Hunter, Matthew C. (Author)
In late seventeenth-century London, the most provocative images were produced not by artists, but by scientists. Magnified fly-eyes drawn with the aid of microscopes, apparitions cast on laboratory walls by projection machines, cut-paper figures revealing the exact proportions of sea monsters---all were created by members of the Royal Society of London, the leading institutional platform of the early Scientific Revolution. Wicked Intelligence reveals that these natural philosophers shaped Restoration London's emergent artistic cultures by forging collaborations with court painters, penning art theory, and designing triumphs of baroque architecture such as St Paul's Cathedral. Matthew C. Hunter brings to life this archive of experimental-philosophical visualization and the deft cunning that was required to manage such difficult research. Offering an innovative approach to the scientific image-making of the time, he demonstrates how the Restoration project of synthesizing experimental images into scientific knowledge, as practiced by Royal Society leaders Robert Hooke and Christopher Wren, might be called wicked intelligence. Hunter uses episodes involving specific visual practices---for instance, concocting a lethal amalgam of wax, steel, and sulfuric acid to produce an active model of a comet---to explore how Hooke, Wren, and their colleagues devised representational modes that aided their experiments. Ultimately, Hunter argues, the craft and craftiness of experimental visual practice both promoted and menaced the artistic traditions on which they drew, turning the Royal Society projects into objects of suspicion in Enlightenment England. The first book to use the physical evidence of Royal Society experiments to produce forensic evaluations of how scientific knowledge was generated, Wicked Intelligence rethinks the parameters of visual art, experimental philosophy, and architecture at the cusp of Britain's imperial power and artistic efflorescence.
...MoreDescription On how British natural philosophers shaped artistic cultures through collaborations with court painters, writing about art theory, and designing buildings.
Review Kusukawa, Sachiko (2015) Review of "Wicked Intelligence: Visual Art and the Science of Experiment in Restoration London". British Journal for the History of Science (pp. 361-362).
Essay Review Hanson, Craig Ashley (2015) “Command of Nature in Action”: From Experiment to Empire. Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences (pp. 493-500).
Review Henderson, Felicity (2015) Review of "Wicked Intelligence: Visual Art and the Science of Experiment in Restoration London". Renaissance Quarterly (pp. 974-975).
Thesis
Doherty, Meghan C.;
(2010)
Carving Knowledge: Printed Images, Accuracy, and the Early Royal Society of London
(/isis/citation/CBB001567175/)
Article
Walker, Matthew F.;
(2011)
The Limits of Collaboration: Robert Hooke, Christopher Wren and the Designing of the Monument to the Great Fire of London
(/isis/citation/CBB001220415/)
Thesis
Hunter, Matthew C.;
(2007)
Robert Hooke fecit: Making and Knowing in Restoration London
(/isis/citation/CBB001560848/)
Article
Felicity Henderson;
(2019)
Robert Hooke and the Visual World of the Early Royal Society
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Book
Jacques Heyman;
Antonio Becchi;
Federico Foce;
(2023)
Hooke, Wren and the Dome: A Seventeenth Century Crossing Space between Architecture and Engineering
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Chapter
Louw, Hentie;
(2006)
The “Mechanick Artist” in Late Seventeenth-Century English and French Architecture: The Work of Robert Hooke, Christopher Wren and Claude Perrault Compared as Products of an Interactive Science/Architecture Relationship
(/isis/citation/CBB000772860/)
Article
Johnston, Stephen;
(2010)
Wren, Hooke and Graphical Practice
(/isis/citation/CBB001023550/)
Article
Wilkins, Emma;
(2014)
Margaret Cavendish and the Royal Society
(/isis/citation/CBB001421033/)
Article
Hunter, Matthew C.;
(2010)
Hooke's Figurations: A Figural Drawing Attributed to Robert Hooke
(/isis/citation/CBB001022711/)
Article
Anna Winterbottom;
(2019)
An Experimental Community: The East India Company in London, 1600–1800
(/isis/citation/CBB821547552/)
Article
Sietske Fransen;
(2019)
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, His Images and Draughtsmen
(/isis/citation/CBB238881930/)
Book
Michael Hunter;
(2016)
The Image of Restoration Science: The Frontispiece to Thomas Sprat’s History of the Royal Society
(/isis/citation/CBB578815711/)
Article
Simon Dumas Primbault;
(2020)
Le compas dans l’œil : la « mécanique géométrique » de Viviani au chevet de la coupole de Brunelleschi
(/isis/citation/CBB178993786/)
Article
Baudot, Laura;
(2012)
An Air of History: Joseph Wright's and Robert Boyle's Air Pump Narratives
(/isis/citation/CBB001320004/)
Article
Vera Keller;
(2016)
Art Lovers and Scientific Virtuosi?: The Philomathia of Erhard Weigel (1625–1699) in Context
(/isis/citation/CBB172909700/)
Article
Jardine, Lisa;
(2004)
The 2003 Wilkins Lecture: Dr Wilkins's Boy Wonders
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Article
Bennett, J. A.;
(1975)
Hooke and Wren and the system of the world: Some points towards an historical account
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Article
Jardine, Lisa;
(2001)
Monuments and microscopes: Scientific thinking on a grand scale in the early Royal Society
(/isis/citation/CBB000101335/)
Book
Cooper, Michael Alan Ralph;
(2003)
“A More Beautiful City”: Robert Hooke and the Rebuilding of London after the Great Fire
(/isis/citation/CBB000470718/)
Book
Gerbino, Anthony;
Johnston, Stephen;
(2009)
Compass and Rule: Architecture as Mathematical Practice in England, 1500--1750
(/isis/citation/CBB001021253/)
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