Robert Hooke, 1674

HOOKE, Robert (1635-1703). An Attempt to Prove the Motion of the Earth. London: T.R. for John Martyn, for the Royal Society, 1674.

First edition of Hooke’s defence of Copernicus. In the first of his Culterian Lectures, a series designed to promote public knowledge of contemporary science, Hooke provides observational evidence to support Copernicus’s heliocentric model of the universe. He begins by encouraging listeners to broaden their minds and not fall among those who “have had no true notion of the vastness of the Universe” and who “suppose the Sun as big as a Sieve, and the Moon as a Chedder Cheese” (p. 2). With this work, Hooke “was the first to recognize that orbital motion did not depend on centrifugal force but rather on the principle of rectilinear inertia. It was this discovery that set Newton on the correct path to understanding orbital dynamics” (Norman). Keynes Hooke 16; Wing H-2613; Wellcome III, p.296; Norman 1093.

Quarto (197 × 140mm). Folding plate, woodcut headpieces and initials (plate repaired along upper fold and worn at edges, shaved with slight loss to "An" on title-page as well as headlines/page numbers and occasional catchwords; brittle with several mostly marginal repairs, old stabholes, lower inner corners excised, creasing along lower edge of leaves). Modern double gilt-ruled crushed red morocco, ornamental gilt panelling, top- and foredge red. Provenance: obscured library stamp above colophon – "14" (note on title page) – occasional annotations – cancelled library accession card dated 17 September 1926 – Owen Gingerich (bookplate).