Picture, object, puzzle, prompter: Devilish cleverness in restoration London

Abstract

In the 1660s, experimental philosopher Robert Hooke drew, cut up, engraved, glued together and then 'dreamed with' his paper model of a telescopic micrometer. This essay uses Hooke's object - and its origins at a nexus of manual skill, technological competition and wild speculation by leading French and English agents of the early scientifi c revolution - to illuminate clever-objecthood as an analytic category. The essay follows Hooke's evolving interest in this cutpaper artefact, flowing from its target (a machine) to its means of representation (paper) to points far beyond and below. Unlike the overwhelming, transformative powers associated then and now with art-objects, the essay proposes that a clever object like Hooke's micrometer is better characterized by its 'lightness', its ongoing availability for thinking. Instrument of problem-solving and evolving generator of problems itself, a clever object is both puzzle and prompter, both trap and trapdoor.