New Research challenges Wren’s insect illustrations
Christopher Wren has long been assumed to be the author of some of Micrographia’s insect pictures. Mark Jervis presents a reasoned argument against that view in his paper ‘Robert Hooke's Micrographia: an entomologist's perspective’.
Micrographia (1665) - was, according to some historians, a formative work of the modern era. Following its publication, it had a rapid impact on natural philosophers, the intelligentsia, and the literate public. Its powerful influence has been partly attributed to the book’s numerous microscope-assisted pictures of insects, some of which feature widely in Hooke biographies and histories of Science.
Until now, the entomological content of Micrographia has not been thoroughly examined and analysed, despite the fact that more than a third of the book’s engravings (the ‘Schemata’) illustrate insects or their body parts, and a similar proportion of its sixty ‘Observations’ (comprising descriptions and speculative discussions) concern insects. Also, the precise taxonomic identities of most of Micrographia’s insects have not previously been ascertained.
The paper by Mark Jervis provides taxonomically accurate identifications for many of Micrographia’s featured insects, and it also assesses - from a present-day entomologist’s perspective - the accuracy of the book’s insect drawings. Other entomological aspects of Micrographia addressed by Jervis are the scientific insightfulness of Hooke’s ‘Observations’, the book’s influence on other seventeenth century studies of insects, and its legacy to modern entomology. Hooke is argued to have made, through his detailed studies of insects, a meaningful contribution to the seventeenth century debate over a highly resilient yet mistaken notion - of the spontaneous generation of organisms. Hooke also shed new light on insect metamorphosis. Hooke’s speculations regarding the function of fly compound eyes, halteres (vestigial hind wings) and mouthparts were particularly insightful. Hooke also pioneered the study of insect flight mechanics. Jervis concludes that Hooke helped to lay the foundations of entomology.
Read the full article online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00222933.2013.780270
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