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Robert Hooke's "Cyberpunk” Letter to Gottfried Leibniz

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Re: Robert Hooke's "Cyberpunk” Letter to Gottfried Leibniz

#31

Post by aspenmayer »

I believe Robert Hooke is mentioned in James Burke’s Connections, a fantastic program that just got a new season on Curiosity Stream; I haven’t seen the new episodes yet but I have thoroughly enjoyed everything else Burke has ever done, so I expect the new series to be great also.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(British_TV_series...

The episodes Faith in Numbers (1978 original series, S01E04[0]) and Thunder in the Skies (S01E06)[1] feature Robert Hooke from what I can tell from a little searching, though it’s been a while since I saw the series, so I apologize if I’m wrong on that point, though the entire series is worth watching all the same.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6yL0_sDnX0

[1] https://archive.org/details/bbc-connections-1978/Connections...

Re: Robert Hooke's "Cyberpunk” Letter to Gottfried Leibniz

#34

Post by dr_dshiv »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #17
dr_dshiv wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leibniz invented binary — so he kind of succeeded in his quest. He based it on the Chinese iching, interestingly enough…

He didn’t actually base it on the Yiching, he just noticed that it could be expressed neatly in binary. But he had come up with binary code before that.

Thanks for pointing me to that. Here is some source material.

https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=395

Re: Robert Hooke's "Cyberpunk” Letter to Gottfried Leibniz

#35

Post by Gormisdomai »

quuxplusone wrote: post #28

TFA says the author has been "trying to transcribe on and off for the past few months." It's a two-page letter in English. To save anyone else the bother (including TFA's author), I just sat down and wrote it all out: https://www.club.cc.cmu.edu/~ajo/disseminate/leibniz.html The letter is basically Hooke saying: "Well, I can't convince anyone but you, Leibniz, that Wilkins' Universal Character is a cool idea. I think…

Thank you for doing this!

Re: Robert Hooke's "Cyberpunk” Letter to Gottfried Leibniz

#36

Post by cxr »

quuxplusone wrote: post #29
quuxplusone wrote: post #28

TFA says the author has been "trying to transcribe on and off for the past few months." It's a two-page letter in English. To save anyone else the bother (including TFA's author), I just sat down and wrote it all out: https://www.club.cc.cmu.edu/~ajo/disseminate/leibniz.html The letter is basically Hooke saying: "Well, I can't convince anyone but you, Leibniz, that Wilkins' Universal Character is a cool idea. I think…

Oh, the other weird thing about this is that even though the "external" catalog information on makingscience.royalsociety.org and the "internal" catalog information penned on page 2 of the letter both describe it as a letter written to Leibniz, and sent to Leibniz, the text of the letter itself refers to Leibniz only in third person, and refers to some other individual in the second person. But it does make (oblique)…

I was going to bring up the same claim—of it being a "Letter, from Robert Hooke to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz". It's clearly not written with that intent.

While reading, I first took it to be a journal entry. The penmanship also supports this. But the second person "you" at the end is a confounding detail. A journal entry in the form of a letter to himself is possible, but doesn't seem plausible.

The word you've labelled "[deviate?]" in your copy is definitely not "deviate" in the manuscript. I'm certain that the first letter is "R", and the second to last letter probably a "d" followed by "e" (compare to "undenyable" and "persuade"). The letter following "R" could be "i", but really could be anything. It's unfortunate that it's not as straightforward as just crafting a regex and grepping at /usr/share/dict/words, because whatever Hooke meant, it's likely to be an archaic spelling. "Recede" spelled as "Ricede" works grammatically, but I don't think that's it, either.

Re: Robert Hooke's "Cyberpunk” Letter to Gottfried Leibniz

#37

Post by hacknewslogin »

bmitc wrote: post #32
mwkaufma wrote: post #23

>> Cyberpunk is a genre of science fiction about high tech, urban sprawl, and do-it-yourself counterculture. Those are the superficial signifiers, not a constructive definition of the genre.

What do you suggest?

William Gibson described it as "High tech, low life." It's also described as a Genre that explores the connection and impacts between technology and the human experience.

Re: Robert Hooke's "Cyberpunk” Letter to Gottfried Leibniz

#38

Post by yomismoaqui »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #7

Hooke introduced the effects of cannabis (“an account of the plant”) to the Royal Society and sometimes I wonder about that. Consider this amazingly dramatic title: “A General Scheme, or Idea of the Present State of Natural Philosophy, And how its Defects may be Remedied by a Methodical Proceeding in the Making Experiments and Collecting Observations whereby to Compile a Natural History, as the Solid Basis for the Su…

Coincidentally yesterday I was reading the Cybernetics Wikipedia page and discovered the relation between it and Kubernetes.

I'm having a Baader-Meinhof effect moment right now :)

Re: Robert Hooke's "Cyberpunk” Letter to Gottfried Leibniz

#39

Post by kmote00 »

quuxplusone wrote: post #28

TFA says the author has been "trying to transcribe on and off for the past few months." It's a two-page letter in English. To save anyone else the bother (including TFA's author), I just sat down and wrote it all out: https://www.club.cc.cmu.edu/~ajo/disseminate/leibniz.html The letter is basically Hooke saying: "Well, I can't convince anyone but you, Leibniz, that Wilkins' Universal Character is a cool idea. I think…

> come up with a lot of true facts in different fields, all of which we can try writing down in this language.

Reminds me of Cyc.[1][2]

[1] www.cyc.com [2] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cyc

Re: Robert Hooke's "Cyberpunk” Letter to Gottfried Leibniz

#40

Post by quuxplusone »

cxr wrote: post #36
quuxplusone wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, the other weird thing about this is that even though the "external" catalog information on makingscience.royalsociety.org and the "internal" catalog information penned on page 2 of the letter both describe it as a letter written to Leibniz, and sent to Leibniz, the text of the letter itself refers to Leibniz only in third person, and refers to some other individual in the second person. But it does make (oblique)…

I was going to bring up the same claim—of it being a "Letter, from Robert Hooke to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz". It's clearly not written with that intent. While reading, I first took it to be a journal entry. The penmanship also supports this. But the second person "you" at the end is a confounding detail. A journal entry in the form of a letter to himself is possible, but doesn't seem plausible. The word you've label…

FYI I agree with you on that word: letter by letter it looks to me like "Roeade", but I can't figure out what English word that would be, either.
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