Out of the Shadow of a Giant: Hooke, Halley, and the Birth of Science

Isaac Newton is quoted as attributing his scientific triumphs to having stood "on the shoulders of giants." Popular science authors the Gribbens (Big Numbers: A Mind Expanding Trip to Infinity and Back) argue that two of these giants, Robert Hooke and Edmond Halley, have not been given proper credit for their contributions to late 17th-century science. The authors further argue that many of Hooke's and Halley's ideas and discoveries were deliberately appropriated by the ill-tempered and imperious Isaac Newton. It is Hooke, for example, who first proposed the inverse square law of gravitation that Newton years later advanced in his Principia. Likewise, Halley's years of careful astronomical observation were essential to Newton's descriptions of orbital mechanics. Beyond seeking to amend the legacy of individual scientists, the Gribbens highlight the social and intellectual milieu that spawned the Royal Society and, with it, the birth of the modern scientific method. British actor John Curless does an extraordinary job enlivening sometimes dense scientific topics.