410–16.

(l) 23 July 1690, ‘A discourse of earthquakes in the Leeward Islands’, pp. 416–24.Google Scholar

(m) 30 July 1699, ‘A discourse of the causes of earthquakes’, pp. 424–8.Google Scholar

(n) 18 July 1688, pp. 428–33.

(o) 29 May 1689, pp. 433–6.

(p) Undated, pp. 436–7.

(q) 14 November 1699, ‘A description of the Ridge of Mary Burrow in the Queens [sic] County in Ireland’, pp. 437–8.Google Scholar

(r) 26 May 1697, pp. 438–50. Read to the Royal Society, 25 July 1694.

8 See, especially, Ibid., (a) to (e).

9 Throughout this paper the word ‘fossil’ will, for simplicity, be taken to refer only to the petrified remains of a former living organism. Readers are asked to disregard the anachronism involved.

10 Waller, , op. cit. (4), p. 280.Google Scholar

11 The figures, which reveal Hooke's high standard of draughtsmanship, represent a variety of ammonites (‘snake-stones’ or comua ammonis), nautilids, belemnites, echinoids (‘helmet-stones’), gasteropods, pelycepods, sharks’ teeth, crinoid stems, etc. The first of the seven sets of engravings illustrating the Posthumous works was reproduced in Andrade, , op. cit. (1), 467.Google Scholar The last two of the seven sets were prepared by Waller from specimens which he himself collected.

12 Waller, , op. cit. (4), pp. 290–1.Google Scholar

13 There is some inconsistency in Hooke's thought here, for on p. 293 of the Posthumous works we read: ‘we find not many Experiments of producing of [the effects of petrifaction and coagulation] … when and where we will”. Conversely, on p. 296 we find: ‘I could … add divers Experiments, by which several of these Concretes may be in a short time made artificially by several Chymical Operations’.

14 Waller, , op. cit. (4), pp. 298–9.Google Scholar

15 The relationship between the methodologies of Hooke and Bacon will be considered in more detail below. It has already been noted that Hooke repudiated the mere collection of mountains of data as being, in itself, of any value for the progress of science. On the other hand, however, we find the constant influence of Baconian thought operating on his work, as instanced in his classification of the types of earthquakes. These difficulties in interpretation probably arise to some extent from ambiguities in Bacon's own writings. I believe, however, that Hooke's methodology represented a considerable advance on that of his mentor.

16 Davies, 1964, op. cit. (1), 495 and 496Google Scholar

17 Waller, , op. cit. (4), p. 316.Google Scholar

18 Ibid.

19 See p. 112, proposition 11.

20 See note 1.

21 Waller, , op. cit. (4), pp. 321–2.Google Scholar

22 See note 7 (a).

23 Waller, , op. cit. (4), p. 329.Google Scholar

24 Cf. Sprat, Thomas, The history of the Royal Society of London (London, 1667), p. 153Google Scholar:‘Yet loverhear the whispers, and doubts of many, who demand, what they have done all this while? and what they have produc'd, that is answerable to these mighty hopes, which indeavour, to make the world conceive of their undertaking?’

25 Waller, , op. cit. (4), p. 330.Google Scholar

26 This appears to be a misprint for ‘out’.

27 Waller, , op. cit. (4), p. 330.Google Scholar

28 The example of the architect is appropriate. One may envisage the a priori conception of the plans for a building, followed by the construction of the edifice according to this programme. Here Hooke appears to have rationalist, deductive elements in mind. However, it is not so clearly evident that the work of a gardener is analogous to attempts to build an edifice of knowledge by laborious inductive methods. The plants will grow of their own accord. Does induction proceed likewise? Doubtless Hooke's chosen metaphor was intended to emphasize the slow and gradual character of the development of the new science, in which daring flights of fancy were to be eschewed.

29 Waller, , op. cit. (4), p. 330.Google Scholar

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid., p. 331.

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid.

34 Ibid.

35 Hooke, R., Micrograpkia: or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses. With observations and inquiries thereupon (London, 1665), p. 14.Google Scholar Hooke touched on the methodology of science in his Preface to the Micrographia, but there he was principally concerned with the aids which instruments could offer to the senses. For his more detailed considerations, it is necessary to consult his Posthumous works.

36 Hooke does not seem to consider the possibility that none of the proposed hypotheses may be correct. Rather, like the sleuth of Baker Street, he seems to suggest that if all possibilities but one are eliminated, the remaining one must be correct.

37 It might be thought that the further progress in the ‘Synthetick’ method would result from using the hypothesis which has survived experimental testing as a spring-board for further ‘upward’ movement. This does not, however, appear to be the intention of Hooke‘s method. He believes that the new data, which arise during the course of the testing of the successful hypothesis, provide the basis for the further ascent.

38 See note 4I above, which gives the title of Hooke's methodological essay according to the table of contents at the head of the Posthumous works. Within the text, the essay is entitled: ‘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.’

39 See Hesse 1966, op. cit. (1).

40 Waller, , op. cit. (4), pp. 139–47.Google Scholar

41 Bacon, F., Novum organum, Book I, aphorism LXI (London, 1620)Google Scholar, trans. Spedding, J., Ellis, R. L., and Heath, D. D., and published in the Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England (14 vols., London, 1857–1874), iv PP– 62–3.Google Scholar Republished as: Anderson, F. H. (ed.), Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount of St. Albani. The new organon and related writings (Indianapolis, New York, and Kansas City, 1960), pp. 58–9.Google Scholar Subsequent references will be made to this edition of 1960.

42 Anderson, , op. cit. (41), p. 93Google Scholar; Book I, aphorism XCV.

43 Ibid., p. 97; Book I, aphorism CIII.

44 Ibid., p. 99; Book I, aphorism CVI.

45 The influence of Aristotelianism on Bacon has been discussed in Larsen, R. E., Journal of the history of ideas, xxiii (1962), 435–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar It is interesting to note that here too Hooke reveals Aristotelian influence in his remark that science seeks to establish ‘the exact Definitions of things’.

46 It should be remembered, of course, that in the seventeenth century these terms did not have their present, fairly clearly defined meanings. Newton, for example, in a letter to Cotes, dated 31 March 1713, wrote: ‘… Experimental philosophy proceeds only upon Phenomena and deduces general Propositions from them only by Induction’; see Edleston, J., The correspondence of Sir Isaac Newton and Professor Cotes (London, 1850), p. 156.Google Scholar

47 Waller, , op. cit. (4), p. 330.Google Scholar

48 . Newton, I., Opticks: or, a treatise of the refractions, inflexions and colours of light (4th edn., London, 1730), pp. 404–5.Google Scholar

49 In an unsigned review of R. D. Hampden's article ‘Aristotle’s philosophy’ in the seventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica; see Edinburgh review, Ivii (1833), 236.Google Scholar Here Hampden and Hamilton were concerned with the use of the terms analysis and synthesis in Aristotle's philosophy of definition, rather than in experimental science, but, as Crombie has shown (op. cit. [51] PP. 61–74 and passim), the distinction between analysis and synthesis has some of its roots in the Aristotelian notions of genus and species.

50 Heath, T. L., The thirteen books of Euclid's Elements translated from the text of Heiberg with introduction and commentary (2nd edn., 3 vols., New York, 1956), i. 137–42.Google Scholar

51 For discussion of the usages of the terms resolution and composition see, for example: Crombie, A. C., Robert Grosseteste and the origins of experimental science 1100–1700 (Oxford, 1953), pp. 27–8, 75–9, 81–3Google Scholar, and passim; Randall, J. H. Jr., ‘The development of scientific method in the school of Padua’, Journal of the history of ideas, 1 (1940), 177–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Régis, L. M., Epistemology (New York, 1959), pp. 443–65Google Scholar; and Gilbert, N. W., Renaissance concepts of method (New York, 1960)Google Scholar, passim.

52 For a discussion of the relationship between the rhetorical tradition and the development of scientific method, see McKeon, R., ‘Philosophy and the development of scientific methods’, Journal of the history of ideas, xxvii (1966), 3–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53 For a statement of Galileo's position, see his letter to Pietro Carcavy (Arcetri, 1637) in Barbera, G. (ed.), Le opere di Galileo Galilei (20 vols., Florence, 1966), xvii. 88–93.Google Scholar

54 R. Descartes, Objections faites par des personnes très doctes contre les précédentes méditations avec les réponses de l'auteur: Réponses … aux secondes objections recueillies … par le R. P. Mersenne, §§121–2, in Oeuvres philosophiques, 2 vols. (Paris: Editions Garnier Frères, 1967), ii. 581–3.Google Scholar The editor of this edition, Ferdinand Alquié, has drawn attention here to the great difficulty in interpreting this portion of the text. For a general discussion of Descartes's usage of the terms analysis and synthesis, see Beck, L. J., The method of Descartes: a study of the Regulas (Oxford, 1952), pp. 155–71.Google ScholarBuchdahl, G., in Metaphysics and the philosophy of science. The classical origins, Descartes to Kant (Oxford, 1969), pp. 118–47Google Scholar, has also treated the problem at length, and has remarked on the fluidity of the Cartesian terminology. He has found it necessary to offer some codification of the different Cartesian uses of the term analysis, in order to clarify the philosopher's intentions.

55 Hesse, 1966, op. cit. (1), 82Google Scholar

56 See note 7(a)—(e).

57 Waller, , op. cit. (4), p. 332.Google Scholar

58 Locke, J., Essay concerning human understanding, (London, 1690)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Book 3, chapter 6, section 35, and passim. Locke, of course, was primarily concerned here with establishing the distinction between the real essence and the nominal essence of objects. Hooke does not make this distinction.

59 Waller, , op. cit. (4), pp. 341–3.Google Scholar The third hypothesis was intended to be independent of the fourth; that is, in the third case, he considered the situation which would arise if the erosion and sedimentation occurred without accompanying changes in the polar axes.

60 Chamberlin, T. C., ‘The method of multiple working hypotheses’, Journal of geology (1897), 837–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Originally read before the Society of Western Naturalists, 1892.

61 Waller, , op. cit. (4), p. 346.Google Scholar It is not exactly clear what Hooke envisaged when he wrote ‘and move in Circles about the present’. The meaning would be clearer if these words were omitted, thus making it easier to reconcile the whole passage with others (e.g. p. 347) where he speaks of alterations in latitudes.

62 In a subsequent lecture (Waller, , op. cit. [4], p. 356)Google Scholar, Hooke argued that bodies would fall in the directions indicated by the dotted lines of Figure 2, because of the different centrifugal effects at different latitudes. The effect is, of course, a real one, but scarcely equal to the task of producing earthquakes as the latitude of a place on the earth's surface changes owing to pole wandering. Thus calculation reveals that an object at the latitude of North 45° falls initially towards a point about ten miles to the south of the geometrical centre of the earth. It should be noted that there appear to be two distinct elements in Hooke's cyclic geological theory: I. the rise and fall of the earth's crust due to earthquakes; 2. alterations in sea level resulting from the presumed oblately spheroidal shape of the earth's envelope of water and a postulated pole wandering. The earthquakes of ‘I’ are presumed to result from the pole wandering of ‘2’, since a given portion of the earth's crust experiences different gravitational effects, depending on the latitude.

63 Waller, , op. cit. (4), p. 347.Google Scholar

64 Ibid., p. 348.

65 Ibid., pp. 340–3 and 433–5.

66 Ibid., p. 349.

67 For a modern discussion of the influence of continental drift on the alignments of the Pyramids, see Du Toit, A. L., Our wandering continents (Edinburgh, 1937), pp. 299–301.Google Scholar

68 Waller, , op. cit. (4), p. 353.Google Scholar

69 It should be noted that although the precession of the equinoxes does not have any effect on either of the two methods which Hooke proposed for the determination of changes in a line of meridian upon the surface of the earth (and he does not concern himself with precession in his discussions of these proposals), any alterations in the obliquity of the ecliptic would result in changes in the altitude of the pole of the heavens in the sky, though they would not affect the direction of a line of meridian on the surface of the earth. Justifiably, therefore, Hooke did not consider the effect of changes in the obliquity of the ecliptic. (I am indebted to Professor J. B. Thornton for his thought concerning the null effect of any possible changes in the obliquity of the ecliptic on Hooke's scheme.)

70 Carozzi, op. cit. (1).

71 The question of some of the more subtle assumptions of Hutton's theories has been discussed recently in Gerstner, P. A., ‘James Hutton's theory of the earth and his theory of matter’, Isis, lix (1968), 26–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A slightly different point of view is adumbrated in my paper: ‘The Vulcanist-Neptunist dispute reconsidered’, Journal of geological education, xix (1971), 124–9.Google Scholar

72 That is, the thesis that experiments and observations can never falsify an individual hypothesis, forming part of a theoretical system. When a hypothesis is ‘put to the test’, experiments and observations may not accord with predictions made on the basis of the hypothesis, This certainly shows that ‘something is wrong somewhere’, but it does not necessarily show that the hypothesis has been falsified, for it may be that it was the ‘background information’—the ‘auxiliary hypotheses’ assumed when me ‘test implications’ were being deduced from the hypothesis—which was somewhere at fault. Moreover, any hypothesis may be saved from falsification if sufficient adjustments are made in the ‘background information’. Hooke, of course, is not concerned with such subtleties. He is quite sure that evidence shows that fossils were not emplaced by Noah's flood. For further discussion of the thesis, see Lakatos, I. and Musgrave, A. (eds.), Criticism and the growth of knowledge (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 184–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar