Wired by coffee and a desire to know

The 17th-century Robert Hooke’s rigorous but open-minded attitude to scientific enquiry and his refusal to dismiss the ‘mad, foolish and Phantastick’ are reminiscent of Charles Fort’s intellectual curiosity

Ross MacFarlane

TO SEND REVIEW COPIES, CONTACT THE BOOK REVIEWS EDITOR AT DVBARRETT@FORTEANTIMES.COM Robert Hooke’s Experimental Philosophy Felicity Henderson Reaktion Books 2024 Hb, 224pp, £17.95, ISBN 9781789149548 The structure of frozen urine, observing the lunar eclipse, strange remains discovered in a dead aristocrat’s body and a onewheeled Chinese vehicle. Not newspaper cuttings sent to this issue of FT, but a range of the topics under discussion at early meetings of the Royal Society. These examples give a sense of how everything appeared to be of interest to the members of England’s first scientific society, founded in 1660 to “promote the study of the natural world through experiments and observation”. The Society’s self-styled “experimental philosophers” adopted the motto of the new institution as Nullius in Verba (roughly, “Take no-one’s word for it”) to…

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Fortean Times (Digital) - 1 Issue, 455

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