![]() Culminating in this paragon of abstract celestial mechanics, however, the traces of Hooke's construction of his Programme lead through his investigations in such practical, earthly disciplines as microscopy, practical optics and horology. The celestial motions, it suggested, those proverbial symbols of stability and immutability, were in fact a process of continuous change: a deflection of the planets from original rectilinear paths by "a centrall attractive power." There was nothing necessary or essential in the shape of planetary orbits, and as Newton was quick to realize, this also implied that "the planets neither move exactly in ellipse nor revolve twice in the same orbit, so that there are as many orbits to a planet as it has revolutions." Far from "being exceedingly well ordered in heaven," as Kepler was still very much certain they were, the planetary trajectories, according to Hooke's Programme, represented nothing but a precarious balance between conflicting tendencies. ![]() It is difficult to overstate the novelty of Hooke's Programme. ![]() ![]() PREFACE This book is a historical-epistemological study of one of the most consequential breakthroughs in the history of celestial mechanics: Robert Hooke's (1635-1703) proposal to "compoun the celestial motions of the planets of a direct motion by the tangent & an attractive motion towards a central body." This is the challenge Hooke presented to Isaac Newton (1642-1727) in a short but intense correspondence in the winter of 1679-80, which set Newton on course for his 1687 Principia, transforming the very concept of "the planetary heavens" in the process. ![]()
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