Meanest Foundations and Nobler Superstructures

by Gal, Ofer

• ISBN13: 9781402007323
• ISBN10: 1402007329
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-10-01
• Publisher: Kluwer Academic Pub

Summary

This book is a historical-epistemological study of one the most consequential idea of early modern celestial mechanics: Robert Hooke's proposal to "compoun[d] the celestial motions of the planets of a direct motion by the tangent & an attractive motion towards a central body," a proposal which Isaac Newton adopted and realized in his Principia. Hooke's Programme was revolutionary both cosmologically and mathematically. It presented "the celestial motions," the proverbial symbol of stability and immutability, as a process of continuous change, and prescribed only parameters of rectilinear motions and rectilinear attractions for calculating their closed curved orbits. Yet the traces of Hooke's construction of his Programme for the heavens lead through his investigations in such earthly disciplines as microscopy, practical optics and horology, and the mathematical tools developed by Newton to accomplish it appear no less local and goal-oriented than Hooke's lenses and springs. This transgression of the boundaries between the theoretical, experimental and technological realms is reminiscent of Hooke's own free excursions in and out of the circles occupied by gentlemen-philosophers, university mathematicians, instrument makers, technicians and servants. It presents an opportunity to examine the social and epistemological distinctions, relations and hierarchies between those realms and their inhabitants, and compels a critical assessment of the philosophical categories they embody.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
The Historical Question	p. 1
Gallileo's Challenge	p. 1
The Correspondence	p. 2
Hooke's Programme	p. 10
The Historiographic Difficulty	p. 12
Hooke vs. Newton	p. 12
The Genius vs. The Mechanic	p. 14
Inflection	p. 17
Introduction: The Bad Ending	p. 17
The Novelty	p. 19
Hooke's Programme	p. 19
Setting the Question Right	p. 22
Employing Inflection
Inflection	p. 34
Application as Manipulation	p. 35
Producing Inflection in the Workshop	p. 42
Construction	p. 44
Implementation	p. 53
Tentative Conclusion	p. 57
1st Interlude: Practice	p. 59
Introduction--Methodological Lessons	p. 59
Hacking	p. 63
The Realism Snare	p. 69
Power	p. 83
	p. 83
Introduction	p. 83
De Potentia Restitutiva, or: Of Spring	p. 86
	p. 102
Horology	p. 102
The Spring Watch	p. 108
Springs and Forces	p. 121
	p. 127
The Origins of the Vibration Theory	p. 127
Of Spring again	p. 131
Springs as a Topos	p. 137
A Clockwork Theory of Matter and Power	p. 140
2nd Interlude: Representation	p. 143
Rorty	p. 143
'Knowledge Of' and 'Knowledge That'	p. 152
Hacking and Rorty	p. 159
Newton's Synthesis	p. 165
Introduction	p. 165
Newton Before and After	p. 168
Hooke's Programme Revisited	p. 200
Notes	p. 207
Introduction	p. 207
Chapter 1: Inflection	p. 207
1st Interlude: Practice	p. 210
Chapter 2: Clocks, Pendulums and Springs	p. 211
2nd Interlude: Representation	p. 213
Chapter 3: Newton's Synthesis	p. 214
Bibliography	p. 219
Index	p. 233
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