25.11.12

Shoulders of the Giants

What do I know about Robert Hook?. I surely have heard that surname before. It comes in one of those chapters that are kept for the last, called elasticity. Hooke's law. y = -kx where k is spring constant. This law was put forth after his experiments on spring, where he figured out that the pull of the spring is proportional to the displacement, obviously. The interesting thing is that it was used to put forth the idea of force for the first time that was before Newton put forth his laws of motion. That was not just one thing. Hooke was more of an experimenter and inventor. He had built several prototypes of microscopes, respirator, spring balances, clocks etc. One of the main funding for Royal society came through entertaining the elites using science. So they had to have a curator and Hooke was the most popular one.

Royal society in a way was Noah’s ark for science in Medieval Europe. Till Royal society had taken shape science was a hush hush word in selected, politically protected circle. It was a time when church was very powerful in Europe, particularly France, Italy, Germany etc where newer scientific fraternity was struggling to get a blanket or anonymity, often finding refuge under several secret societies. Several scientists were killed or silenced over heresy. Copernicus was burned at stake. Galileo Galilee was able to buy life in exchange for house arrest and it was when scientific renaissance was heading for a premature death, the protestant England was wholeheartedly looking to challenge the Roman Catholic rest of Europe by promoting anything that Catholics were against. Fortunately science was one of them. And a period of superstition, plague and civil war was paving its way to a new age of science.

Formation of Royal Society was not abrupt. It started with a group of philosophers and scientific enthusiasts meeting at Gresham College. Royal Society came to being in early 17th century with King Charles II giving the go and formulating the diploma for the Royal Society for study and promotion of science and philosophy . The new scientific revolution took Baconian scientific approach. Francis Bacon was one of the important non-scientists of the lot, but he realized and promoted scientific thinking through his philosophical lectures. His three stage process of starting with hypothesis first, followed by theoretical articulation and finally experimental confirmation, would still be pursued as the best scientific approach. Royal society has had several illustrious fellows, who would keep lighting up the scientific temper till the rise of modern scientific advancements.

The book by John Gribbin was a very enlightening read. It took me to the minds of some of the finest personalities in science. It also revealed a lot more about them and their personality. Some popular figures like Christopher Wren, an architect and a fine engineer who along with the other fellows of the society took up the task of rebuilding London after the great fire of 1660, Robert Boyle, an Irish chemist and physics got his assistant Robert Hooke to design him an air pump with which he demonstrated the Boyle’s law, Isaac Newton, Edmund Halley and their interactions and conflicts that would only build an incredible establishment for scientific fellowship. If there is a revolution, there would be rivalries. Perhaps they were the tipping points of several discoveries.

Rivalry between Newton and Hooke is the most popular of the Royal society ones. Newton was more of mathematician, while Hooke was more of experimenter. Hooke couldn’t become a fellow for a long for he was not a gentleman (whatever meant at that time), Newton was extremely introvert and doubtable schizophrenic. Their personalities had a common link, a sense of insecurity. It was not just around the concept of force did they lock horns. Hooke had predicted the planetary motion, made several thesis on optics, all which later got published in Newton’s papers without giving due credit. When Newton became the president of society he got all the portraits of Hooke dismantled from the hall. In popular science while Newton became a giant, Hooke diminished.

Perhaps we are not reading thing the way it should be. I feel we tend to idolize someone, and build myths and superman stories around them and betray an array of contemporary minds. What was Isaac Newton was he a physicist or a mathematician? What was Boyle, a chemist or physicist? Was Charles Darwin a geologist, biologist or a naturalist? Ernst Rutherford appears in Chemistry school textbooks, while he was a physics guy. Yet several of them, William Gilbert, William Harvey and several others. These are people who have never allowed themselves in any box. That is one fabulous thing about classical scientists. They are more of philosophers, guess that is why they are scientists too.

More interesting things: Originality of Species
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