Robert Hook: expanding one's umwelt to expand one's mind

His fascinating approach to life and understanding

Excerpt: "Hooke, the first paid curator and later secretary of the Royal Society of London, has often been regarded as a dabbler in too many fields of knowledge.

Felicity Henderson, a senior lecturer at the University of Exeter, demonstrates in “Robert Hooke’s Experimental Philosophy” that he was in fact a pioneer—he coined the term “cell,” for the hollow structures he found inside a slice of cork, insisted that fossils were the remains of actual forms of life, and proposed that species may have changed their shape “in great part” over time. His theory that the laws of attraction govern the interactions of celestial bodies sent Isaac Newton back to the drawing board.

In Hooke’s view, a scientist, equipped with good instruments and fortified with lots of caffeine (he was a regular at London’s coffee houses), could unlock a world more ordered and wonderful than anything humans could make.

A microscopic close-up of a printed period revealed it to be a fuzzy, unappealing thing. But when Hooke focused his lens on the leather binding of one of his books, he saw an enchanted garden of undulating flowers (otherwise known as mold)."