Over 4000 free audio and video lectures, seminars and teaching resources from Oxford University.
Skip to Content Skip to Navigation

Lecture 4: "The Greatest Mechanick of this Present Age": Dr Robert Hooke and the Origins of Engineering Science in Oxford

Loading Video...
Duration: 1:03:04 | Added: 10 Jun 2008
Loading Video...
Duration: 1:03:04 | Added: 10 Jun 2008
Dr Allan Chapman on '"The Greatest Mechanick of this Present Age": Dr Robert Hooke and the Origins of Engineering Science in Oxford'.

"When his Oxford friend, John Aubrey, described Hooke as the "Greatest Mechanick" of the Age, he acknowledged Hooke's genius as an Experimentalist. For Hooke the whole of nature was a great machine or engine in motion, the deepest truths of which could be uncovered by means of ingeniously-contrived instruments. For in the 1650s, Oxford's "Ingeniosi" of the future Royal Society were beginning to revolutionise our sense of "natural knowledge" and coming to envisage ways of applying it to "the Relief of Man's Estate."

People:
Copy and paste this HTML snippet to embed the audio or video on your site:
Copy and paste this HTML snippet to embed the audio or video on your site: