Collective Note-taking and Robert Hooke's Dynamic Archive

This chapter examines the challenge of collective note-taking in the service of collaborative projects, such as those of John Ray and Martin Lister on the description and classification of plants and animals. It considers the influence of Francis Bacon's Sylva Sylvarum as a model for the preliminary collection of data under tentative topics, and one that might guide additional collection. It underlines Henry Oldenburg's role as the Royal Society's information manager and the challenge of storing and arranging its paper archive. The main figure in this chapter is Robert Hooke, whose views on note-taking are closely interwoven with his ideas about the nature of memory, the philosophy of science, and his vision of an institutional archive.

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