Robert Hooke’s Micrographia: an entomologist’s perspective
2013
Jervis, Mark A.
The illustrations in Robert Hooke’s epoch-making publication Micrographia became the standard reference work for depicting microscopic phenomena. Of the book’s 38 engravings (the “Schemata”), 14 illustrate insects or their body parts, and of its 60 “Observations” (descriptions and speculative discussions) nearly a third concern insects. Here, I provide taxonomically accurate identifications of Micrographia ’s insects, and assess, from a present-day entomologist’s perspective, the accuracy of the book’s insect drawings. I also present additional evidence against the widely expressed opinion that Christopher Wren was probably the author of some of those illustrations. Other entomological aspects of Micrographia addressed in this paper are the insightfulness of Hooke’s Observations, the book’s influence on seventeenth century insect studies, and its legacy to modern entomology. Some of Hooke’s writings in the Observations foreshadow those of Swammerdam on insect metamorphosis (Hooke may have understood it in its basic modern sense) and of van Leeuwenhoek on insect population growth. Also in his discussions of insects, Hooke made what is arguably a meaningful contribution to the debate over spontaneous generation. Hooke’s speculations regarding the function of insect body parts such as dipteran compound eyes, halteres and maxillary palps, and coleopteran elytra, were particularly insightful. I conclude that Hooke helped to lay the foundations of entomology.
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