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Narrating a New World : How Microscopic Experience was Communicated through the Words and Images of Robert Hooke’s <em>Micrographia</em>

<p>This essay revolves around <em>Micrographia </em>written by the English 17th century experimental philosopher Robert Hooke and the way it mediated microscopic experience. The focus of this study is on one hand the strategies Hooke used to communicate experience and on the other the responses by some of Hooke’s contemporary readers. By comparing <em>Micrographia </em>to Henry Power’s <em>Experimental Philosophy</em>, we see that <em>Micrographia </em>uses images where the author is invisible and textual narrations with an explicit authorial voice to mediate experimental experience to his contemporaries. Samuel Pepys uses the mediated experiences to learn how to see through the microscope and to become more like the author in <em>Micrographia</em>, Margaret Cavendish does not trust the representational techniques of Hooke and the playwright Thomas Shadwell satirizes the gentleman virtuoso that constitutes the narrative voice in <em>Micrographia</em>. By the study of these three readers, I build on Peter Dears definition of a scientific text as having an inherent reference to an experimental situation. By seeing <em>Micrographia </em>as defined through the interactions between the author and the readers, we see that this reference, and therefore a text’s scientific status, is defined by a relation between author and reader based on trust. The reader has to trust both the author and the representational techniques used in the text. The appropriation of <em>Micrographia </em>by readers who do not possess this trust, results in the redefinition of <em>Micrographia </em>into other kinds of texts that fill different purposes defined by the readers. <em></em></p>

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA/oai:DiVA.org:uu-113831
Date January 2008
CreatorsOrrje, Jacob
PublisherUppsala University, Department of History of Science and Ideas
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, text

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