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Lab hidden inside a famous monument

bbc.com

144 pointshappy-go-lucky30 comments

I find it weird that this article acts as if Robert Hooke isn't particularly well known, and downplays his accomplishments somewhat. He's an influential scientist, with contributions in many fields, whose name everyone learns in high school (both in biology and physics class).

The British should be a bit more proud of him.

So many contenders. Britain built the modern world.

The English-speaking world often thinks so.

You're implying you think they're wrong? Why not instead state why you think they're wrong.

I'm not really interested in a to and fro off-topic argument, but I know from previous to and fros, every big European country has its own heroes of the enlightenment. I find proclaiming nationalist "we're special" ownership ugly and usually ignorant, which is why I commented.

You suggest Britain is an unlikely candidate, merely because there are other options?

Wouldn't it be much easier to criticize the notion that one country built the modern world?

That's exactly what he(or she) is criticizing.

Not explicitly. Instead, his/her argument has the form: "Every country claims to be the important country, and nationalists are bad, so it can't be Britain."

I commented because I thought that argument was badly constructed.

Of course, anyone can guess whether the argument's author supports the alternative argument (as you claim).

And by modern world you mean industrial revolution?

Yeah and it shows. So much human suffering under the British yoke and we're still dealing with the arrogant decisions of a brutish regime... :(

The Horrible Histories series I read as a child portray him as being a general loon, and being a low rent Newton.

Newton was so prolific and is so well-known that he occupies approximately 90% of the mindspace of that period, as far as famous figures go.

He's similar to Einstein - everyone knows him, but who can name the other people who made great advances around that time Einstein? We're likely nerds, so we can probably name more, but I'd wager that most randomly selected people might know Oppenheimer, just because of his famous quote.

Newton despised him, because when Newton proved how springs should work from basic principles (resistance proportional to compression) Hooke said "I published that first" and got it named after him - the so-called 'Hooke's law'. But Hooke had published half a dozen possibilities in a speculative article, and proved nothing. Kind of the original spammer.

I can't help but think fondly of the Baroque cycle when reading about the likes of Hooke and Wren.

https://www.nealstephenson.com/baroque-cycle/

Same! I really need to read up on the actual history a bit more, as it was a golden age of really cool (and bizarre) things happening.

James Gleick's Isaac Newton is an excellent account of the time. It focuses on Newton's life and is quite brief, but still prepares you to recognize many of the cast in the Baroque cycle.

I would perhaps recommend The Clockwork Universe[0] instead, which is more or less exactly an overview of the characters and intellectual influences of the time.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004GB1TTA/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

I was thinking the exact same thing while reading. And while holidaying in Bohemia earlier this year!

I can't help thinking of the false proof punishment in Anathem whenever anyone mentions the Baroque cycle.

There are so many bits of true history mixed in indistinguishably with irrelevant falsehoods-- which were especially irritating because I'd been reading swaths of Philosophical Transactions from the 1700s shortly before reading Quicksilver-- that I found reading it to be a punishment.

I _love_ the Baroque Cycle but I wish there would be some sort of annotated version which highlights facts and fiction.

I like this idea. Maybe there's a way to put a little beep in before and after a historic sections of the audio books play :)

The monument in question is this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monument_to_the_Great_Fire_of_...

You ruined the surprise :-)

This piece is really good for reasons that go far beyond the hidden Indiana Jones style secret lab:

Every six months, the star moves north or south in the sky at a scale equivalent to the hands moving 22 ten-thousandths of a second.

To magnify parallax enough to see it, you need a very large telescope indeed.

Very interesting, I'm curious if the lenses are still there?

I very much doubt it - those things weren't cheap and probably would have been repurposed, if possible.

Where do these things that are stolen end up? I wonder what is left nether.

Many of the scientific antiquities and papers of the UK end up at the Royal Society Library. Brady Haran has a nice video series named Objectivity[1] about objects in the archives done with their head librarian, Keith Moore[2].

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtwKon9qMt5YLVgQt1tvJKg

[2]: https://blogs.royalsociety.org/history-of-science/author/kei...

Cheers, I didn't realise the Royal Society had a library. Will check your links.

Hooke was a master lens maker, and the inventor of the modern microscope.

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