I am especially grateful to Dr Michael Hunter (Birkbeck College, London) for careful and provocative comments on the first version of this article; although I doubt that I have met his high standards, it is thanks to Dr Hunter that I have found more in both Hooke and his audience than I thought was there. A crucial matter, insisted upon by Dr Hunter (and with important results for this paper), was the consultation of the Journal Books of the Royal Society, and I would like to thank the Librarian of the Society, Mr N. H. Robinson, for the efficiency and courtesy with which he met my request for microfilms of these manuscripts.

1. Among the more valuable studies of Hooke's thought is Oldroyd, D.R., ‘Robert Hooke's Methodology of Science as Exemplified in his Discourse of Earthquakes’. Br. J. Hist. Sc. (1972), 6, p. 109–1 0CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which includes a bibliography of other pertinent works on Hooke's lectures. The paucity of published comments by Hooke's contemporaries is signalled by Eyles, Victor A., ‘The influence of Nicolaus Steno on the Development of Geological Science in Britain’, in Scherz, Gustav, ed., Nicolaus Steno and his Indice. Copenhagen, 1958, p. 186–187.Google Scholar

2. On the lack of knowledge of English among French scientists, see Brown, Harcourt: Scientific Organizations in Seventeenth Century France (1620–1680), Baltimore, 1934, p. 198. 203–204, 225, 282.Google Scholar Even Buffon, who knew English well, cited John Ray, not Hooke, on the geological role of earthquakes. See Oeuvres philosophiques de Buffon. Piveteau, Jean, ed. Paris, 1954, p. 88BGoogle Scholar and n. 16; the text published here is Buffon, , Histoire naturelle. i, 1749Google Scholar, ‘Preuves de la théorie de la terre, Article V’.

3. Hooke, : Micrographia. London, 1665Google Scholar; facsimile reprint with preface by Gunther, R.T., New York, 1961, p. 107–112.Google Scholar Hooke's earlier comments on fossils, at meetings of 17 June 1663 and 24 August 1664, are in Birch, Thomas, History of the Royal Society of London, 4 vols., London, 1756–1757, i, 260ff, 463.Google Scholar Hereafter: Birch. For the dating of Hooke's 1667–1668 lectures, see remarks in Appendix, lecture 1.

4. The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke. Waller, Richard, ed. London, 1705Google Scholar; facsimile reprint with introduction by Brown, Theodore M., London, 1971, p. 318. 290–295.Google Scholar Hereafter: PW.

5. Ibid., pp. 327–328. Hooke had in mind variability within species and used such common examples as the various breeds of sheep and dogs.

6. Ibid., p. 321; also, p. 319. For antiquarian interests in the Royal Society, see Schneer, Cecil J.: ‘The rise of Historical Geology in the Seventeenth Century’. Isis, (1954), 45, p. 256–268.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For comparisons of coins and fossils, see the discussion of ‘monuments’ in Rappaport, Rhoda, ‘Borrowed Words: Problems of Vocabulary in Eighteenth-Century Geology’, Br. J. Hist. Sci. (1982), 15, p. 27–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. PW: p. 291, 312–313, 316, 320, 321–322.Google Scholar

8. Ibid., p. 324; also, p. 312. Accounts of earthquakes occupy p. 299–310. In addition to Oldroyd, , op. cit. (1)Google Scholar, see Shapiro, Barbara J.: Probability and Certainty in Seventeenth-Century England. Princeton, 1983, ch. 2, passim.Google Scholar

9. ‘Lectures De Potentia Restitutiva, or of Spring’. In Gunther, R.T.: Early Science in Oxford, viii: The Cutler Lectures of Robert Hooke. Oxford, 1931, p. 380–384.Google Scholar As in 1667–1668, Hooke again refers briefly, p. 382, to possible changes in the earth's axis.

10. PW, p. 329, 331.Google Scholar

11. Ibid., p. 338, 342.

12. See the ‘Catalogue of Fellows, 1660–1700’. In Hunter, Michael: The Royal Society and its Fellows, 1660–1700Google Scholar. BSHS Monographs, no. 4, 1982. Useful articles on Lister and Plot are in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography.

13. Birch, , ii, 487Google Scholar, entry dated 2 November 1671. Lister's letter was published in Philosophical Transactions, (1671), 6, p. 2281–2284.Google Scholar

14. Plot, : The Natural History of Oxford-shire. Oxford, 1677, p. 111–123.Google Scholar

15. Birch, : ii, 487.Google Scholar

16. Ibid., iv, 238, entry dated 12 December 1683.

17. Ibid., ii, 13, entry dated 8 February 1665 (N. S.), for ‘petrified snow’ and ii, 487 (2 November 1671) for remarkable tumour. An admirable analysis of the confusion attending various kinds of ‘petrifactions’ is in Rudwick, Martin: The Meaning of Fossils. London, 1972, ch. 1–2.Google Scholar

18. PW, p. 281.Google Scholar

19. Birch, , ii, 183Google Scholar, entry dated 27 June 1667.

20. See, for example, Histoire de l'Académie royale des sciences, Paris, 1703 (1705), p. 22–24.Google Scholar

21. Plot, , op. cit. (14), p. 113.Google Scholar

22. PW, p. 343.Google Scholar

23. Reference to Burnet occurs rather late (ibid., p. 371), when Hooke had just decided to shelve astronomy and begin his analysis of fables. Still later, Hooke read accounts of Burnet's theory of the earth to the Society; see Journal Books of the Royal Society (hereafter: JB), entries dated 12 December 1688, 19 December 1688, 9 January 1689 (N. S.). Among the many accounts of Burnet's most famous work, the article in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography is convenient and accompanied by an excellent bibliography.

24. PW, p. 330.Google Scholar For knowledge in the Royal Society of some of the contents of the Principia, see Westfall, Richard S., Never at Rest: a Biography of Isaac Newton. Cambridge, 1980, p. 444–445Google Scholar; Newton was still putting Book Two into final form during the winter of 1686–1687 (ibid., p. 465).

25. On renewing the fuel supply, PW, p. 327.Google Scholar For early and later discussions of the earth's growing old, ibid., p. 325–326, 379, 422, 427. For subterranean fires always associated with earthquakes, see Birch, , iii, 435Google Scholar, entry dated 7 November 1678.

26. PW, p. 345.Google Scholar

27. Ibid., p. 347.

28. In the Appendix, lectures 4–7. Analysis in Oldroyd, , op. cit. (1), p. 127–129.Google Scholar

29. Text dated 1695, in PW, p. 536–540.Google Scholar

30. Birch, , iv, 550Google Scholar, entry dated 26 October 1687.

31. Letters from Halley, to Wallis, John, London, 15 02 1687Google Scholar and 9 April 1687. In Correspondence and Papers of Edmond Halley. MacPike, E. F., ed., London, 1932, p. 77–80, 80–82.Google Scholar

32. Halley presented to the Society (JB, entry dated 1 February 1688) a paper on changes in the earth's axis. He did in fact think such changes might have occurred, but so slowly that they would not be detected by any comparison of ancient and modern measurements.

33. In MacPike, , op. cit., (31), p. 77–78.Google Scholar

34. Wallis, to Halley, , Oxford, 4 03 1687.Google Scholar In Turner, A. J.: ‘Hooke's Theory of the Earth's Axial displacement: Some Contemporary Opinion’, Br. J. Hist. Sci. (1974), 7, p.167.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The texts of this letter and a second one to Halley are here given in full. The meetings of the Oxford group, during which changing latitudes were discussed, are described in Gunther, R. T.. Early Science in Oxford, iv: The Philosophical Society, Oxford, 1925, p. 199, 200, 201–202Google Scholar, entries dated 22 February and 1 March 1687.

35. Birch, , iv, 527, 529Google Scholar: entry dated 9 March 1687, when Halley read the first of Wallis's letters, and entry for 23 March 1687, when the Society allowed that the earth's poles had shifted.

36. PW, p. 411.Google Scholar

37. Ibid., p. 372.

38. Ibid.

39. Ibid., p. 303, 308, 324, 337 (gaps in written records), 334, 335 (the invention of writing), 335, 338 (fossils as natural chronometers).

40. See Manuel, Frank E.: The Eighteenth Century Confronts the Gods, Cambridge, Mass., 1959Google Scholar, ch. 1–3, and Walker, D. P.: The Ancient Theology. Ithaca, N. Y., 1972Google Scholar. Hooke's knowledge of the works of Kircher and other antiquarians is evident in The Diary of Robert Hooke, M. A., M. D., F. R. S. 1672–1680. Robinson, H. W. and Adams, W. eds. London, 1935, p. 70, 163, 254, 266, 390.Google Scholar

41. PW, p. 384.Google Scholar For pagan floods as different from Noah's, ibid., p 389, 408; fora comparable refusal to conflate pagan tales with the Tower of Babel, ibid., p. 395–396. On the one occasion when Hooke tried to weave the Flood into his geological theories, he did allude to accounts in authors other than Moses that might have some bearing on the Flood, ibid., p. 412.

42. Ibid., p. 374. Theodore M. Brown (ibid., p. 9) suggests that Hooke's use of fable may have been a reply to Thomas Burnet. But Hooke had just referred to Burnet in a different context, the earth's shape (above and n. 23), and his return to the subject of fable in 1693 is more plausibly a result of his reading of Burnet's later work (see below) rather than Burnet's theory of the earth.

43. In the Appendix, lecture 9 and the preceding lecture for which there is no text. Hooke had earlier toyed briefly with interpretations of the Atlantis myth and Ovid, , PW, p. 308, 320, 323Google Scholar, but at that time he probably thought he had enough evidence for earthquakes without pursuing the exegesis of fables. Hanno's voyage probably took place in the fifth century B.C.

44. Ibid., p. 391. In the two examples of the Titans and Proserpine, I have actually used lectures of 1693, rather than 1687–1688, since Hooke's method of exegesis did not change. There was, in fact, an earlier lecture on Proserpine (ibid., p. 395), but the text seems not to have survived.

45. In the Appendix, lecture 12, and Birch, , iv, p. 555–556Google Scholar, entry dated 1 December 1687. (According to JB, this should be 7 December.) Dr Thomas Gale, F. R. S., formerly regius professor of Greek at Cambridge, was a celebrated classicist admired by Huet and Jean Mabillon. His distinguished career is chronicled in the DNB, and his active participation in the Royal Society can be inferred from Hunter, , op. cit. (12) p. 218–219.Google Scholar

46. When Evelyn saw how the sea had encroached on areas in Holland, he was reminded of the Flood and went on to quote Ovid; see The Diary of John Evelyn, de Beer, E. S. ed. 6 vols., Oxford, 1955, ii, 32Google Scholar, entry for 23 July 1641. For an example of Woodward's use of Ovid and other poets to confirm Genesis, see Levine, Joseph M.; Dr Woodward's Shield. Berkeley, 1977, p. 70.Google Scholar On Huet, in addition to Walker, , op.cit. (40)Google Scholar, there is Dupront, A.: Pierre-Daniel Huet et l'exégèse comparatiste au XVIII^e siècle. Paris, 1930Google Scholar

47. In the Appendix, lectures 13, 14. Earlier references to the Flood are in PW, p. 320, 341.Google Scholar Interpretations resembling Hooke's views of 1688 were devised late in the eighteenth century by such geologists as John Whitehurst and Jean-Andre Deluc, and as early as 1700 by Abraham de la Pryme; for the latter, see Porter, Roy: The Making of Geology. Cambridge, 1977, p. 81.Google Scholar

48. PW, p. 320, 422.Google Scholar

49. This is a supposition based on the absence of any new critical issues raised in PW. There were, as Hooke admitted in 1667–1668, very few ancient texts relevant to his own geological concerns, even Strabo and Pliny generally repeating older tales and adding little fresh, first-hand observation. Hooke may have come to a halt in 1688 for lack of material.

50. JB, entries dated 14 December 1692 and 18 January 1693, and PW, p. 402–403.Google Scholar In addition to earlier work on Burnet, , cited above (23)Google Scholar, see Rossi, Paolo: I Segni del Tempo. Milan, 1979, esp. p. 59–60.Google Scholar

51. JB, entry dated 13 July 1693, and PW, p. 384–385Google Scholar (see comments in Appendix under lecture 21).

52. PW, p. 440.Google Scholar

53. The issue of lusus naturae occupies much of lecture 16 (in the Appendix) and part of a lecture summarized in JB, entry dated 4 January 1699. The other topics mentioned are recurrent themes in lectures 15, 17, 18, 23–27, and in other lectures during this period, recorded in JB and listed in the Appendix.

54. PW, p. 404.Google Scholar

55. Text in Gunther, R. T.: Early Science in Oxford, vii: The Life and Work of Robert Hooke. Oxford, 1930, p. 774.Google Scholar Hooke's earlier remarks on amber are in Birch, iii, 75 (5 February 1673) and 440 f (28 November 1678). Hooke's renewed interest was prompted by the reading to the Society of a letter on amber from J. P. Hartmann, author of an earlier work on the same subject (JB, entries for 14 January, 3 February, 24 February 1697).

56. PW, p. 433.Google Scholar

57. Ibid., p. 450.

58. Ibid., p. 446. This remark comes near the beginning of a long discussion of priority disputes, including the lack of public recognition when discoveries remain unpublished. An autobiographical element can be detected in Hooke's statement not simply because he did not publish his lectures on earthquakes, but also because his treatment of fossils in the Micrographia had been ignored by Philippe de LaHire who in 1692 published what purported to be an original analysis of petrified wood; LaHire is explicitly discussed in Hooke's lecture. That LaHire did not know Hooke's work is evident if one compares the Micrographia with the summary of LaHire, in Memoires de mathematique [sic] et de physique, tirez des registres de l'Academie Royale des Sciences. Paris, 1692, p. 122–125.Google Scholar

59. PW, p. 437.Google Scholar For the debates of this period, see Rudwick, , op.cit. (17), ch. 2.Google Scholar

60. Ibid., esp. p. 83–84, and Levine, , op.cit. (46)Google Scholar, ch. 2. Hooke's attack on Woodward occurred in a lecture devoted to the causes of petrifactions and of their burial, in which he included an assault on the Woodwardian notion of the Flood's dissolution of the antediluvian world. JB, entry dated 4 January 1699. Woodward was present at this meeting, but no debate on these issues is recorded.

61. On earthquakes, see letter from Evelyn, to Tenison, , 15 10 1692Google Scholar, in The Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn, F. R. S., Bray, William, ed. 4 vols., London 1883–1887, iii, p. 325–330Google Scholar, and Kennedy, J. E. and Sarjeant, W. A. S.: ‘‘Earthquakes in the Air’: The Seismological Theory of John Flamsteed (1693)’. J. Roy. Astronom. Soc. Can. (1982), 76, p. 213–223.Google Scholar For subterranean heat and/or fires, see Boyle, Robert, ‘Of the Temperature Of the Subterraneal Regions, As to Heat and Cold’ in: Tracts Written by the Honourable Robert Boyle, Oxford, 1671Google Scholar (each tract in this collection is separately paginated), and Henshaw's discussion of hot springs in Birch, , iii, p. 433–434Google Scholar, entry dated 31 October 1678. A later revival of Hooke's theory of earthquakes met with no better success, as indicated in Erich Raspe, Rudolf: An Introduction to the Natural History of the Terrestrial Sphere (1763), transl. and ed. Iverson, A. N. and Carozzi, A. V.New York, 1970, p. xxxviiGoogle Scholar, where the occasional compliment to Raspe is coupled with no indication that the theory itself was admired. Apart from Raspe himself, Hooke's only known convert is Aubrey; see Hunter, Michael: John Aubrey and the Realm of Learning. New York, 1975, p. 58–59, 223.Google Scholar

62. In addition to Rudwick, , op.cit. (17), esp. p. 63–66Google Scholar, see Gordon Davies, L.: The Earth in Decay: A History of British Geomorphology, 1578–1878. London and New York, 1969Google Scholar, for the subject of ‘degradation’ without a mechanism for ‘renewal’ of the earth's landforms. For influential opposition to Ray, see Buffon, , op. cit. (2)Google Scholar. One would like to know more than Davies offers about the apparent incompatibility of the ideas of immutable laws of nature and the irreversible processes of decay (chiefly denudation). Hooke did encounter some equivocal opposition to the latter idea from John Evelyn (JB, 30 July 1690), but there is no evidence that Hooke's notion of the diminishing intensity of earthquakes played any role in the general rejection of his theory.