This volume represents a benchmark in the study of Robert Hooke (1635-1703), a genius whose wide-ranging achievements are at last receiving the recognition that they deserve. It brings together a comprehensive set of studies of different aspects of his life, thought and artistry, with sections on Hooke's life and reputation; his contributions to celestial mechanics and astronomy, and to speculative natural philosophy; the instruments that he designed; and his work in architecture and construction. The introduction places the studies in the context of our current understanding of Hooke and his milieu, while the book also contains a comprehensive bibliography.

Robert Hooke was one of the most gifted men of his age, but it was his great misfortune to work in the sphere of two remarkable men - Isaac Newton and Christopher Wren. While they gained the recognition of a monument in Westminster Abbey, Hooke died unloved, alone and in poverty. This title recognizes the great contribution that he made.

Scientists and the Sea is a history of how the scientific study of the sea has developed over a period of nearly 2500 years. Beginning with the speculations of Greek philosophers it carries the story forward, showing how curiosity about the ocean appeared in many different forms and locations before, in the late 19th century, the first deep-sea researches heralded the foundation of the science known today as oceanography. Originally published in 1971, this book has never been superseded as the most comprehensive and wide-ranging treatment of the emergence of marine science within the western scientific tradition. After three introductory chapters dealing with knowledge up to the Renaissance, the main part of the work shows how pioneers of scientific observation at sea during the 17th and 18th centuries made notable discoveries, but that it was not until the middle of the 19th century when, aided by the advance of technology, scientists were able to undertake the first explorations of the ocean depths. This second edition contains a new introduction and bibliography.

Since the time of Aristotle, the making of knowledge and the making of objects have generally been considered separate enterprises. Yet during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the two became linked through a "new" philosophy known as science. In The Body of the Artisan, Pamela H. Smith demonstrates how much early modern science owed to an unlikely source-artists and artisans. From goldsmiths to locksmiths and from carpenters to painters, artists and artisans were much sought after by the new scientists for their intimate, hands-on knowledge of natural materials and the ability to manipulate them. Drawing on a fascinating array of new evidence from northern Europe including artisans' objects and their writings, Smith shows how artisans saw all knowledge as rooted in matter and nature. With nearly two hundred images, The Body of the Artisan provides astonishingly vivid examples of this Renaissance synergy among art, craft, and science, and recovers a forgotten episode of the Scientific Revolution-an episode that forever altered the way we see the natural world.

A contemporary of Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton, and close friend of all but Newton, Robert Hooke (1635-1703), one of the founders of the early scientific revolution, faded into almost complete obscurity after his death and remained there for nearly three centuries. The result has been that his role in the scientific revolution has been almost totally ignored. He was the first professional scientist worthy of the name, working for the young Royal Society of London as its curator of experiments for four decades. He became the Society’s intellectual center, and for a while its Secretary, roles which led to confrontation with Newton. He made important contributions to pneumatics, mechanics, microscopy, astronomy, and geology, and was partner to Wren in rebuilding London after the Fire.

These lecture notes deal with the behavior of elastic bodies subject to small displacement gradients, namely their linearized elastic response. The framework for describing the nonlinear response of elastic bodies is first put into place and then the linearization is carried out to delineate the status of the linearized theory of elasticity. Easy reading for upper-division and first-year engineering students is provided by a balanced combination of mathematical rigor and physical understanding. This lecture note grew out of a course that the author regularly teaches to undergraduate mechanical engineering students.

In Inwood's biography of this forgotten scientist, Robert Hooke and his world are vividly recreated with all their contradictions, successes, and failures. The Forgotten Genius is an absorbing and compelling study of this unduly overlooked man.

This volume considers contingency as a historical category resulting from the combination of various intellectual elements – epistemological, philosophical, material, as well as theological and, broadly speaking, intellectual. With contributions ranging from fields as diverse as the histories of physics, astronomy, astrology, medicine, mechanics, physiology, and natural philosophy, it explores the transformation of the notion of contingency across the late-medieval, Renaissance, and the early modern period. Underpinned by a necessitated vision of nature, seventeenth century mechanism widely identified apparent natural irregularities with the epistemological limits of a certain explanatory framework. However, this picture was preceded by, and in fact emerged from, a widespread characterization of contingency as an ontological trait of nature, typical of late-Scholastic and Renaissance science. On these bases, this volume shows how epistemological categories, which are preconditions of knowledge as “historically-situated a priori” and, seemingly, self-evident, are ultimately rooted in time. Contingency is intrinsic to scientific practice. Whether observing the behaviour of a photon, diagnosing a patient, or calculating the orbit of a distant planet, scientists face the unavoidable challenge of dealing with data that differ from their models and expectations. However, epistemological categories are not fixed in time. Indeed, there is something fundamentally different in the way an Aristotelian natural philosopher defined a wonder or a “monstrous” birth as “contingent”, a modern scientist defines the unexpected result of an experiment, and a quantum physicist the behavior of a photon. Although to each inquirer these instances appeared self-evidently contingent, each also employs the concept differently.