Some 'Philosophicall Scribbles' attributed to Robert Hooke

Abstract Among the Hooke manuscripts held in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, is an undated document of four pages, entitled (on a separate sheet): XVI Philosophicall Scribbles’. We shall offer here an edition of this hitherto unpublished document; its contents will be discussed and compared with Hooke’s published theories of the soul, mind action and memory in his ‘Lectures of light’ (I); and some consideration will be given to the general adequacy of Hooke’s epistemology, as revealed in the ‘Scribbles’ and the ‘Lectures of light’, and its place in history. A transcription of the ‘Philosophicall scribbles’ reads as follows: It has pleased ye al wise contriuer of ye Universe to send man into the world almost/ready tempered,/like a peice of soft wax to receiue those impressions and stamps, which he has though[t] it most conuenient to receiue, though altogether unfit for/some/other perhaps, which his infinite wisdom saw good to wthhold. Those stamps are only of five kinds. And are generally comprisd under one name, to wit The Objects of Sense, /and this ? is calld the common sense,/But this is only that passiue facully [sic] wch this lump or mass of bodys come furnished wth all, wch is much ye same wth what ye bodys of almost all animalls are as well if not in a better manner endowed.