on 03/03/03 it will be the tricentennial of
the death in 1703 of Robert Hooke.
Hooke was born at Freshwater Isle of
Wight in 1635
There is considerable evidence available online
to the effect that he discovered the inverse square
law of gravity and the fact that it would generate
elliptical orbits required by Kepler and, indeed,
of his communicating the inverse square idea to
Newton at a time when Newton was in the dark about it.

Hooke also is credited with the "spring" law that a
spring pushes back at you with a force which is proportional to how much it is compressed or stretched. The spring force is proportional to the distance you push it.

He was clearly concerned with force and its relation to distance: how with gravity the force falls off with the square of distance, how with elastic objects like springs the force increases with distance pushed.

Hooke was friends with Christopher Wren and played a leading role in the royal society. He was described by a contemporary who knew him, John Aubrey, in a book called Aubrey's Brief Lives

[[He is but of midling stature, something crooked, pale faced, and his face but little belowe, but his head is lardge; his eie full and popping, and not quick; a grey eie....
As he is of prodigious inventive head, so is a person of great vertue and goodnes....He is certainly the greatest Mechanick this day in the World...
Twas Mr. Robert Hooke that invented the Pendulum-Watches, so much more usefull than the other Watches...
Before I leave this Towne, I will gett of him a Catalogue of what he hath wrote; and as much of his Inventions as I can....
(Aubrey then goes into detail about Hooke's discovery of the inverse square law and his
communication of this to Newton in several letters
and Newton's failure to credit the source of the idea.)

This is the greatest Discovery in Nature that ever was
since the World's Creation. It never was so much as hinted by any man before. I which he had writt plainer, and afforded a little more paper.]]

My mom's birthday is also coming up soon.

Ralf

Ralf, you have to learn English the English way. That is, stop saying "mom" and "math", please.

Leonard.

Your tribute to Robert Hooke is all very interesting but may I ask what this has to do with the subject matter of this forum? Or am I missing something?

so nice of you to ask!
I was wondering if anyone would think of
inquiring as to relevance

I despair of convincing you personally Pip
of there being any relevance, however
someone else reading the exchange might see
some (given a different perspective)

in the Systeme, the unit force is what
will accelerate unit mass at unit acceleration
that is the force that will accelerate
one kilogram at rate of one meter per sq.second

and this unit force is called the "newton" because
after all Isaac Newton was concerned with force,
wasn't he, so there you are.

and Newton was a plagiarist who took over Hooke's
superb insight into gravity and did not give him
credit. Bit of a headstrong egotist too. Liked
to watch torture when he was head of the mint. Highly
vindictive in his scientific disputes and so on.

all this is by the by. why should it matter? but it gives one to think.

perhaps to even things up...

Leonard I am not impressed by this contemptuous response:

"I despair of convincing you personally Pip
of there being any relevance, ..."

As to the rest of it we only have your word that Isaac Newton stole the credit.

Your version of history may or may not have elements of truth but there is no disputing the fact that the man himself had considerable talent in mathematics and physics. I doubt if anyone could pull the stunts you accuse him of and get clean away with it for all time.

However to be fair to you I too have learned over the years not to trust conventional history absolutely. It does have an unrealistic tendancy to credit individuals with disproportionate achievement as though they did it all single-handed.

I am more inclined these days to think of such achievements as the discovery of the law of gravity as being a product of the times in which it occurred. The evidence and the sharing of ideas stimulated the scientific community of the day. However there was then as now fierce competition to be the first to publish or have the good fortune to be recognised by the establishment. These things tend do to distort history a bit.

As it always has been and will always be, it's not just *what* you say, but also *how* you say it and *who* says it.
Hooke's insights into gravity might have contributed to Newton's theories, however, Newton brought it all together, wrote and published the "Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica", not Hooke.

Ralf

Pip, newton's well-documented abuse of hooke is all over the internet. Before you challenge me (mere messenger in this matter) please do a little research on your own.

>As to the rest of it we only have your word that >Isaac Newton stole the credit.

You do not have only mine---just google with the keywords
[newton hooke]

By today's ethical standards Newton should have credited Hooke in the Principia and the fact that he does not constitutes plagiarism.

Newton wrote Hooke a letter (at a time when Hooke was explaining the inversesquare law and its generation of elliptical orbits to Newton) which confessed that Newton had not thought of it. Hooke read this letter to some people at the Royal Society, because it conclusively demonstrated his priority. Newton became furious when he learned that the letter had been shared, and so on. Not one to cross. I am not concerned with this. By modern standards Newton was a plagiarist and had a rather difficult personality but this does not interest me---do your own reading about it on the internet if you are interested in Newton.

I think we might consider honoring Robert Hooke by naming the unit of force after him-----instead of, as the metric system has done, Newton.



"I despair of convincing you personally Pip
of there being any relevance, ..."

MY DEAR PIP this was not meant contemptuously! you
have always seemed to me firmly set in your viewpoint
and I merely express a matter of fact---I do not expect you to be persuaded of anything through conversation. Please do not take my response as "contemptuous".


>I doubt if anyone could pull the stunts you accuse >him of and get clean away with it for all time.

Newton did not get clean away with it for all time.
But a lot of "stunts" happen in academic politics that are not strictly regular so your point of doubt is invalid. Also I am not Newton's accuser. Take it up with his biographers and with the scientific historians of the period. I have enormous respect for Isaac as a mathematician (he and Leibniz invented calculus for gods sake) but the son-of-a-bitch did love to watch people tortured, and attended torture at the Mint with evident satisfaction. Please allow me a complex view of reality.

A search on Google under the three search words: 'Hooke, Plagiarism, Newton' produces 15 entries

My old Geography teacher had a favourite dictum:

"Copying from one source is plagiarism. Copying from two sources is 'research'".

Hi Tony, great to hear from you!

Not to worry. Can't imagine Newton's great reputation
could be tarnished by having neglected to acknowledge. But he probably should have
recognized his indebtedness to hooke in some small
way and then none of this would've ever come up.

I am endeavoring to maintain my high regard
for Newton while assimilating the facts of his
difficult and actually rather interesting personality.

I suspect that (because of love of history) you already know a lot about Newton that I don't and
I am curious as to your view of the man.

did you ever look at Aubrey's brief lives? Lovely book. all the biographies are short (one page mostly) and gossipy and are of his contemporaries. he knew everybody. London society very small circa 1700.

You Americans! Always tryinna dis our great minds. It's shameful, Leonard, truly shameful.

Tony, if you wouldn't mind helping with the choice of names, I have three good names (mile, minute, talent) for the main units but am still searching for the right name for the force unit that goes with them.

I'll make a side by side comparison to give you a chance to see which is the more comfortable.

BTW the metric unit force (which gives unit acceleration, one meter per second per second, to the kilogram mass) is the newton.

A hooke is worth 12 newtons. (just over 12.0, less than 12.1)

A bob is worth 12 newtons.

The energy unit in the system is the hookemile---about 5 food Calories, delivered by pushing for one mile with hooke force.

The energy unit is the bobmile. (analogous to "foot pound" or to the "newtonmeter" energy unit which in the Systeme is called "joule" and is delivered by pushing for one meter with newton force.)

The hooke force---at about 2.7 poundforce---is similar to the "oke", variously spelled ocque, oka, still used in the eastern mediterranean.

The bob force---2.7 pounds or 12 newtons---is similar to the traditional oke or ocque unit of weight. See Google with two keywords [oke ocque].

The power unit, hookemile per minute, delivered by pushing at mile-a-minute speed with hooke force, is about half a horsepower.

The power unit, bobmile per minute, is roughly one-half horsepower or 360 watts.

Definitions (note that a special 10 percent reduced minute is used in physics contexts):

minute = 1/1600 day, 54 seconds
mile = tenmillionth of a lightminute
talent = 10^40 hbar minute per sq. mile
hooke = 10^40 hbar/mileminute

(or bob = the same thing)

Natural constants:

c = tenmillion miles a minute
hbar = 10^-40 hookemile minute
G = 10^-15 hooke squaremile per squaretalent

or

c = tenmillion miles a minute
hbar = 10^-40 bobmile minute
G = 10^-15 bob squaremile per squaretalent

Just turns out that a hooke is worth a dozen newtons. No disrespect, but perhaps a slight hint of dissidence is in keeping.

If you can come up with a preference one way or the other without too much bother I certainly would appreciate hearing it.

Bryan! do YOU hear bobmile and better than hookemile
(for the energy unit) or viceversa?

You should be happy I am not trying to name something
after Johannes Kepler who was a GERMAN after all.

I need help. your good ear. how do these two
names for the force unit strike you? don't need
reasons so much as gut reaction

Wish Paul were here

Neither strike me as particularly appropriate.

have you cooled as regards *ocque*

that has the advantage of being a traditional measure (although used abroad) which is the right 2.7 pound size

I have a set of fables (Nature Fables 3) in which
mile-minute-talent units are tried out with ocque
as the force unit.

if you don't think either hooke or bob are good maybe I will hold off and not re-edit those fables---leave them saying *ocque*

for some reason *ocquemile* does not bother me, as the
name for the 5 Calorie energy delivered by a mile-long push which ocque force.

it may actually be not as dorky as hookemile or bobmile

if you have any reactions please tell me (except not if it is utter boredom, I am already discouraged enough by how hard it is to name the force unit)

I realise Leonard that I am a bit late responding to this but I would like to anyway:

[MY DEAR PIP this was not meant contemptuously! you
have always seemed to me firmly set in your viewpoint
and I merely express a matter of fact---I do not expect you to be persuaded of anything through conversation. Please do not take my response as "contemptuous".]

It shows the limitations of this form of communication, messages often seem more negative than intended. If I have misunderstood you then I am sorry.

As for being firmly set in my view-point, well lets not kid ourselves Leonard, we may have amicable exchanges for fun but we are all deeply entrenched in our views over the metric v non-metric debate, which-ever side we are on.

Hi Pip,
to say "all" firmly entrenched may overstate
but many of us do indeed seem to be
I know from personal experience that one
can change one's mind having been a metric-booster
until realizing that metric sizes are bad
(it is a failed attempt at a purely decimal system)

when choosing a physics text for my students
in Seventies I made a point of getting a
metric-only text (some very good texts were
50-50 or more evenly divided in the problems
at that time) because I wanted total immersion in a new language
for them and a complete conversion of their thinking
to metric. looking back this seems misguided and regretable,
but anyway it shows we can change:
having been a metric hard-liner I know

the decisive thing for me, in switching, was
the ugliness and total non-decimality of the
metric system's constants
I realized that in the long term metric was
unacceptably bad and incompatible with
an advanced civilization. Then later I realized
to my great surprise that by weird coincidence SOME of
the units which one would need to have if one were
to make the main constants be decimal
were roughly the same size as classical and traditional ones
(mile, gallon, talent,...)

I'm not disdainful of the dozenal and binary relations in the range of practical units---indeed I find divisibility handy in everyday matters such as cooking and carpentry---but I think that for the foreseeable there will be SOME decimal system (as well perhaps as foot-inch-pound-ounce-like schemes with 12 and 16) and therefore logically the metric system should be destroyed and made obsolete as soon as possible so as not to get in the way of more competent decimality.

My point is, we wont get rid of a decimal system, we are bound to have SOME decimal sytem of units at least for science (and whoever else wants) so therefore we should try to have a good one
instead of metric which is such a trashheap.
it is the only system that needs to be actively opposed.
the rest can be left to evolution---the gradual changes that go on unmanaged in language and custom.

So I will oppose it with any and every available weapon.

My chorus of 180 people sang the Bach Bminor last night, with an orchestra composed of period instruments, and received a standing ovation---very proud of this---very exciting piece of music. I was
at the back row of the bass section at one corner, with sopranos behind and at my elbow. Incredible to sing one part and hear the other parts very clearly too. not being surrounded by other basses.

Listen Pip, energy and temperature and frequency are the same scales. Temperature is virtually the same thing as energy (microscopic level.) The conversion ratio linking those two scales ("kay") must be a power of ten.
In metric it is 1.38065...x10^-23 joule per kelvin
and most of the time what is used is a bastard
non-metric version 8.617342...x10^-5 eV per kelvin
(working physicists find metric a pain in the ass and
have a lot of kludges and dodges to get around
having to use the consistent system, like saying electronvolt to measure both temperature and frequency as well as energy!)
Ask yourself, what is required by way of unit sizes so that both this 1.38...and this 8.617...go away? What will make the conversions between these scales (and the other scales I'm not bothering to mention) be just plain old exact powers of ten? And I mean exact---like the metric speed of light is now exactly 299792458 meters per second and no longer possible to measure---exactly that by definition. (all except for newtons G which would be problematical to make exact but can be approximately a power of ten)

one of the pleasures of life is the close contact with nature where you walk outdoors into the light and the color of the light and the temperature on the surface of the sun and the frequency of the vibrations warming your back and illuminating your retina and the warmth radiating from the flagstones of the terrace and the convection stirring currents of air and the sounds you hear are all relate in simple ways
by a system of constants that is not alienating

but for many people the metric system of constants is alienating

it numbs their contact with nature

basically I want user friendly (look a modern word!)
constants of nature

I will give you some examples of how that works later

L