In his discussion of Robert Hooke's geological ideas, David R. Oldroyd has suggested that ‘Hooke's daring cyclic earth theory may have seemed absurd to his contemporaries’. Following Oldroyd's suggestion, A. J. Turner has claimed that it is entirely understandable that Hooke's geological theories had no followers, ‘for, however plausible in themselves, they were quite implausible in the context of seventeenth century knowledge’. Gordon L. Davies has asserted that Hooke was too advanced for his time and that his geological ‘ideas made (...) no impact on his contemporaries’, and Rhoda Rappaport has said that ‘Hooke's geological work made virtually no impression on the writings of his British contemporaries’. (shrink)

Akin to the mathematical recreations, John Wilkins' Mathematicall Magick (1648) elaborates the pleasant, useful and wondrous part of practical mathematics, dealing in particular with its material culture of machines and instruments. We contextualize the Mathematicall Magick by studying its institutional setting and its place within changing conceptions of art, nature, religion and mathematics. We devote special attention to the way Wilkins inscribes mechanical innovations within a discourse of wonder. Instead of treating ‘wonder’ as a monolithic category, we present a typology, (...) showing that wonders were not only recreative, but were meant to inspire Wilkins' readers to new mathematical inventions. (shrink)