Europe and the Microscope in the Enlightenment

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Eu r o p e a n d t h e M ic r o sc o pe in t h e Enlightenment

Marc James Ratcliff History of Medicine Department of Anatomy University College London

Thesis submitted to University College London for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

January 2001 ProQuest Number: U643645

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While historians of the microscope currently consider that no systematic programme of microscopy took place during the Enlightenment, this thesis challenges this view and aims to show when and where microscopes were used as research tools. The focus of the inquiry is the research on microscopic animalcules and the relationship of European microscope making and practices of the microscope with topical trends of the industrial revolution, such as quantification. Three waves of research are characterised for the research on animalcules in the Enlightenment: 1. seventeenth-century observations on animalcules crowned by Louis Joblot's 1718 work in the milieu of the Paris Académie royale des sciences, 2. mid eighteenth-century observations and experiments on polyps and animalcules (Trembley, Baker and Hill) and, 3. between 1760 and 1790, O.F. Mtiller's establishment of the systematics of infusoria in Denmark and Germany.

Microscope making is characterised by the diversity of cultural styles of production and advertisement, analysed for various European countries. An increased precision in building instruments is nevertheless a practice shared by many European makers, as well as attempts, by scholars, at standardising microscopical observations and measures by making use of various forms of quantification. This trend shows that microscope makers and scholars applied to the instrument and research the needs of quantification that began to impact on European science from the 1760s onwards.

In the course of the thesis, two interpretative schemes propose explanations for the construction of microscopical knowledge of animalcules. The first deals with authority and the reproduction of experiments and observations, and the second emphasises the respective parts of a social versus a heuristic construction of knowledge. The thesis ends with a critical examination of the historical conditions that led early nineteenth-century scientists to assume the role of historians of microscopy, building thus a mythological history which is here deconstructed. Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 The history of the microscope and its contribution to the history of eighteenth-century practices of the microscope 1.2 Microscopy and the tradition of history of “biological” knowledge 1.2.1 The question of the microscopic illusion 1.2.1 Generation and infusoria 1.3 Socio-constructivism and the microscope

Chapter 2 The Study of Animalcules at the Turn of the Eighteenth-Century 2.1 Louis Joblot and disproving spontaneous generation of animalcules 2.2 Reception of Joblot's work and the academic context 2.3 Reasons for an apparent lack of reception

Chapter 3 Production and Visibility of Microscopes in the Eighteenth-Century 3.1 Changes in visibility in the European market of the microscope in the first half of the century 3.2 New models and styles in producing microscopes 3.3 From changes in shape to changes in production 3.4 Henry Baker and new strategy for an emerging market 3.5 Social and economic cultures of the microscope: Two styles of producing microscopes, in France and Italy

Chapter 4 Abraham Trembley, the Polyp and New Directions for Microscopical Research 4.1 A model for scientific communication, the European spreading of the polyp and the “democratic microscope” 4.2 Trembley’s laboratory and its effect on the practices of the microscope

Chapter 5 The Quantifying Spirit in Microscopy and Keeping up with Microscopical Objects 5.1 Iconographie techniques and the microscope: naturalizing images and an initial approach to quantification 5.2 From minute mensuration to standards of measure 5.3 Quantification of power, magnification and natural size 5.4 The quest for instrumental precision: Micrometers and instruments of division

Chapter 6 The Emergence of the Systematics of Infusoria 6.1 The competition in Britain between Hill and Baker for control of m icroscopy 6.2 The rise of microscopical research in Germany 6.3 Roots for the systematics of microscopic animals 6.4 Establishing the systematics of infusoria 6.4.1 Mtiller's 1773 Vermium terrestrium et fluviatilium 6.4.2 The second spreading of infusoria and microscopical research in Germany 6.4.3 The definitive foundation: Mtiller’s 1786 Animalcula infusoria 6.5 Impact of the systematics of infusoria Chapter 7 The Deconstruction of a Myth. Proposal for a Reform of the Categories Used for the History of Microscopy 7.1 Anachronism in the history of microscopy 7.2 The invention of the “technological thesis” 7.3 Losing memories 7.4 The functions of the historical reconstruction 7.5 Fetishes, myth of creation and murder of father

Chapter 8 Conclusion 8.1 Shaping the practices of the microscope 8.2 Historicist categories: systems of practices and microscopical report 8.3 Toward a restitutive history

Current Abbreviations Used in the Footnotes

BPU Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire de Genève CRT Trembley, Maurice & Guyénot, Emile. (Ed.) 1943. Correspondance inédite entre Réaumur et Abraham Trembley, Genève, Georg. C&C Clay, Reginald S. & Court, Thomas H. 1932. The History of the Microscope Compiled from Original Instruments and Documents, Up to the Introduction of the Achromatic Microscope, London, Griffin. (Reprint London, Holland Press, 1975). M&R Mazzolini, Renato G. & Roe, Shirley. (Ed.) 1986. Science against the Unbelievers The Correspondence of Bonnet and Needham 1760- 1780, Oxford, Voltaire Foundation. PV AS Procès-verbaux de l’Académie des Sciences. S&S Shapin, Steven & Schaffer, Simon. 1985. Leviathan and the Air- Pump, Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life, Princeton, Princeton University Press. '

W arning

Due to the poor quality of the xerox of the figures of eighteenth-century engravings, I redrew slightly certain figures anew in order to get them closer to the original. Acknowledgments

The writing of this work has benefited from the help of several colleagues at the various Institutes in which I was a pilgrim during three years. The Max Planck Institute fiir Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin, the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, and the Institut Louis Jeantet pour l'Histoire de la Médecine in Geneva, provided hospitality between 1997 and 2000. I'm indebted to the directors and professors in these institutes. Professor Lorraine Daston and Hans-Jorg Rheinberger, Professor Bill Bynum and Professor Bernardino Fantini.

I'm particularly indebted to Professor Fantini for his impulse, without whom my work would probably have not been undertaken. I appreciated the constant support of my supervisors Professor Bill Bynum and Janet Browne whose helpful discussions allowed, among other things, suitable revisions in my interpretations. It is also a pleasure to acknowledge the many persons who have assisted at certain stages of research and writing: Giulio Barsanti, Marino Buscaglia, Evelyn Fox-Keller, Alexandre Metraux, Maria- Teresa Monti, Teresa Huguet-Termes were a source of encouragement and ideas. Eric Ratcliff and Allison Morehead helped greatly to transform my poor English into acceptable reading matter

Without the assistance of a grant n° 8210-050423, from the Fonds National Suisse de la Recherche Scientifique, this research could not have been undertaken. I am grateful to the Royal Society, the Archives de l'Académie des Sciences de Paris, the Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire in Geneva, and Mr. Jacques Trembley in Geneva for allowing me to quote from manuscript sources in their collections.

Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude beyond calculation to my wife and family. C h a p t e r 1

I ntroduction

The aim of this work is to present the history of the multiple uses of the microscope and of microscopic organisms in Europe during the Age of Enlightenment. In contrast to other fields in the history of natural sciences, and to other periods covered by the history of microscopy, this type of historical inquiry was not undertaken, due to several reasons. Indeed, many historical comprehensive works develop topics such as natural history, botany, physiology, animal generation and experimental science of the eighteenth-century. As well, an important amount of research covers seventeenth-century microscopy. But looking for eighteenth-century historiographical case studies in microscopy is a much more fruitless task than searching out eighteenth-century microscopes... Most likely such a situation is not fate, but, as we will see, the product of a historical construction.

If a historiographical tradition refers to a cumulative amount of studies that quote each other, the aim of which is to address specific issues, two main traditions are to be distinguished here.

The first and perhaps the better-defined of them is the British — and partly Dutch— tradition of the history of the microscope. Its founding studies begun to be issued during the second part of the nineteenth-century, and have mostly been carried on by biologists belonging to scientific microscopical societies.^ The second

^ See the works by Turner 1990 {Instruments), 1980 {Microscope), Ford 1985, 1991, Bracegirdle 1978b, Bradbury 1967, Clay and Court 1932. tradition, focusing on the conceptual and historical aspects of the sciences of nature and of microscopy was influenced by continental historians up to the 1980s, and the issue is lately become topical among English-speaking historians. Notably, the recently-published works by Fournier and Ruestow discuss historical, social and scientific dimensions of microscopy, though principally related to seventeenth-century. The established subjects of each tradition, as well as their methodologies, are mainly different, though some authors encouraged to make links between each trends, and one of the goals of the two above- mentioned works was partly to unbolt the frontiers between the history of the microscope and of the microscopy.

Nevertheless, there is also shared knowledge among historians of the microscope and historians of natural sciences, especially in regard to the opposition between seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century microscopes and microscopy. It is said that there was practically no optical improvement of the microscope during the eighteenth-century, although such is the epoch in which many morphological improvements led the microscope to acquire its modern shape.^ But, as a consequence of the former thesis concerning microscopes, eighteenth-century microscopy is always presented under an unfavourable light in comparison to the seventeenth and nineteenth-century studies. Such a strategy strengthens the contrast between the “good research” carried out in the seventeenth-century and the “amateur work” of the eighteenth-century. As Maria Rooseboom typically puts it: “After

2 The reference for the morphological improvement of the preachromatic microscope is Clay and Court 1932 (abbr. C&C). See also Laissas 1961, 569 and Policard 1932, 209-211. - 3 -

the great discoveries of the pioneers, the 18th-century brought

little sensational news in the fields of microscopes and

m i c r o s c o p y ” .3 Held by historians of the microscope long before

the 1960s, this argument did not really change in the updated and more recent version, assessing that the seventeenth-century

scientific programme of microscopy was not carried on during the

Enlightenm ent.4 Nevertheless the studies that addressed new issues

such as those by the French historians who, in the 1960s, started

examining the impact of eighteenth-century microscopy on emerging fields such as metallurgy, mineralogy, and microscopical papermaking, did not generate other works. This situation is not an exception, and one can too often gather data from a wide range

of authors who, though not integrated into both traditions, bring essential information to the issue. When working on the European context, the large spreading of information --primary sources as well as secondary literature— is a permanent obstacle one might not underestimate the influence.

Another consequence deriving from the above thesis is the

necessity to account for the discrepancy between data showing that a large amount of many types of microscopes was built during the eighteenth-century, and the absence of a microscopical programme. What were the microscopes used for? Historians have replied that their use was restricted to entertainment: “In the early

[sic] part of the seventeenth-century workers such as Hooke and

Grew and Powers had used compound microscopes for serious scientific work. By the middle of the eighteenth-century it had

^ Rooseboom 1956, 7. ^ Ruestow 1996, 276. largely come to serve as an instrument for amusement”.5 As well, recent historians consider that “The programme of microscopy does not survive into the eighteenth-century as a resource for natural philosophy except at the relatively popular level”.^

Although, as was shown by Ruestow and Fournier, the Netherlands seem to have carried on the previous interest in microscopy during the first half of the century, it was argued that the decline of microscopy started between 1690 and 1710,”7 and quickly inaugurated a period in which microscopes were mainlyprized as decorative and entertaining toys: “With the exception of the

Netherlands, in various parts of Europe a general consensus among many physicians and philosophers was shaped around the years 1690-1710. It credited microscopy with a fancy-illusory and theoretical status (in the pejorative sense), that restricted it to an entertaining and useless activity”.8

In the present state of historical research, a consequence is that eighteenth-century microscopy has been very poorly examined, especially when contrasted with the large quantity of studies that deal with the seventeenth-century. Let us analyse more in detail the claims and issues of each of these traditions.

^ Bradbury 1967, 152. To check the seriousness of these assertions, everyone will agree that the 1650-1680 period that saw the publication of the works by Power, Hooke and Grew, is the '‘‘‘early part of the seventeenth- century”. My italics. Turner ([1972], 12) also discussed the relation between science as a popular pastime and development of the market. ^ Bennett 1997, 72. ^ Fournier 1991, 4, 16-17. ^ Mazzolini 1997, 219. See also on the microscope and other instruments considered as toys, Fournier 1991, 2; Turner [1987], 378-385; Turner [1973], 19. - 5 -

1.1 The history of the microscope and its contribution to the history of eighteenth-century practices of the microscope

Dating back to the nineteenth-century, the classical Dutch and

British histories of the microscope have displayed a considerable amount of data about preachromatic microscopes,^ which are the only type of instruments considered in my work. Many catalogues from public and private museums of scientific instruments conserving antique microscopes are nowadays available, written since the first part of the century.lo In the history of the preachromatic microscope, the large disparity between the clear- cut British-Dutch tradition, and the works by the rest of Europe is also typical of this stream of research. Except the substantial chapters Daumas wrote on microscopes, there is indeed no recent book comparable to Clay and Court’s (1932) for France, Germany and Italy. I mean a comprehensive work on the development of optical and technical aspects of preachromatic microscopes and related tools, like the camera obscura, the microtome or the microscopical preparations. 12 Clay and Court have brought strong evidence for the above-mentioned thesis: microscopes did not undergo major optical advances, though their morphological aspect improved during the eighteenth-century, as to fit with scholar’s demand for special kinds of observations. The latter

^ C&C 1932, Hogg 1867, Karting 1866. 1 Henderson et al. 1974, van der Star 1953, Van Cittert 1934, Nachet 1929, Disney 1928. For a survey of the catalogues, see Nuttall 1979. 1 1 Daumas 1953, 199-229, 324-385. 12 The works of Lualdi 1999, 1996, 1995, Turner 1991, Bock-Berti 1983, and Bedini 1963 have supplied data concerning Italian microscopes. Nowak 1984, de Martin 1983, Allodi 1967, and Hintzsche 1949a, b, c have provided information concerning German microscopes. On the development of the microtome, see Bracegirdle 1978a, 12-21 and Prison 1972, 95. - 6 - point was convincingly established through a comprehensive survey of the evolution of the microscope, especially for the case of England.

During the period considered as the decline of interest in the microscope, at the beginning of the eighteenth-century, two new types of microscopes were nevertheless built: the Wilson (a simple m icroscopes) in 1702, and the Culpeper around 1725 (a compound microscopes). The renewal of the microscope trade in

London in the 1740s was marked by the improvement of the

Culpeper type and by the construction of two new models: the solar microscope, that allowed the projection of magnified images on a wall, and the microscope for opaque objects. If “communal observation” was encouraged by the solar microscope,!^ both dynamism of the competition among British instrument makers and their relations with scholars asking for improvements of the instrument led to ameliorate many aspects of the simple and double microscopes. The leading instrument maker involved in those changes is John Cuff (1704-1772). Among other innovations. Cuff gave the microscope its modern shape, designed a stage free from disturbance when manipulating, and improved the system of the screw to adjust the focus. He also added a movable mirror to the solar microscope and built a stand on which the Wilson hand- microscope could be fixed. Other instrument makers built microscopes advertised as universal, like George Adams (1709-

13 The relations between Henry Baker and John Cuff, and John Ellis and Cuff are paradigmatic of these types of relationship between the user and the producer, see Lenhoff and Lenhoff 1986, 35-36; Ford 1985, 112; Turner [1974], 63-64. 8 Terms followed by the exponent g are defined in a final glossary. 14 Walters 1997, 141. - 7 -

1772) or Benjamin Martin (1704-1782).After that relatively dynamic period, the attention towards microscopes vanished somehow during the second part of the century. Thus, in 1759, the method invented by John Dollond for the construction of achromatic lenses for telescopes was not suitable for producing achromatic images when applied to the microscope. The importance achieved by the Cuff double microscope of 1743 led historians to consider that many continental instrument makers copied this model.

The focus on English instrument makers leads me to outline a current belief stemming from this trend. Generally speaking, the

London microscope-makers are viewed as European leaders in conceiving, building and selling microscopes all over the century.i ^ Many other microscope-makers and especially the continentals are believed to take their morphological models from the Wilson, Culpeper and Cuff types, all invented in London. Consequently, creativity and production of microscopes move one-way from

England to the Continent, overwhelming the rest of Europe. To moderate this view, some historians nevertheless mentioned the fact that no model or accessory for the microscope is uniquely British. For instance, from Harting we know that the Wilson is an improved version of a model pictured by Nicolaas Hartsoeker

(1656-1725), the figure of which was engraved in his 1694 Essay de Dioptrique. Other historians have stated that the field-lens —a lens set between the ocular and the objective, that widens the field

1 5 C&C 1932, 173. ^ ^ Daumas 1953, 212. 17 C&C 1932, 141. 18 Nuttall 1979, 8-13; Pipping 1977, 101; Turner [1976], 1; Turner [1973], 21-22; Taylor 1966, 57-58. - 8 - of vision-- was introduced by Johann Wiesel (1583-1662) of Augsburg in 1654, and imitated during the next century by many microscope makers4 ^ As well, adjustment screw existed since the seventeenth-century.20 Clay and Court have also showed the influence of the Berliner anatomist Johann Nathaniel Lieberkhun

(1711-1756) who, around 1738, introduced into England the solar microscope and the microscope for opaque objects. Nowadays, historians of the seventeenth-century microscope have recognised the influence, at that time, of Italy, where the “best, innovative optical instrument makers were found as well as the best optical glass” .21 Even the first micrometer fitted to a microscope was not invented by a British, George Adams, who advertised it as a major tool for his universal microscope in 1738. He owed the invention to the German mathematician Christian Gottlieb Hertel (1683-

1743) who fitted one of his microscopes with a micrometer already in 17 16 .2 2

An important issue turns over the question of the leadership of the British trade for instruments. My work that deals with the use of the microscope indeed can not avoid the question of what precise kind of microscopes were used by scholars, where, and for what. Actually there are no systematic evidences allowing to confirm the British primacy, and many questions are still left to be raised: to what extent were the British instrument makers leaders on the continent, and what were the local areas for their exportation? What was the importance of other local markets?

Were there other important workshops able to compete with the

1 ^ On Johan Wiesel, see Daumas 1953, 119-120, 2 9 On the adjustment screw, see Bedini 1963, 409, 421. 21 Bennett 1997, 66. 2 2 C&C 1932, 155-156. - 9 -

London instrument makers? On this point, Peter de Clercq, in his

1991 article, already demonstrated the existence, between 1660 and 1750, of a large Dutch workshop that advertised and sold mathematical instruments and microscopes to the whole of

Europe. The Musschenbroek family in Leyden ran the workshop for three generations, they broke into the European market and were for instance the first to issue catalogues of their instruments with fixed prices in 1736.^3 De Clercq’s research led to a reappraisal of the pre-eminence of London’s instrument makers. Antonio Lualdi as well provided evidence of several important workshops in Italy, Venice and Milan, while Daumas demonstrated that Paris was an important place for instrument m a k e r s .^4 To such a debate that touches important points like the specialisation and professionalisation of instrument makers, I shall bring in chapter 3 data taken from the sources, that will likely help to grasp the differences in the markets for microscopes among the main countries of Europe. For instance, Douglass Taylor highlighted a social difference between the French aristocrat (Due de Chaulnes) and the English uneducated craftsman (Jesse Ramsden), who worked on a similar object, the instrument for precise and microscopic division.B ut, except for the case of England, we know approximately nothing about the social status of the instrument makers, the means and ways of their advertising, the material and techniques they used, and their relation to the s c h o l a r s . 26 Knowing indeed the relative importance of local and

2 3 de Clercq 1988, 1991, 2 4 Lualdi 1999, 1996, 1995, Daumas 1953, 97-113, 339-385. 2 5 Taylor 1966, 59. 26 On these aspects, see Taylor Brown 1984, 3-5; Turner [1976], Turner [1966]. - 10 - international trade for microscopes will allow to better understand the use of the microscope.

Another trend in the tradition of the history of the instrument relates to empirical studies on the optical properties of the microscopes. I will not speak here of the measures of powers of the remaining microscopes from Leeuwenhoek, ^7 but of other microscopes. Edward Frison already in 1948 measured the magnification of some French and British microscopes built in the middle of the century. Bradbury then measured, in 1967, the optical properties of thirteen microscopes dated between 1690 and 1790. According to him, optical properties were mainly insufficient to undertake observations, and almost every lens presented chromatic and spherical aberrations. Given the defective lenses, no scientific research could be carried out in the eighteenth-century.

Frison is perhaps one of the few who spoke out against such a deductive consequence. In his 1972 book he challenged Bradbury’s claim and highlighted the striking contradiction between discrediting the optical properties of the eighteenth-century microscopes and the weak amount of quantitative data regarding the microscopes from this period. When measuring systematically the magnifications and resolving powers of the microscopes from the Van Heurck Museum, Frison indeed found remarkable and unexpected qualities in their optical properties. He drew from his survey the conclusion that a common Culpeper microscope can produce images as good as a nineteenth-century achromatic

^ 7 The measure (x270) was first taken by Harting in 1850, see Dobell 1932, 323-326. For more recent accounts, see Fournier 1991, 26-27; and Ford 1991, Ford 1985, 60-75 for the history of remaining microscopes of Leeuwenhoek. - 11 - microscope built in 1835 from C h e v a lie r .28 So important a thesis, in contradiction to that of Bradbury, was indirectly reexamined by

Bracegirdle, who in 1978 measured 25 microscopes built between 1660 and 1800.29 Almost none of them reached a magnification higher than xlOO. Their resolving power increases from 3p in the seventeenth-century to 2p in the next century,30 and Bracegirdle stated that, optically speaking, a typical microscope from the eighteenth-century was to be considered the Culpeper. Still the technique of measuring the power remains an exception, and is usually not used in the descriptions of microscopes from catalogues of instruments. Moreover, one can ask why, if the resolving power of the seventeenth-century microscopes was poorer than that of the next century (3p against 2p), how could the

“serious scientific research” of Malpighi, Power, Grew and Hooke have been carried out with such “bad” instruments? What is indeed the meaning of these surveys? Methodologically speaking, these inquiries would gain in historical value once we would know something concerning either the owners of the microscopes measured or the observations undertaken with them. Which, with a few exceptions, we unfortunately do not. Perhaps the microscopes they measured were only used for scientific work, or never; who knows? So how can one infer from this high-tech package of data the least consequence about eighteenth-century microscopy without looking at the use of these microscopes?

Except for what concerns seventeenth-century authors, it is a more recent trend to try to identify, through printed and

2 8 Frison 1972, 123. 29 Bracegirdle 1978a. 3 0 Bracegirdle 1978a, 193. - 12 - manuscript sources, the sort of microscopes used by scholars. Jean Anker, Erich Hintzsche, Brian Ford, Virgina P. Dawson, Julius

Groner, Philip Sloan, Marta Stefani and Giulio Barsanti have discussed identification of microscopes of Müller, Haller, Linnaeus,

Trembley, Henry Baker, John Ellis, Buffon, Needham and

S pallan zan i.N ev erth eless, and in a symmetrical way to the above-mentioned works, there is not so much left to hope from such kind of studies, unless we can identify and recover in a museum or in private collections the true instrument that was employed by the microscopist to observe a specific object. Indeed one of the main problems of eighteenth-century use of the microscope is the relative lack of standardisation in the manufacturing of the microscopes. Craft working conditions of grinding the lenses, and poor methods of control explain why two same powers built by the same instrument maker for the same model can vary enormously in resolution and magnification. Moreover, there is much evidence indicating the complete autonomy of the optical system and the type of microscope used by scholars. Indeed Reaumur, Trembley, Saussure, Fontana,

Gleichen, LedermUller claimed to have adapted to their microscope lenses which they had bought separately from the microscope itself. Curiously, such a crucial idea that clearly stems out of

Bracegirdle’s and Prison’s inquiries, was not discussed in their papers, though the lack of standardisation is a major characteristic of the microscopes of that time, which the scholars had to permanently deal with. In terms of method, my claim is here close to that of Gerald I’E. Turner, who has highlighted that decorations

3 1 Barsanti 2000, 179-188; Stefani 2000, 162-166; Groner & Cornelius 1996, 111-130; Sloan 1992, 421-424; Dawson 1987, 86; Ford 1985, 112-115; Hintzsche 1949d, 104; Anker 1943, 195-196. - 13 - tools for microscopes are not reliable marks enabling historians to identify their original m a k e r .^2 Unless recovering the true instruments, identifying the kind of microscopes used by scholars will likely acquire more meaning when systematised through comparative surveys and statistical inquiries enabling the historian to discuss the following topics: 1. Challenge, amend or confirm the thesis of the leading role of British microscope-makers in Europe.

2. Bring precise data showing the respective importance of the simple, compound and other microscopes as used in research. Brian Ford indeed claimed that up to the time of Robert Brown (1832), discoveries were made only thanks to the simple microscope. However, postmodern history is concerned with construction and deconstruction more than with discovery, although both have a place in the history of science.23 Historians have alleged as well the Enlightenment scholar’s distrust in the compound microscope,34 so that further investigation synthesising sources from a wider range of countries would allow to clarify what is the general trend in Europe. 3. Investigate the strategies used by scholars to by-pass characteristics such as chromatic and sphericity aberration. 4. Understand how the question of standardisation was considered, and how did scholars tackle the problem with respect to the eighteenth-century known epistemological standard of repeating experiments and observations.35 5 . Supply information about local and international

3 2 Through a large survey, Turner [1966] has shown that the same decorative pattern was to be found on microscopes signed by different makers, and vice-versa. 3 3 On this tension between discovery and construction, see Brush 1995, 228-229. 3 4 Ruestow 1996, 14-15, 287; Ford 1985, Castellani 1978, 59. 3 5 On repetition of experiments see Garber 1995, S&S 1985, 55-65, Duchesneau 1982, 152-156, Belloni 1970. - 14 - trade, in order to shed light on the differences between the various networks of scholars “microscopists”. Chapters 3, 5 and parts of others chapters will be dedicated to this research.

A study of the Enlightenment practices of the microscope needs to reflect on the conditions of the reproduction of knowledge within a social sphere that employs non-standardised instruments, of which the microscope is among the best representatives.

Historians have calculated magnification for microscopes which no one can prove when and where they were used, and they ignored any mention of the interchangeable lenses used by scholars. This could be extra evidence against using the technological methods in the history of the microscope, as outlined above. Indeed, the scholars of the eighteenth-century did not use the microscope as a ready-made instrument. Rather they use do-it-yourself as a normal expedient of research, fitting a lens made by their brother, friend, colleague, amateur or professional craftsmen.There are many examples of this. Do-it-yourself, bricolage and trial and error were common practices shared by eighteenth-century microscopists, and it would be absurd to neglect such a constitutive aspect of

Enlightenment scientific activity. So much so that I believe that no one can legitimately deduce anything from a given microscope about the quality of image it historically produced and about vision, either good or poor. Studies done in such a spirit have a documentary interest rather than an epistemological or conclusive value, because it can not be proven that the actual microscope was

^ ^ In October 1744, Trembley changed the lens of his microscope (CRT 1943, 210); Ginanni (1747) used a lens made by his brother; Saussure, in March 1766, fitted a Cuff simple microscope with a lens from Trembley (BPU: MS 64, Agenda, n.p.); Villars (1804, 95-96) adapted a microscope by Rochette, to his Lyonnet microscope. - 15 - used in the eighteenth-century with the same lenses with which it is currently fitted. This permanent do-it-yourself attitude of the

Enlightenment scholars responds fittingly to the lack of standardisation of the microscope. Given that these scholars were aware of the “imperfection” of their instruments, standardisation was rarely attainable, except at a the level of local communities, it appears that the main problem was one of communication, which I will discuss below.

Another aspect of the classic museological tradition of the microscope is its relative lack of strong conceptual and theoretical foundations, that hinders it embodying the problems encountered by eighteenth-century scholars in the social, cognitive and historical contexts they belonged to, issues which other studies have addressed.37 By contrast, recent historians of scientific instruments have charted an important trend that developed during the second half of the eighteenth-century, and have discussed several questions like the growth of quantification in science, the need for standardisation and the research undertaken to improve instruments. Frangsmyr and Heilbron have thus characterised the second part of the century by a wave of quantification which participated in the technological take-off of the Industrial Revolution.38 If the “quantifying spirit” is to be found, for instance in demography, mathematics, meteorology and natural knowledge, it also concerns the development of scientific instruments since the 1760s.39 The instruments for measuring

3 7 See Butler et al. (1984, 1-23) on the social advertisement related to bacteriology; Gooday (1991) on disciplining domestic practices during Victorian era, and Walters (1997) on eighteenth-century polite science in Britain. 38 Frangsmyr et at. 1990, Cardwell 1972, 111-112. 3 9 Heilbron 1990, 3; Frangsmyr et al. 1990. - 16 -

(barometers, thermometers, eudiometers) and surveying (telescopes) were built with increased precision at that time. To this trend can be linked the standardisation of weights and measures that spread all over Europe after the French Revolution.

A factor affecting the development of mathematical and optical instrument building was their nautical applications related to the expanding development of commercial travels as well as that of military needs.Along with the emerging trend of technology during the same period, these factors helped to progressively transform the way of making instruments, building up a demand for more precise and mathematical studies of instrument making. The change of needs, coming from many sectors of the societies, led to many improvements of the techniques. Of course, England, Holland, France, Germany and Italy present in many respects different forms of technological cultures. For instance, visibility and advertisement, social status of the instrument makers, business practice as well as the relationship with the scholars are some of the points by which an Italian instrument maker lived in a world totally different from that of a British or of a German craftsman. Yet all of them also belonged to a world where technology was progressively transforming the society.

Concerning the microscope, the question is what is its place and the place of related instruments, such as the camera obscura or micrometer, in the general development of quantification in science that took place during the second part of the century. The major question is whether the development of the practices of the microscope was or not in time with the expansion of technology in

Heilbron 1990, 6; Moskowitz 1986, 12; Daumas 1953, 123-124. - 17 -

Occident? Or, according to the tradition, did microscopy stagnate, being far removed from the general trend, and in what respect?

What is the form the quantifying spirit took in building microscopes and in using them within scientific communities? Did the microscope improvements only happen in the early nineteenth- century, mainly managed by the known instrument makers Joseph

Fraunhofer (1787-1846), Charles Chevalier (1804-1859), Joseph

Jackson Lister (1786-1869) and Giovanni Battista Amici (1786- 1868)?4i Did these improvements represent a full rupture with works and problems originated in the previous century?^^ Or did the question of achromatism find its roots eighty years before the issue became topical in the 1810s-1820s, when these makers provided original solutions to problems already raised and discussed by scholars during the Enlightenment? Matthias Dorries has recently regarded the better description of the instruments and the measurement of their resolving powers as topical practices explaining the process of “transforming instrument into objects of research”,43 that developed during nineteenth-century. This process led scientists to justify the choice and use of their instruments, to describe their performances and define some standards. The German Friedrich Adolf Nobert (1806-1881), who engraved micrometric plates with a diamond in the 1840s, is famous in this respect.44 As regards eighteenth-century, the point at issue is whether such reflexive nature of experiment —as an investigation of the instrument by the scholar and the instrument

4 1 See Nuttall 1979, 14-24; Turner [1972], 13-15 and C&C 1932, 231 for the development of the achromatic microscope between 1800 and 1860. 4 2 Such is the position appearing in Dorries 1994, 13; Turner [1967], 162; Bancher & Holz 1961, 269; Hughes 1959, 8-9, 59. 4 3 Dorries 1994, 32-33. 4 4 Dorries 1994, 25-29; Turner [1967], 164-170. - 18 - maker— also existed during the Enlightenment, and to what extent. We already know that since the 1750s, microscopes were objects of the research of Leonard Euler, John Dollond and Klingenstiern.4 5

They are but the tip of the iceberg and many other scholars and instrument makers were involved in the research for achromatical lenses, which became a question discussed everywhere in Europe around the 1 7 6 0 s.Achromatism brought together an important network of scholars from many disciplines —mathematics, physics, natural history— who started to draw a regular line of collaboration with instrument makers, to which I will bring further investigations. I shall obviously not examine hereafter what was the respective importance of the standardisation of manufacturing and of the optical improvement of the microscopes in the early part of the nineteenth-century,^"7 but rather draw Enlightenment’s roots of modern attitudes of research towards the microscope and its uses.

In chapter 5, I will then show in what respect the microscope related to quantification, then I shall gather data showing the pros and cons of parallelism in the rhythm of the research on microscopes, with those for the development of scientific instruments. Did the microscope participate in such a major process of the rationalisation of technology, up to what point, and according to what modalities? Whether or not the Enlightenment’s spirit of quantifying also encompassed microscopes will then clearly show if the microscopes did belong to the scientific world or to that of entertainment.

^ ^ See François 1961, Boegehold 1943. ^ Proverbio 1989. See on the standardisation and calibration technique of the Bavarian instrument maker Fraunhofer, Dorries 1994, 3-4, 12-14, 23-26; and Jackson 1994, 555-557. - 19 -

1.2 Microscopy and the tradition of history of “biological” knowledge

The tradition of history of “biological” knowledge I shall now deal with mainly contrasts with the British-Dutch history of the microscope. The former examined the theories and practices of natural science without particularly stressing the microscope, and, since the 1960s, put a strong emphasis on the quarrel of generation. But there is a common thinking shared by both traditions, when they focus on the microscope’s “negative influence” on the development of knowledge on nature. Already in 1934, Charles Singer noticed that “the writings of the micrographs of the classical period (with the exception of Grew) give the impression of a work without method nor determined goal”."^8

Guyénot, one of the first French historians who initiated studies on the history of biological thought, states that “The discovery of the microscope did not produce results one could logically expect from it (...) Nobody devised the existence of animal cells”.

Nevertheless, the later works in this tradition did not concentrate on the use of the microscope and seldom tackled the issue directly. Historians have usually discussed the microscope only within the context of wider issues: philosophical implications, microanatomy, artificial fecundation, embryology, spontaneous generation, “spermatology” and classification. I will discuss in more detail the latter of these topics in the next chapters.

48 Singer 1934, 174. 4 9 Guyénot 1941, 442. 5 0 On the philosophical implications of the microscope, see Wilson 1995, Parigi 1993 and Solinas 1967. - 20 -

The historical circumstances of the decline of microscopy between 1690 and 1710 are a topical issue for the understanding of the transformation of microscopy and its status during the eighteenth-century. In her 1935 brilliant essay, Marjorie Nicolson demonstrated the caustic influences exerted by writers and reporters on the fall of microscopy in England at the end of the seventeenth-century. She showed that from the 1680s onwards people other than academics competed in cracking public’s attention up by dropping scathing irony on the Royal Society. They published pamphlets and satires, and performed plays that made scientific activity look ridiculous, especially microscopy. Satirising women’s interest in experimental studies and, most of all, their microscopical observations, lead public opinion to thus consider the work of Leeuwenhoek, Grew or Hooke as totally useless.^ ^

Later Belloni had considered that quacks who used the microscope also contributed to the “latent period” of microscopy during the enlightenment.52 Afterwards, except the studies on Henry Baker,53 historical works seldom got to the point of understanding the reactions of scholars, in the eighteenth-century, to such public attacks. Notably the question was not examined regarding France and Germany. Did really the scholars stop producing microscopical works or did they modify the level of visibility of their works by using some new strategies for their publications? Is the London milieu the prototype of the European attitude towards microscopy, or is it just limited to London? In France, the works of Louis Joblot

(1645-1723), who wrote the first treatise on microscopical animalcules in 1718, have been thoroughly underestimated.

5 ^ Nicolson 1935, 22-37. 5 2 Belloni 1961, 587. 5 3 Mazzolini 1997, 217; Turner [1974], 61-65. - 21 - considered either an imitation of Leeuwenhoek’s work, or welcomed by a lukewarm reception with no influence on further research. Contrary to this, chapters 2 and 6 will show that Joblot’s work topped off the first wave of research on animalcules, providing the first consistent antispontaneist system of experiments.

Nicolson’s and Belloni’s studies are not the only one tracking some of the factors accounting for the “decline of microscopy”. For a decade historians have focused on academic contexts such as central Italy and the Netherlands. In Bologna, the quarrel between the physicians Sbaraglia (1641-1709) and Malpighi (1628-1694) at the end of the seventeenth-century, led the conservative “empirical Galenist” academic party to get back, against microscopic investigation, their authority on anatomy and other lectureships.^4

A convicting argument raised in the issue was that microscopy was useless to the lasting Galenist therapeutic frame, as well as to the

Materia medica.^^ So that, generally speaking, these events account for the fall of microscopy in anatomy, and historians have stressed the point that the seventeenth-century Malpighian programme of anatomical microscopy was not continued during the Enlightenment.56 Nevertheless, in other fields such as embryology, historians also showed that later microscopical works by Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777) and Caspar Friedrich Wolff

(1733-1794) were indebted to seventeenth-century scholars, especially to Malpighi’s works and methodology.57

5 4 Cavazza 1997, 140-142. 5 5 Guerrini 1997, 117-120; Cavazza 1997, 132-134, 140. 5 6 Bennett 1997, 72. 5 7 Bemardi 1992, 44; Monti 1990, 151; See Mazzolini 1977, 220-224 on the microscopical techniques used by Haller for the embryology of the chicken. - 22 -

Regarding the Netherlands, Fournier and Ruestow, though mainly concerned with seventeenth-century Dutch scholars, have also discussed some cases in eighteenth-century microscopy. The latter has shown that the micro-anatomical programme was mainly abandoned during the first half of the century with physicians and anatomists like Ruysch, Boerhaave and Muys.^s To understand the obstacles to eighteenth-century microscopy, Ruestow invoked several arguments: the negative role of cartesianism which demanded rational comprehension, the tradition of miniature painting which entailed iconographie conventions, as well as theological obstacles which induced people to contemplate things more than to observe them.59 Fournier studied three Dutch naturalists. Job Raster (1711-1775), Martin Slabber (1740-1835) and Leendert Bomme (1727-1788), who kept alive the seventeenth-century tradition of microscopical observation and illustration.Nevertheless, statistical surveys on the amount of leaflets and microscopical works annually printed in Europe, presented by Hans Peter Nowak and by Fournier credited the decline of microscopy around 1700 with the objectivity of numbers.61

The main questions I will address regarding the early eighteenth- century decline of microscopy are the following. What more precisely is the situation of microscopy in other cities such as

Nuremberg, Paris, and Florence? Was the “decline of microscopy” a decrease of the production of microscopical studies, or just in the visibility given to the production, or both? If the latter hypothesis

^ ^ Ruestow 1996, 170, 291-293. ^ 9 Ruestow 1996, 62-80. 60 Fournier 1987. 6 1 Fournier 1991, 12-17; Nowak 1984, 5. - 23 - turns out to be more reliable than the previous standard interpretation, which reifies the apparent decline into a real break of production, I could be led to read in the so-called “decline of microscopy” the mark of an important epistemological rupture between the scholar’s world and the public. Such an important change could have affected the forms of communication of the scientific knowledge, especially when showing only selected aspects of the scholar’s production to the public. When considered a reaction of the scholars against public criticisms, microscopy would have turned partly invisible, used as a routine tool adapted to transverse practices with low visibility, in a sphere in which the control of procedural and conceptual knowledge would theoretically tend to avoid any critical and “non-expert” intrusion from outside. But in order to be shaped as a routine instrument, the microscope might have been employed to examine particular objects, which, in the first forty years of the century, were mainly insects and cryptogam. Small-scale creatures, studied through their generation and their ambiguity in belonging to a particular kingdom, provided the first microscopical objects of the eighteenth-century, observations that every scholar managed to repeat easily. This construction of new democratised microscopical objects, which corresponded to a rejection of a part of the seventeenth-century microscopical approach, will be the main subject of part I (chapter 2).

The second dimension I shall examine is whether or not the rest of Europe followed topical London and Bologna example in their apparent rejection of the microscope. Or whether other cases in

Europe are closer to the Dutch, and if there are other unknown models for the development of microscopy during the first half of - 24 - the eighteenth-century. To take a comparative example in Germany and Italy, T. Saine showed that during that period, the new German literary culture ends in a “ideology of nature” for which the microscope and the telescope represent highly symbolical instruments. In Italy, influenced by the contrast between “poor” microscopy and the importance of the Galilean tradition, historians still consider that the microscope did not produce a

“scientific revolution” compared with that which occurred thanks to the telescope.62 gy contrast, in Germany the new form of culture “takes place simultaneously on the levels of science, theology, metaphysics, and psychology”.63 Between 1720 and

1760, poets like Barthold Heinrich Brockes, Klopstock or Christlob Mylius (1722-1754) sing the praises of the microscopic and telescopic discoveries,64 and they are followed as well by natural theologians such as Lesser (1692-1754). In France and England, natural theology, represented for instance by l’Abbé Pluche’s Spectacle of Nature, and by William Derham’s Physicotheology, was the object of many ironical attacks in the middle of the century,65 that led to the diminishing and almost to abandon this way of disclosure. Nothing in Germany seems comparable to the caustic pamphlets and scathing remarks written by Addison, Swift, Voltaire, La Mettrie, Diderot and Buffon against academics and natural theology, in which microscopists are the continual target of sarcasm.66 Perhaps also there is no target in Germany like

English and Erench polite science that carries the culture of

62 Bernardi 1995, 113-114. 6 3 Saine 1976, 62. 6 4 Saine 1976, 64-67. 6 5 Dawson 1994, 83-84; Roger 1993, 561. 6 6 Mazzolini 1997, 210; Nicolson 1932, 30-32. See manuscript B. - 25 - conversation.In the northern and north-east part of the

Continent, the influence of natural theology lasted during the whole century, and thus participated in the spread of a well- disposed image of the microscope. As well, the microscope and the theories it allowed to produce, defended by Leibniz, Wolf and Kant, was not the object of a quasi philosophical prohibition as in Berkeley’s New Theory of Vision (1709).68 There are probably only few similar things shared in the representation of the microscope among the main European countries, Germany, England, the Netherlands, France and Italy.

The second half of the Enlightenment, or more precisely the

1740s onwards is known as a period displaying a very different pattern than the first half of the century. Leaving aside some microanatomical discoveries —identification of the axon by Fontana, morphological studies on the blood cells by della Torre, Hunter, and Fontana, generalisation of the discovery of lymphatic vessels by Mascagni and Hunter— many studies have emphasised the how and why of the regeneration of polyps, of the parthenogenesis of green flies and the renewal of spontaneous generation.69 John Farley, for instance, has traced the périodisation of the trend in spontaneous generation and he has established the existence of three periods: first the spreading of the Redian programme omnia ex ovo until the 1750s; second, attacks from Needham and Buffon against the paradigm in the middle of the century and strong reactions from many parts of

6 7 On polite science in Enlightenment, see Walters 1997. 6 8 Brykman 1995, 134-135; Wilson 1995, 248; Parigi 1993, 161; Roger 1993, 461-462; Solinas 1969, 57-58, 188-191. Wolf (1744, 61) illustrated the “distinct notions” by an analogy with the microscope. 6 9 Vannozzi 1996, Clarke 1960, 135-137; Allodi 1955, Hoff 1959. On spontaneous generation, see Roe 1982, 1983; Farley 1977. - 26 -

Europe between 1750 and 1780; third, the triumph of spontaneous generation from 1780 to 1830, a period charted also by Rostand^o

National styles in the history of science have lead historians to focus on some particular scholars and to widen the research on these heroes. Leeuwenhoek’s works especially were thoroughly examined, but most of it are celebrative works.Before the importance and the amount of microscopical research undertaken by the Italian physicians and naturalists in the second part of the eighteenth-century —della Torre, Fontana, Corti, Mascagni, Spallanzani— the modern Italian historians could indeed not deny the existence of research programme in which the microscope was a necessary tool. In that respect, they identified heirs to Malpighi, “the founder of anatomical microscopy”, f o r he established a programme of research that grounded the anatomico-pathologic programme by Giambattista Morgagni (1682-1771) between 1710 and 1770,'73 though, strictly speaking, microscopical anatomy was not developed by him. But continuity was established for the tradition of organic physics. Historians have indeed claimed continuity between Malpighi’s works and later works by eighteenth-century natural experimentalists, mainly Antonio Vallisneri (1661-1730) and Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729-1799).”74

Nevertheless, before these historiographical traditions, one is lead to ask whether or not they have neglected international and

Farley 1977, 17-46; Rostand 1943, 73. See Ford 1991. Brush (1995, 230) has distinguished celebratory and amateur historians from scientists who brought important contribution to k n o w le d g e . Belloni 1961b, 585. See also Bertoloni Meli 1997. ^ 3 See Cavazza 1997, 141; Boaretti 1990, 94-95; Belloni 1979, 140-144; Belloni 1971, 103-104. ^ Bernardi 1986, 393-394. See also Castellani 1992, 1994. - 27 - exchange factors in their account of the practices of the microscope. Jacques Roger showed that the generation quarrel owed much to the French philosophers, to Descartes, and to eighteenth-century Philosophes. Bernardi replied in 1986 by showing that the quarrel started as an Italian issue in the second part of the seventeenth-century, and similarly died in Italy near the

French Revolution, with the death of Spallanzani (1799). Germany also developed some schools of microscopy, as in Nuremberg and later in Berlin. Bracegirdle reinforced the isolationist approach by saying, about eighteenth-century microscopists, “People worked in isolation, and the coincidence of their interest being in things small seems to produce a coherence which is in fact lacking”.^5 A factor somewhat neglected, especially in Bracegirdle’s account, is the importance of the scientific exchanges in the development of eighteenth-century systems of scientific practices, which include extensively the use of the microscope. It is likely not that “there was no organisation of research until later in the nineteenth- century”,'^6 but the organisation of the knowledge was different and not so systematised as it became later. Enlightenment being the century of correspondence, the exchanges between scholars — and especially related to the microscope— can actually not come into view without reading the enormous amount of letters either published or still being in archives. Moreover, since the 1980s, many studies showed the importance of European exchanges in technology, in chemistry or among scholars implied in the quarrel of generation.^77 Local milieu which implied exchanges within the

7 5 Bracegirdle 1978a, 12. 7 6 Bracegirdle 1978a, 12. 7 7 See Kanz 1997, CNSS 1990, Frangsmyr et al. 1990, and the correspondences of Enlightenment’s scholars (de Clercq 1991, Grmek 1991, - 28 - area of a city or of a region, probably were determining factors for some particular discovery. So that generally speaking the eighteenth-century scholar was never isolated. Foucault underscored well “the difficulty to understand the network that links research as different as the taxonomic essays and the microscopical observations”.”78 My belief is that an investigation into scientific exchanges shall allow to reconstruct networks of scholars concerned by microscopes, networks which local situation usually balances, and which are precisely one of the forms of the eighteenth-century practices of the microscope. The shapes that these scientific exchanges took are mainly the scholar’s travel, education abroad, instrument trade, dispatch of living organisms, of engravings and drawings, translations, correspondences and publication —to which we could add... technological spying!79 Such that against this isolationist approach, I will show the relevancy to work with systems of sources^ that allow coherency to emerge from multiple comparison of sources that quote each other.

1.2.1 The question of the microscopic illusion

By the 1960s, another trend appeared that influenced major parts of the later historiography. Bruno Zanobio had begun to show that important preachromatic microscopists, such as Thomas

Willis (1621-1675), John Hunter (1718-1783) and Paolo Mascagni

(1755-1816) were “victims of the microscope”, mislead by their instruments, since eighteenth-century microscopes produced a

Rousseau 1990, Manzini 1988, Dawson 1987, 198-242; M&R 1986, Di Pietro 1984- 1995, Sonntag 1983, CRT 1943). ^8 Foucault 1966, 139. ^ 9 For cases of spying on methods and scientific instruments see Jackson 1994, 569-572; Christensen 1993, Perez & Pinault 1990. - 29 -

“precise” kind of illusion Zanobio called the reticular-filamentous image. With a special technique and modern microscopes, Zanobio created anew an analogous kind of reticular-filamentous image similar to the one drawn, in some of their plates, by previous micro-anatomists. The point is that the anatomists credited these images with a structural meaning Zanobio had denied any scientific value, because of their modern lack of meaning, and artifactual origin. This experimental-historical study influenced the Italian historiography of microscopy, by providing it a procedure helping to reconstruct the factors producing illusion. The illusory microscopy, —as it was named among Italian historians— produced by “bad microscopes”, was thus viewed as a factor adduced to explain the decline of microscopy: “A still incomplete knowledge of optical physics, and defective instruments produced erroneous microscopical observations that could only be corrected much later. And one really understands why, at the end of the eighteenth-century, scientific microscopy could not avoid to expire into a dead-end of which it would only be removed from with the advances on the lenses theory and the improvement of optical instruments”.80

Considered by Zanobio as a kind of research programme to put into general use for the history of microscopy, the thesis was actually echoed in many trends, because it eventually supplied historians with “technological proofs” demonstrating that preachromatic microscopes generously yielded artifacts. Luigi Belloni, for instances considered Zanobio’s thesis a leading advance in the history of microscopy.81 The illusory microscopy

8 0 Zanobio 1961, 593. 8 1 Belloni 1961, 1962, 65-68. - 30 - found many echoes and was applied to the explanation of particular phenomena, such as the globular illusion. Many microscopists, we are told, drew globular images of animalcules of the infusions and of anatomical sections. Rupert S. Hall considered globular theories such as Buffon’s, to be the product of the spherical aberration caused by the instrument.^2 Such a thesis has been developed by Philip Sloan who argued that the microscope Needham lent to Buffon was a Wilson simple microscope.^3 Shirley

Roe applied as well this logic in considering that for his embryological description of the development of the chicken embryo, “Wolff’s ‘globules’ were most likely optical artifacts”.84

The same kind of explanation was recently put forward by Danièle

Ghesquier about Gales’ determination of the Acarus scabiei in

1816.85 In one way or another, eighteenth-century scholars were then almost always regarded as “victims of the microscope”, an expression coined by Zanobio thanks to his anachronistic inquiry.

What does such an investigation mean? There are some methodological criticisms to direct at Zanobio’s work. It is based on five images taken from five books printed between 1680 and

1820, and this should act as a causal explanation accounting for the eighteenth-century failure of microscopy... But Zanobio himself selected his images among hundreds of other images, which do not present the same defect. There is, as well, a flagrant contradiction between the magnification used by Zanobio to obtain his photographic image (x700!) and the average in magnification of

8 2 Hall 1969, 186. 8 3 Sloan 1992, 424-425. For a reconsideration of this thesis, see Stefani 2000, and chapter 6. 8 4 Roe 1981, 179. See also Roe 1981, 85-86. 8 5 Ghesquier 1999, 50. - 31 - eighteenth-century microscopes as was found by Bradbury and

Bracegirdle, which is about x50-x60. Moreover, Zanobio did not imagine other hypothesis to explain the reticular-filamentous image, such as the possibility that they came from a specific technique used by drawers and engravers to fill up some spaces in a plate. We could perhaps find the reticular-filamentous image in an engraving without magnification... How then can one compare an image produced through photo to that engraved on the basis of a drawing, being the normal procedure used for scientific iconography during the eighteenth-century? On top of it, depicting the eighteenth-century scholars as “victims of the microscope” is taking them either for fools or unable to tackle the problem of illusion. Such an approach neglects two fundamental facts which are the use of the microscope and the scholar’s reactions to the condition of vision yielded by instruments. Are there evidences showing such kind of relation between the scholar and the microscope, and according to what kind of social, historical, technical or geographical factors? It is also likely, through the use of the microscope, that changes emerged during the century, and techniques gently improved. Some research have recently proved that scholars were not passive before the question of the illusion, an issue addressed in the 1750s by a populariser of the microscope like Henry Baker ( 1 6 9 8 - 1 7 7 4 ).^6

One of the specific concepts put forward to understand more analytically the functioning of preachromatic microscopy has been proposed by Luigi Belloni —a leader historian of microscopy for half century after second world war. The concept of “microscope

^ ^ Mazzolini 1997, 217. - 32 - of nature” refers to the ability to select, through microscopical inquiry, an organism which turns paradigmatic to some features to be observed and acquire a more universal meaning. Belloni states that the frog was indeed a good experimental animal through which Malpighi could, with a modest magnification, discover the reticulate net.87 Such a discovery would have been much more difficult if undertaken on the human species, for it would have necessitated more powerful lenses. The microscope of nature also explains, for instance, why the instrument makers supplied their customs with the image of a small fish, and perhaps with a true one, in which the circulation of blood was visible. On the other hand, such a concept does not account for the normal activity of most eighteenth-century scholars. They worked like explorer of the variety of the new world of microscopy, which no grand discovery would stem from. But if an organism presents some specific properties that might be selected for observation — obviously one would not study parthenogenesis in cows— nevertheless, acceptance of a discovery by a community of scholars calls for other kind of procedures. I speak here of the tension between the relative lack of the microscope’s standardisation and the necessity for the communities of scholars to reproduce experiments and observations in order to record valid knowledge. Since Shapin and Schaffer’s work, the multiplication of witnesses has been considered an important characteristic of a community of scholars for validating knowledge through three technologies: instrumental, social and rhetorical.^ ^

All but eighteenth-century microscopy was considered from this

87 Belloni 1979, 143; Belloni 1971, 103. 8 8 See S&S 1985, 25-26, 55-65, Shapin 1984. - 33 - a n g l e . 89 But there are also constraints related to the object and conceptual necessities where the social reproduction of knowledge was forced to deal with cognitive considerations.

Pursuing further this argument, in the next chapters I will show that the use of the microscope, though still controversial —which is inescapable, but so is science— was mainly in accordance with the reproduction of observation, perhaps the major epistemological dimension required by scientific activity during the age of

Enlightenment. The growing adequacy between the possibilities opened by the instrument and the rules of the communication of knowledge through the reproduction of observations and experiments caused the microscopist to adapt his instrument to organisms that everyone could still afford to observe. Commonly interpreted as the foundation of the experimental biology,9 0

Trembley’s polyp is perhaps more significant when considered the prototype of such novelty in the history of scientific communication, and I shall investigate the terms by which the polyp became a paradigmatic microscopical object. Indeed, with respect to the practices of the microscope, one of the major stakes of the polyp —so the green fly— was that it provided academics with a kind of gauge for a valid standardisation of instruments used to tackle the less-visible and microscopic objects. With the polyp, for the first time, the limits of visibility changed not only for a couple of scholars, but on an European scale. With such a new object, and with the renewal of spontaneous generation that

8 9 See Wilson 1995, 98-100, Harwood 1989. 9 0 Lenhoff and Lenhoff 1986, 16; Schiller 1974, 185; Baker 1952. Every remarkable scientist was considered an original “founder” of biology, Spallanzani (Rostand 1951, 258-259); Buffon (Binet & Roger 1977, 165-167) and Lamarck (Pichot 1990, 588). - 34 - followed, the 1740s was not only characterised by changes in scientific issues, but also by a rupture in the forms of communication, which, from the standpoint of research with the microscope, allowed for the consummation of a definitive rupture with the past. Part II (chapter 4) will be dedicated to the examination of this issue. Furthermore, a main difference between

Trembley and Bonnet’s natural experimental projects with previous projects was that the former were designed as experimental systems and not simply experiments. Appealing for more detailed and accurate reports, enabling the researcher to account for a series of experiments on a series of objects, Trembley also rose the standards of the forms of communication related to such knowledge, as will be shown in chapter 4. The further development of marine zoology and of studies on animalcules from the 1750s onwards shows the efficiency of his heuristic method.

Though the microscope was beforehand a normal tool used in some academic areas mainly to study insects, the debut of the polyp marked the beginning of an irreversible path in looking for more microscopic organisms. Up to the middle of the century, reports on invisible organisms were partly shrugged off from academies for lack of possibilities to share their verification with many other scholars. Buffon and Needham’s hints to show microscopic organisms get their meaning partly in relation to such a context. I thus call rationalisation of the practices of the microscope the process by which the microscopists and related networks of scholars tended to adapt the material conditions of vision and the objects of their observations and experiments, as well as their reports, to the imperative of replication. This, for instance, compelled to develop procedures such as the comparison - 35 - of microscopes, and the uses of many microscopes when observing and experimenting. As well, scholars had to get how to send organisms, and explain their observations, techniques and material used, in order to give colleagues the opportunity to replicate exactly their own experiments. Rationalisation is also one of the ways scholars by-passed the problem of “illusion”, by sharing observation and controlling it through repetition, using several instruments instead of only one. In such a history, which I believe enables the historian to draw the lines of force in the development of natural sciences related to social interaction, scholars like

Leeuwenhoek would obviously not appear to be so important. To the elitist way of using the microscope by Leeuwenhoek opposed the democratic microscope of many eighteenth-century authors. Indeed, if the sensitivity to social circumstances was raised by

Ruestow to explain Leeuwenhoek’s commitment to m icroscopy,^ i however many historians have underlined his reticence to play the game of enabling other scholar’s repetition of his observations, of sharing instruments or showing the way to make them.^2 The relative lack of heirs to Leeuwenhoek’s work thus appears partly as a consequence of his attitude, and in such a respect, as we shall see, eighteenth-century continental scholars always faced the problem of the empirical repetition, regarded as an act with a scientific and social meaning.

My aim here is clearly not to measure the distance between an idealised rationalisation and the results obtained by scholars, for instance in the debate of spontaneous generation. I do not strive at

^ ^ Ruestow (1996, 174-175) invoked Leeuwenhoek’s “self-esteem” and ‘e g o ” . See chapters 2, 3. - 36 - all for a classification of good and bad microscopists, especially when such a classification is loaded by the results obtained with the classical gauge of their belief in or rejection of spontaneous generation. Much more, the rationalisation of the practices of the microscope stems from the sources and encompasses debates and quarrels as an integral part of its dynamics. In such a process, the analysis of the scholar’s behavior towards new trends and new discoveries appears much more fundamental than the reality of the illusion —though illusion can not be neglected— produced by the microscopes.

1.2.2 Generation and infusoria

In order to avoid spreading the subject, I will restrict the following inquiry to the issue of infusoria and related topics such as the quarrel of generation and the emergence of the systematic of microscopic beings.

With respect to the quarrel of generation, two main episodes have been widely analysed by historians: the Buffon-Needham- Haller-Bonnet quarrel between 1749 and 1764, and the renewal of the polemic opposing Spallanzani and Bonnet to Needham (1765-

1 7 7 6 ) . Spallanzani is credited by historians of science to have demonstrated for the first time the vacuity of the spontaneous generation of o r g a n is m s .94 However rare studies have examined the reception of his theory abroad, except the relations with

Charles Bonnet (1720-1793) and the continuation of the polemic

93 Roger 1993, 497-511, 692-717; Bernardi 1986, 409-415; M&R 1986, 30-52; Roe 1982, Farley 1977, 22-27; Castellani 1971. 9 4 Castellani 1992, 1991, 1973, Farley 1977, 25; Rostand 1943, 50-73; Bulloch 1938, 75-79; Singer 1934, 460-461. - 37 - with John Turberville Needham (1713-1782).^5 Some historians followed old Clifford Dobell’s and Emile Guyénot’s judgments on

Needham’s work. The animalcules, infusoria and microbes “gave occasion to fancy speculations and to the erroneous observations of a Needham”.96 But other historians have tended to justify

Needham’s views by arguing that his criticisms towards Spallanzani’s experiments on the generation of the animalcules were actually well-founded. Needham objected to Spallanzani that, when heating the sealed infusions, such a way of experimenting destroyed also the internal air, thus impeding any generation of the animalcules.97 S. Roe and Mazzolini and Roe later have shown that philosophical conceptions also influenced the debate: Bonnet and Spallanzani’s opposed to Needham’s representations of life and its origins were rather incompatible, the former being influenced by a preformationist-mechanistic view, and the latter by an atomist-vitalist conception.98 On the other hand, the role played by scholars from the Northern parts of Europe in this quarrel, and especially in relation to infusoria was thoroughly neglected. Historians hardly have mentioned and described the works of Heinrich August Wrisberg (1739-1808), of Otto-Friedrich

Müller (1730-1784), and Wilhelm von Gleichen (1717-1783) who repeated Needham’s experiments, in defense of the transmutationist generation of inferior beings,99 to say nothing of the scores of scholars who had brought small empirical

9 5 See M&R 1986, 30-52; Roe 1983, 1982, Farley 1977, 22-26; Grmek 1971. 9 6 Guyénot 1941, 442. See also Dobell 1932, 380. This judgment was however softened by Castellani 1969, 215-221. 9 7 Singer 1934, 461. Rostand (1943, 72-73) showed that Pasteur argued in a same way and justified Needham’s criticisms. See also Bernardi 2000, 54-56 and Roger 1993, 697. 9 8 M&R 1986, 10. 9 9 Stefani 1999, 329, Ruestow 1996, 261, 270-272; De Martin 1983, 81-84; Rostand 1943, 47. - 38 - contributions to the issue. Important spread of their works could act as a relevant reason explaining why the spontaneous generation apparently acquired so wide an audience at the end of the century, since it was a theory also defended by important authors like

Erasmus Darwin and Jean-Baptiste de L a m a r c k . Yet very seldom are the studies such as Ainsworth’s which in 1976 reconstructed an episode of the transmutationist debate between Linnaeus, Baron von Munchhausen, and the British naturalists, a dispute dealing with microscopical observations made on some spores of Fungi taken for animalcule’s eggs.i^i

The study of the theories of generation, of embryology and of preformationism also supplied historians with other arguments against the scientific value of the microscope. Elizabeth Gasking argued that the microscope indirectly strengthened the preformationist’s views by embodying tiny structure invisible to the naked e y e .102 The microscope then encouraged “fancy” developmental interpretations such as those by preformationists who claimed that the body already existed as a whole in the g e r m . 103 Through the example of spermatology, Joseph Needham set many examples, from François de Plantade (1670-1741) to

Gautier d’Agoty (1717-1785) of the imagined men and horses

“observed” with the microscope and folded up in the sperm atozoids. 104 Thus the microscope is considered as having encouraged a kind of perverse effect on the theory. It strengthened, according to historians, the belief that invisible

100 Ruestow 1996, 275-276; Farley 1977, 38-45. Kant considered spontaneous generation to be impossible (Solinas 1969, 190). 101 Ainsworth 1976, 23-25. 102 Gasking 1967, 45-46. 103 For later development of the germ theory, see Fantini 1994, 111-115. 104 Needham 1959, 205-206. - 39 - structures existed which reinforced some scholars in their views.

Invisible structures were used to prove what the scholar wanted them to prove^o^ —the truth of their own theories— ignoring or neglecting the necessity of observations. Walter Bernardi pursued this line of reasoning further by charting a frontier between two visual regimes, of weak and of strong visibility. The former describes a way of observing in which the microscopical observations are influenced by theoretical assumptions. In such a regime an observation being at variance with the system would be discarded. Such was apparently done by Haller in spring 1765 when he tested anew the epigenetic hypothesis championed by Wolff accounting for the early development of the chicken’s blood vessels.106 go that thanks to the microscope, the invisible was used as a strategy by preformationists. The strong visibility depicts the way to observe in the epigenetic system for which the observation prevails over the theory.!07 Nevertheless Roe also showed that the epigenesists used such a top-down —weak visibility— approach when examining microorganisms: “In March 1748 Buffon and

Needham started to test the hypothesis that both spermatic animalcule and all microorganisms were only machines emerging from a random combination of organic particles, a theory suggested by B uffon”.108 Both presented in 1748 and 1749 two interpretations accounting for the origin of animalcules: Buffon stood firm on the organic particle theory, and credited hazard with a leading role in the making of these small machines, including the

“spermatic animalcules”, and Needham built a theory of the

Roe 1981, 84; Bracegirdle 1978a, 12. 106 Monti 1990, 183-189; Roe 1981, 60-61; J. Needham 1959, 22. 107 Bernardi 1995, 33-34. 108 Roe 1983, 161. - 40 - transmutation from the vegetable to the animal. Partly through these examples historians have drawn the conclusion that microscopy, during the Enlightenment, was in a state of regression by comparison with previous studies by Leeuwenhoek who had indeed established the animal nature of both infusoria and spermatozoids. But the episodes of the 1740-1760 period radically changed the conditions of vision, and Jacques Roger has deeply thrown light on the question, considering that “by the 1750s, scientific observation ceased to be within amateur’s r e a c h ” . ! 0 9

If many studies have embraced the question of the origin of infusoria around Needham and Spallanzani, there are however almost no studies devoted to the history of the systematic of infusoria, and to their microscopic determination and description. Historians probably recorded some eighteenth-century scientific discoveries regarding the structure and life of “animalcules”: the contractile vacuole of Protozoa recognised by Louis Joblot in 1718, the discovery of free-living amoeba in 1755 by Rosel, the identification of diatoms by Müller in 1773, and the property of reviviscence of the r o t i f e r . ! gm actually one can not consider that the extant references and methodology hold the key bringing to a systematic inquiry on the history of infusoria. An example of such indistinctness of the research sharply stems from the question of the discovery of the division in infusoria (fission).

Dobell considered Leeuwenhoek to have detected the reproduction of Volvox; John Baker has held Trembley, in 1744, to be the first discover of the division of unicellular beings; Rooseboom looked

!09 Roger 1993, 195. ! ! Ruestow 1996, 261-262; Rothschild 1989, 279; Bracegirdle 1978, 12; Van der Paas 1973, 110; Rooseboom 1956, 56; Cole 1926. - 41 - upon the British naturalist John Ellis as having made the discovery in 1769. Still for 1769, Mazzolini and Roe have put forward the names of Needham and that of H.-B. de Saussure (1740-1799), one of the Genevan intellectual heirs of Bonnet, while other historians have ascribed the discovery to Lazzaro Spallanzani in 1 7 7 6 !^

Obviously the subject calls for further inquiry.

As a consequence, except for Leeuwenhoek’s contribution about infusoria, 112 we actually know more things regarding the history of words such as protista and infusoria than the history of infusoria strictly speaking. It was Gmelin that entered the Protista in the Linnaean classification with the name of infusoria in the 13th edition of the Systerna N a t u r a e The word Protozoa seems not to belong to the Enlightenment, having likely been created in 1817 by Georg A. Goldfuss in Ueber der Entwicklungsstufen des Thiers Infusoria itself appeared “during the latter half of the eighteenth- century (...). The “infusion animals” of Martin Ledermiiller, or the (latinized) “infusoria” of Heinrich August Wrisberg, made their debuts in the early 1760s to describe microscopic organisms that appeared in infusions”.H o w ev er, almost all the classical knowledge about the systematics of infusoria in the eighteenth- century takes its source from works published in the first part of the nineteenth-century, such as Histoire naturelle des zoophytes infusoires by Dujardin (1841). He identified the main steps in the progression: John Hill was, in 1752, the first to give Latin names to the animalcules, Linnaeus grouped them under the appellation of

Lenhoff and Lenhoff 1986, 13; M&R 1986, 39-40; Castellani 1971, 8; Roseboom 1956, 48; Baker 1952, 155-162; Dobell 1932, 380. 112 Ford 1991, 38-47; Bulloch 1938, 22-30; Dobell 1932. 113 Guyénot 1941, 91. 114 Rothschild 1989, 279; Dobell 1932, 378. 115 Rothschild 1989, 278. - 42 -

Chaos, and Otto-Friedrich Müller in 1773 and 1786 systematically classified 379 infusorial Without being more investigated, this view was popularised by the first handbooks of history of natural sciences, by Cuvier, and Hoefel.^^^ Even the most popular Larousse dictionary of 1880 copied out Dujardin's genealogy,ia topic to which some precision was brought by Cole in 1926 and Bulloch in

1938.^19 Cole corrected for instance the date Dujardin attributed to Joblot’s first observations of animalcules (1718 instead of 1754). Bulloch also gave Joblot —himself a whole chapter in the history of infusoria— a respectable place in the history of protozoological r e s e a r c h . Yet historians seem unable to imagine suitable means to analyse the problem represented by the creation of the systematics of infusoria between 1773 and 1786, when not ignored: “It is well known that Leeuwenhoek published figures of four forms of bacteria, and Otto Muller’s work on infusoria, published in 1786, did contain bacterial forms, but the systematic study was not taken up until the 19th-century”.i2i Chapter 6 will reconstruct the system of sources showing the existence and importance of Muller’s works, as well as those by his predecessors. Indeed their comments on such a fundamental taking-off end up with arguments that mainly highlight the lack of this work in contrast with the studies of the following period, especially those of Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg (1795-1876). Historians usually have stated that Müller, in his 1786 Animalcula infusoria

^ ^ ^ Dujardin 1841, 3-11. 117 Cuvier 1845 V, 271-272; Hoefel, 1873, 249-250. Carus (1880, 455) who praised Müller, ignored the attempt by Hill. 11^ Larousse 1880, 690, entry “Infusoire”. 119 Bulloch 1938, 37, 171-172. 120 Bulloch 1938, 70-71. See also van der Pass 1973. 121 Turner [1967], 175. - 43 - confounded worms, protozoa and metazoa,!^^ that he made

“errors difficult to account for” such as taking a diatom —a vegetable— for an animal, and they have pointed at some holes in his descriptions, for instance Müller did not notice the cilia in P.

AureliaA'^^ Historians have sometimes identified the improvements of the classification from those by Hill and Linnaeus until that of

M ü l l e r . 124 So that the same cliché, which after all is said and done seems a badge to be classified “historian of microscopy”, is once more used for infusoria: “Despite such implications —and the expectation, indeed, that so much was yet to be learned from the infusoria— the eighteenth-century failed to develop the study of microscopic life into a sustained and integrated field of research”. 125 And why did this programme not develop? Following

Bulloch, Dobell, and Corliss, Ruestow has recently considered that “Müller’s achievement hence stands alone among eighteenth- century studies of microorganisms, and, since he lacked immediate heirs of significance, such efforts had come to a halt by the opening decades of the following century”. 126

I will here draw attention to a contrast between “studies” on

Müller and the infusoria which almost did not round the cape of allusions, and studies on Leeuwenhoek. Both scholars lacked “immediate heirs of significance”, which means that, according to historiography, their works were not developed in substantial fields of investigation after their deaths. But there is a striking

122 Ruestow 1996, 276-277; Rothschild 1989, 278-279; Corliss 1986, Guyénot 1941, 91; Singer 1934, 357; Dobell 1932, 376. 123 Guyénot 1941, 90. Rothschild 1989, 279. 124 Ruestow 1996, 276; Bulloch 1938, 36-37; Dobell 1932, 375-378. 125 Ruestow 1996, 276. 126 Ruestow 1996, 277. See Corliss 1986, 476; Bulloch 1938, 29; Dobell 1932, 375-382. - 44 - difference, perhaps a discrimination between studies on

Leeuwenhoek and on Müller. The bicentenary of the publication of the posthumous Animalcula infusoria by Otto-Friedrich Müller gave rise to a... four pages paper in the Journal of protozoology, though Müller is the founder of the systematics of infusoria between 1773 and 1786.^27 jn the symposia on the history of protozoology (issued in JHB 1989), no study was dedicated to Müller, though he was hailed there as the Danish L i n n a e u s Still historians take almost always directly their material from good old classics History of Protozoology by Francis Cole (1926), Dobell’s Little Animals (1932)1^9 and Bulloch’s History of Bacteriology

(1938). Such a methodology is somewhat surprising, because of two aspects: on one hand there are practically no historical studies about Müller’s works, as compared to Leeuwenhoek; on the other hand, as we will see in chapter 7, the historical knowledge from the 1840s onwards took gradually into account only Leeuwenhoek and seventeenth-century microscopy. Indeed, when comparing data on Leeuwenhoek and Müller during the 1840s with the present state of our knowledge, one is lead to think that the historiography about Müller and Enlightenment’s microscopical research is more than one century behind the history of seventeenth-century microscopy. For 150 years, historians have studied Leeuwenhoek and alia, and for 150 years eighteenth- century microscopy has been neglected. As a consequence, 1 dare say that one of the functions of the classic historiography of microscopy has mainly been to explain the “absence” of

127 Corliss 1986. 128 Rothschild 1989, 278. Churchill (1989, 188) jumped from Leeuwenhoek to Lamarck and then Ehrenberg. 129 Dobell 1932, 371-381. - 45 - microscopy. But such an absence, in a high proportion, is the product of the lack of interest in eighteenth-century microscopy — not in the microscope— stemming from the previous historiography... So that we are lead to the conclusion that a part of this historiographical trend has especially functioned as an obstacle to someone undertaking research on the period. Perhaps also the importance of spontaneous generation has taken a heavy toll, for, oddly enough, such a big hole in historiography represented by the ghostly Enlightenment microscopy coincides with the major period in which spontaneous generation was mainly discussed by scholars. Eventually “microscopy” itself could appear as a nineteenth-century invention, and bear the anachronistic load close to the “history of biology” or of “vitalism” using nineteenth- century words to designate fields that did not exist during the

Enlightenm ent. % shall negate, along with the cliché, the object itself of the standard history of microscopy, and my study shall thus reconstruct the European network of practices of scholars who used the microscope.

It is not easy to break down so rooted a prejudice, and contemporary historians are from two decades confronted with quite similar a situation to the one eighteenth-century scholars stumbled over. On one hand, there is a dogmatic set of beliefs acting as obstacles to undertaking research on eighteenth-century practices of the microscope, a mythology I will attempt to deconstruct on chapter 7. On the other hand once one goes looking for primary sources, they display in most cases a flagrant contradiction with the expectations. As a result, and with very few

130 See Jardine 2000, 261-262. - 46 - exceptions, the historian always finds himself in rather the same situation as Leeuwenhoek, when he opened the corked vessel containing a four days old infusion, full of animalcules: the theory is wrong! But instead of changing method, Leeuwenhoek did not stir his belief, and preferred to continue adhering to the antispontaneist theory.For the historian, such a tension between being consistent with the expectations of the technical history of the microscope, and the contact with the sources has probably been the principal hindrance to look at Enlightenment’s use of the microscope in greater depth. Up to the 1990s indeed, there are seldom studies that have brought positive data embodying eighteenth-century microscopical research in its practices and context, looking at what the uses actually were of the microscope in the scientific life. Studies by Castellani about Spallanzani, especially the publication of his experimental notebooks on embryology and generation issued in 1978, are exceptions. Even rarer are the studies that have ventured to draw from their data conclusions other than the usual song of the absence of a microscopical programme, or at least, that have imagined other causes than the “bad microscopes”. Bracegirdle himself, when looking at the sources was astonished to find that during eighteenth-century, “some striking scientific results were ach ieved ” , 132 this could of course not be the rule since scholars “worked in isolation”.133 How strong is the prejudice!

From the old-fashioned idea of the microscope used as a toy, historians might find a way to prove that their belief was true, and have invented the story of the isolated scholar, just because they

131 See Ruestow 1984, 235-237. 132 Bracegirdle 1978, 12. 133 Bracegirdle 1978, 12. - 47 - did not look at the system of sources which allows a reconstruction of an issue. The historians who have emphasised the importance of Dutch microscopy during the eighteenth- century, still have concluded that microscopy was absent. Marian

Fournier inquired about particular aspects of Dutch microscopy admitting that many microscopical studies took place in the eighteenth-century. Yet she appealed to statistics in order to show both the preeminence of Leeuwenhoek and the “decline of microscopy”. These are good examples of the actual tension between following the credo and archive work. Nevertheless, from a decade, the attitude of historians of microscopy seems to have progressively changed and they did not any more make reference to the technological “proofs” brought by old Zanobio, Bradbury and Bracegirdle. Perhaps it is the sign that the spirit in which these studies were carried out belongs to a remote period in the historography of microscopy. Some studies have emphasised the impact of the microscope on the cultural realm and philosophical conceptions in the seventeenth-century. ^3 5 Other trends, such as the question of ambiguous animals have captured the attention of historians and some of them consider that the Enlightenment “was the time of the great microscopical discoveries, when creatures were found that did not seem to be constructed by analogy with other creatures at a l l ” . 1 3 6 Barsanti has regarded the studies of ambiguous organisms by microscopists since the 1740s to serve as the basis of the new biology in the early nineteenth-century. 1 3 7

134 Fournier 1989, 1991, 5, 16. 135 Mazzolini 1997, Wilson 1995, Parigi 1993, Solinas 1967. 136 Elkins 1992. 137 Barsanti 1997, 81-82. - 48 -

Nevertheless, there is no smoke without fire. If, during more than one century, historians have seldom found evidences for microscopy in the eighteenth-century, there are likely some reasons for this, which touches on their object: they looked for a discipline where there are but systems of low visible practices. I shall then challenge the current credo, arguing in favour of the following hypothesis. I do agree with the historians who have shown that the fashionable and heuristic representation of the microscope of the second half of the seventeenth-century radically changed at the turn of the following century.^^s But I have strong reservations regarding the methodologies adopted to show that the production of microscopical studies declined between 1690 and 1730. In this respect, looking at London and Bologna is not enough to account for the whole situation of the practices of the microscope in Europe, and there is a need to get acquainted with systems of sources. Such an overview can only be constructed with accumulation and synthesis of case-studies to which my study is aimed at giving a new impetus. Indeed many particular contexts among Europe produced different styles in representing the microscope, many ways of using the microscope. The fashionable and heuristic representations of the microscope varied according to the countries —and cities— where academics and others used the microscope. Moreover there is no causal nor simple relation between the fashionable and the heuristic representation of the m 1 9 9 7 . ex relation. One of the paths 1 shall explore is that the microscope entered the eighteenth-century as a routine instrument, which gave it its lower visibility.

See Mazzolini 1997, Nicolson 1935. - 49 -

According to many studies, the imaginative concept of the microscope was saturated and its representation was in the process of changing. But instead of being nullified, it moved from an instrument that reveals marvels to a routine tool, hence its low visibility in several respects. This routine function of the microscope hailed from a body of minor and less minor studies which eventually enlarged the field of use of the instrument.

Proportionally to the large number of these minor works, carried out thanks to the microscope, the works of Joblot, Trembley, Hill, Müller, Spallanzani and others are exceptions, and they developed unexplored and new potential of the microscope as a research tool. For this reason these works allowed the researcher to move beyond the normal, low visibility of the routine instrument. They contributed to the microscope’s heuristic function in the Enlightenment, opening up a space for new investigations. “Rationalisation of the microscope” refers to the use of the microscope by scholars as a tool adapted to the conditions of research, to the forms of communication and to the scale of the object. However, the microscope was also, for certain eighteenth- century scholars, a goal in and of itself. My work shall attempt to distinguish between scholars who applied the microscope as a means to the knowledge of microscopical things, and others whose main interest was the promotion of the instrument. In the latter instance, obvious from the works of several authors, the function of the microscope was inverted. From a routine research tool, the microscope became a goal per se. Such a role for the microscope, as a fetish or as merchandise, sold with a pastiche of its heuristic function, explains notably why it was considered by many historians as a toy for the elite. My work will demonstrate at what - 50 - point and for which authors the microscope became more of a goal and more of a means for r e s e a r c h . The process of changing the function of the microscope —a goal or the means— finds a kind of equivalence at the level of exploiting the social sphere by the scholar. Indeed, one of the core issues of the Enlightenment use of the microscope is the understanding of the conditions which allow a scientific activity to be heuristic. It is certain that there is no science without a social embodiment; knowledge is either valuated or rejected by a social community. But no less sure is the fact that certain knowledge produces new kinds of knowledge, while others do not. The former participates in the construction of scholarly disciplines, while the latter remains knowledge, shared of course by a community, which does however not begin a process of cumulated data within new fields reformulated. The practices of the microscope in the Enlightenment appeal to historians to discuss such issues. How can one distinguish between Abraham Trembley and Henry Baker, other than appealing to old-fashion categories such as genius and experimental creativity? How was Trembley —and not Baker— able to indirectly lay the foundations of marine zoology? Similar questions can be asked in the cases of

Ledermiiller and Müller. Distinguishing the functions of the microscope as either a goal per se or as a means for research provides a sketch of a model for shaping the differences between the social and the heuristic styles of practicing microscopic research.

At the turn of the eighteenth century, scholars changed thus their attitude towards the instrument, diminishing the visibility of

139 On this dichotomy in the experimental context, see Lenoir 1988, 10, 17. - 51 - their microscopical works, but not the use of the instrument. A goal of this work shall be to understand the main trajectories for the use of the microscope, to trace some genealogical lines that transformed seventeenth-century microscopical knowledge into that of the Enlightenment. If we know some of the factors determining the “decline of microscopy”, there is important work to by carried out in order to determine to what extent the decrease is in visibility and in production. Furthermore, the changes in visibility of this routine instrument were linked to the heuristic representation of the microscope. Although it was used by scholars as a routine instrument, when regarded as a serious instrument by non-scholars, the microscope increased in visibility. Systems of sources stemming from interrelated works by scholars —articles, correspondence, leaflets— allow us to reconstruct these changes in visibility and production. With their different styles for trading, the rhythm of the Academies, the universities that progressively adopted experimental philosophy and instrumental practices, the increase of the relative influence of small academic societies that changed the European equilibrium in the intellectual and technical forces of production, the growing importance of the scientific exchanges, all these factors form the general context in which the practices of the microscope got a respectable though sometimes controversial position. It is one goal of this work to show, through a variety of case-studies, the extensions and ramifications of

European practices of the microscope. The development of the interest in infusoria and allied organisms --replaced in their context— will provide a topical example for the historian for understanding the regime of the functioning of the microscope. By following throughout the century the “interquoted” systems of - 52 - sources that constructed a path allowing scholars to capture the natural identity of several kinds of small organisms and animalcules, this work shall reconstruct their history in relation to the rationalisation of the practices of the microscope.

1.3 Socio-constructivism and the microscope

The history of the practices of the microscope in the Enlightenment shall thus provide us with a historiographical lesson, illuminating the existence of a field in an area where historians have previously negating one. Nevertheless the question touches also upon the epistemological level when one considers the stake, in terms of scientific communities and of construction of a scientific discipline, as related to the history of the practices of the microscope. In this respect, the analysis of the relation between science and society can shed much light on the question of the status of the practices of the microscope.

Through the documented example of the seventeenth-century air-pump as the centre of a conflict between Robert Boyle and

Thomas Hobbes, Steve Shapin and Simon Schaffer have shown that a literary technology such as the experimental report allowed for the change in the status of authority in Restoration England, by multiplying the number of witnesses for an experiment.in a similar way, the reproduction of experiments has been considered by Peter Dear to be a new form of authority replacing the previous form embodied in religious and antique texts.A vaguely similar

140 s&S 1985, 56-58. 141 Dear 1985, 159-161. - 53 - pattern can be perceived in Italy with the quarrel of the Neoterics and the Aristotelians, and, in the case of literacy in France with the querelle des anciens et des modernes, through which the modem viewpoint established itself against traditional knowledge.It permitted the placing of Fontenelle at head of the renewed Académie des Sciences in the late seventeenth-century. The establishment of the report of experiments as a new form of authority has been documented more recently by several historians. Christian Licoppe, through an analysis of the “rhetoric of trial” (the use of “I did, I saw”) has emphasised the differences between the relationship of the academies to political power in France and in England in the late seventeenth-century. Allan Gross et al., on the other hand, have established the emergence of an international scientific community sharing narrative and visual arguments that grew independently of political powers. Licoppe’s study on the fate of experimental reporting in the eighteenth-century has brought to light an important differences with the previous century. During the 1710s, the experimental report began to represent the decontextualisation of instruments used in the experiments, which opened to it new mercantile and scholar prospects.1^4 There is indeed an important difference between the period when a new form of authority was invented, and the following period when this form became the established form of scientific authority. In studying institutional changes,

Bourdieu and Passeron have characterised this difference as forces

On the cultural implications of the Querelle, see Hahn 1971, 54-57; Gillot 1968. Licoppe 1994, 239-241. Licoppe 1996. Gross et al. (2000, 388-389) have identified shared knowledge in arguing local facts, explanations and visual arguments. Licoppe 1996, 157-158. On eighteenth-century public sphere, see Broman 1994, 144. - 54 - enacting in order to create new institutions, as opposed to conserving established institutions. Such that, on the point of authority, the difference between seventeenth and eigtheenth- century academic institutions can be understood as the opposition between creative and conservative forces. One difference is that while previous sacred and traditionalist institutions retained an immutable form of knowledge, the new academies defended and preserved a creative method for producing knowledge. Habermas has situated the emergence of this “form of rationality”, as he termed it, in the twentieth c e n t u r y . 1^5 But its origin was more likely related to the creation of the seventeenth-century academies which institutionalised the production of new knowledge.

When related to eighteenth-century practices of the microscope, this discussion opens up two paths. I shall first examine the hypothesis that two different statuses of the microscope correspond to the difference between creative and conservative forces in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century. The microscope was a new and unknown instrument to be explored and used in the seventeenth-century, bound to the creative atmosphere which characterises this period. Historians of seventeenth-century microscopy have documented this point well. The use of the microscope was legitimated by its novelty and its knowledge- producing capabilities. In the eighteenth-century, the microscope, already known and framed by a conservative form of knowledge, became a routine instrument not linked particularly to one field. It could not be a goal per se, but had to be considered as a means of research, a routine research tool of which little was to be said.

Habermas 1978. - 55 - because it was accepted almost everywhere by scholars as a

“normal” research tool. This process implied that a certain form of authority was delegate to the instrument itself.The following chapters will provide evidence for this phenomenon.

The second point of discussion relates to the tyranny of the experimental report over the historiographic debate concerning the sciences of the ancien regime. Shapin and Schaffer, Peter Dear,

Christan Licoppe and others have mainly discussed several forms of the experimental report, in the context of physics. Catherine Wilson has argued that the features of knowledge constitution described by Shapin and Schaffer were also valid for seventeenth- century microscopy. But, especially in the case of the eighteenth-century, I believe that the natural sciences demonstrate a noticeable specificity in contrast to the physical sciences which have been largely examined. Natural sciences in the Enlightenment period deal with types of languages and logic, in part different from those of experimental physics. While both share the experimental report as a form of communication of knowledge, the question of naming and classifying natural objects appears to be a constitutive issue mainly for natural history, which has been well investigated by another historiographic tradition. 1^8 jn the field examined by Shapin and Schaffer, and Licoppe the question of classification is treated as an epistemological issue similar to that of demarcation, for instance, outlining the difference between matter of facts and hypotheses.^^9 On the contrary, the field in

146 See Licoppe 1996, 277-282; S&S 1985, 36-39. 147 Wilson 1995, 100. 148 Concerning the language and classification of the Latin natural history tradition see Steam 1995, 10-16, 41-44; Stevens 1994, 161-182; Slaughter 1982, 76-82; Stafleu 1971, Foucault 1966, 140-150. 149 s&S 1985, 162-163. - 56 - which the microscope operated during the eighteenth-century dealt progressively with classification and nomenclature i.e. a set of logic and linguistic technologies irreducible to demarcation and the three technologies, literary, material and social, discussed by

Shapin and Schaffer.Among the causes of the so-called decline of microscopy in the late seventeenth-century is a pattern too dependent on the British form of narrative rhetoric, as we will see in chapters 2 and 6 , which neglected entirely the issue of naming and classifying creatures seen through the microscope. This latter work was undertaken mostly by continental scholars.

What did the experimental report become in particular cases of the practices of the microscope? It floated between the democratic and the elitist methods of reporting, while certain scholars felt the obligation to complete their reporting with a descriptive theory of natural objects. Microscopists still had to manage experimental reports, but there first existed another emerging relation in terms of language which was developing —through the Latin natural history tradition— and secondly, the experimental report itself was in the process of transformation. Indeed, it would be misleading to believe that no changes affected the experimental report after it was established in Europe in the second half of the seventeenth- century. Since this new form of authority was now approved by academies, scholars did not have a problem dealing with this form of authority any more. The narrative report of experiment, marked by circumstanciated details, prolixity, the use of the pronoun I, modesty, became, in the eighteenth-century, the place of transformation. I would characterise it as such: economy of words

150 s&S 1985, 25. - 57 - was the tacit rule followed by experimenters and observers, due to the increasing amount of data they focused on and ave to the new procedures they had adopted in order to face this increase. As early as 1687, Fontenelle sensed and summarised this emerging trend, when, in the midst of the querelle des anciens et des modernes', he wrote: “I thought that the quickest way was to consult on this matter the Physics, which holds the secret to summarise many disputes which rhetoric makes infinite’’.^^i

Experimenting in series, i.e. the multiplication and variety of experiments by the same experimenter, and condensing its narrative before presenting results in their entirety to the public, notably for replication, was among the elements that build the new identity of natural sciences of the 1740s.

If the experimental report was improved, observations with non standardised microscopes were also the subject of literary practices. The absence of standardisation was indeed a major constraint which placed scholars before a choice between two styles of communication. On the one hand was the possibility of fully opening up to others their method in order to encourage a precise and complete repetition of the original procedure by other scholars. On the other hand, scholars could conceal the means and procedures they had employed for the production of a particular result. Speaking of the means here refers to the narrative and analytical description of the procedures and objects whichallowed for repetition, including a description and the use of tools and microscopes themselves. In this respect, the practices of the microscope raised, in an acute way, the fundamental issue of the

151 Fontenelle 1994[1688], 34. - 58 - social construction of science. I call the first instance, use of the “democratic microscope”, where a scholar includes himself, through his narrative. The text being, in some ways, transparent, its construction aims at analytically recreating the smallest detail concerning observations and procedure. The second situation, in which the text operates as an opaque reference to a experiment and discovery, and does not provide the analytical means to reproduce the observation, I shall call use of the “elitist microscope”.

There is a second aspect to the issue of the social microscope. Looking through a classical microscope is equivalent to looking at an object which no one can see at the same moment in time and in the same way. A proof of the importance of communication was the fortune of the solar microscope in Germany in the second part of the eighteenth century. This microscope, which enabled the depiction of an image on a wall, was marketed in the early 1740s, and opened up a new social space for the discussion of images. Still the use of the classical microscope was, in some ways, entirely antisocial. To this major difficulty of partial communication due to the elimination of another person’s experiment, one can add the specificity of the spectacle observed. The shapes and motion observed were incommensurable with the perceptive and visual reality of everyday life. Being an antisocial instrument, separating the observer from others’ perceptual experience, the problem was always that to socialise this instrument, which, in two words, forced the scholar to adopt a strategy of communication in order to fill the gap opened up by the antisocial microscope. Scholars were forced thus, on one hand, to adapt the narrative report to the particular case of their practices of the instrument. They needed - 59 - always to account for the reproducibility of their observations as a major factor in their work. On the other hand, before “spectacle”, scholars constructed an object to be more and more microscopical, but it also had to become a shared object in order to exist in the scientific realm. The issue of this cognitive constraint was knowing which were the smallest of the knowable objects available, describing and classifying them. The issue of the

“social microscope” was entirely different, and lay, for every scholar, in finding the method by which other scholars could see and repeat what they had seen and made, thus choosing the democratic or the elitist microscope. Even more, the particular asocial relationship of the scholar with the instrument lead progressively to the understanding that there was a place for a descriptive theory of the natural objects itself, carried out in the tradition of Latin natural history. Other issues opened or renewed by microscopical observation, such as generation, regeneration, causes of illness, appear more as superstructures in comparison to the infrastructure represented by the construction of the microscopical object and by the social constitution of the “microscopical report”. Still these issues sometimes played a major role when they met with unanimous success through reproducibility. Trembley’s work symbolises this success. As it will progressively emerge, most eighteenth-century scholars contributed to the shaping of these last categories while working on generation and other topics. The modern categories of using the microscope —social construction of the procedures, and of the object-- were elaborated during the eighteenth-century. C h a p t e r 2

THE S t u d y o f A n i m a l c u l e s a t t h e T u r n

OF THE E i g h t e e n t h -C e n t u r y

Among the main historians of the French academic context of the Ancien Régime, it is Jacques Roger and Claire Salomon-Bay et who have mainly noticed the relative absence in the use of the microscope in the Académie Royale des sciences. Already in the older academy, of 1666 to 1699, “the microscope, contrary to the status it held in England and in Holland, remains an instrument rather personal and rare, not used systematically, and to the improvement of which some scholars are hoping. But, at first sight, it does not belong to the material of laboratory”.^ Jacques Roger observed that the microscope had had “a larger success in England than in France. At least the Academy keeps the same silence on the microscope and on Leeuwenhoek”.2 Such silence is the mark of a different scheme from that which was adopted by the British,

Dutch or Italians scholars, already present in the seventeenth- century. Considering the position of the topics of the older French academy’s registers (1666-1699), the microscope appears to come second to last.^ My thesis is that such an absence is more the outcome of the method used by historians than an expression of what is to be found in the sources. Furthermore, the fact that microscopy in early eighteenth-century France was thought of as a kind of very rare practice, could, on the contrary, aid in my

^ Salomon-Bayet 1978, 130. 2 Roger 1993, 183. ^ Salomon-Bayet 1978, 122. - 61 - demonstration. The microscope started to be a routine instrument in some parts of Italy and in the French context at the end of the seventeenth-century, and that is the reason why it was not perceived by historians. The attitude towards microscopes in France highlights well a different scheme in using and publicising the microscope, as compared to the English context. During the first decades of the eighteenth-century, Italian and French communities of scholars used the microscope with sufficient intellectual criticisms to advance within main programmes, and could then produce enough papers to seriously pursue certain topics. In this chapter I will show to what extent the microscope was used during the first thirty years of the eighteenth-century, focusing on the experiments against spontaneous generation of animalcules —works by Louis Joblot— and on an important programme of research related to the microscope conducted in late seventeenth-century Italy and developed at the Paris Academy.

2.1 Louis Joblot and disproving spontaneous generation of animalcules

Although in 1718 it gave rise to the first French treatise of microscopical research, the work of Louis Joblot (1645-1723), published in Paris with the title Descriptions et usages de plusieurs nouveaux microscopes, tant simples que composés was seldom discussed by historians. Historiography for Joblot is both poor and dated, especially if compared with historiography for Leeuwenhoek and Malpighi. In 1895, Konarski claimed a pre-eminent place for

Joblot in the history of protozoology, attesting that he had described many animalcules not previously observed, and had - 62 - discovered their contractile vacuole. Oudemans later showed that

Joblot also described the parasitic nymph of the pond M ussel.^

However, the biographer of Leeuwenhoek, Clifford Dobell strongly defended Leeuwenhoek’s primacy going as far as to consider that

Joblot had imitated him.^ Joblot’s book was ignored by Jacques Roger, who, in 1963, integrated him into the context of the growing quarrel of animalculism against ovism .^ According to

Roger, Joblot showed the spermatic animalcules^ to some Italian and French physicians. Most likely, Roger has found evidence for this but did not quote his sources, and actually such interest in spermatic animalcules does not stem at all from the 1718 treatise. Nowhere is there mention of the spermatic animalcules. Even the term “animalcule” is absent; Joblot always uses “animals”, “fishes” and sometimes “insects” to name the animalcules of infusionss.

Van der Pas in his biographical entry for Joblot, in DSB, and more recently Fournier, have driven attention to Joblot’s antispontaneist experiments.^ Descriptions et usages de plusieurs nouveaux microscopes sanctioned 38 years of microscopical research. Joblot’s interest in microscopic beings dates back to 1680,^ two years after the demonstration of the animalcules given before the

Académie des sciences by Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) and Nicolaas Hartsoeker (1656-1725) during the summer of 1678.9

^ Oudemans is cited by Van der Pas 1973, 110-111. 5 Dobell 1932, 372. 6 Roger 1993, 312-313. ^ Fournier 1991, 182-183; Van der Pas 1973, 110-111. 8 Joblot 1718 II, 2, 5. 9 Joblot 1718 II, 12-13. See Ruestow 1996, 25-26; Van der Pas 1973, 110; Cole 1926. The 30th of July 1678, Huygens demonstrated not only the animalcules of the pepper infusion, but also “a infinity of small animals similar to the small frogs when they form. They were in spermate canis' (PV AS 1675-1679, f° 185-185v). Both observations were reported in Huygens 1730, 608-609. On the quarrel that followed, see Roger 1993, 302-304. - 63 -

The observations and experiments on animalcules, which are reported in the book, were carried out mainly between 1710 and

1716, as shown by mention of the dates of the observations. The book, which was accepted in 1716 for printing by the Académie de sculpture et de peinture, of which Joblot had been professor of mathematics since 1699, is divided into two parts, first the construction of microscopes and second the study of microscopical beings, mainly animalcules. The second part of the book, which I will mainly deal with here, is organised around a central thematic —the refutation of spontaneous generation with experiments and arguments— to which many detailed descriptions and references to the plates of the animals of infusions served as a counterpoint, being good example of “microscopical reports”. Up to but excluding Konarski (1895) and three pages by Fournier, secondary literature does not supply a comprehensive account of Joblot’s book and experiments, and therefore I will analyse it in detail in the following pages before presenting its reception in the eighteenth-century.

Joblot’s journal of experiments guided the chronological structure of the second part of the book, in the middle of which the antispontaneist “hypothesis” is interpolated. He first reports experiments during the 1680s and 1710s on the life and death of eels of vinegar (pp. 2 - 12), followed by the animals appearing in the pepper infusion as demonstrated by Hartsoeker when in Paris in 1678 (12-16). Joblot then describes animals from various infusions as observed between July 1710 and Autumn 1711 (16- 39), that led to the crucial experiments on the infusion of hay carried out in October 1711 (39-40). From then on comes an interruption because Joblot stopped reporting directly to his - 64 - journal, and began synthesising previous empirical data for the repetition of which he gave much advice (40-43). The three following pages (44-46) disclose what he calls his hypothesis or conjecture on the generation of the small animals. The next forty pages continue with many descriptions of new animals from other infusions (46-85), which brings the journal to December 1718. Finishing with the microscopical reports, the book then comes to a close with a dissertation of ten pages long on optical perception through the microscope. The observations seem to have been interrupted between 1680 and 1710. But Joblot stated that he carried out his observations over 36 years (he wrote the passage in 1716). Two pieces of evidence show that he indeed continued the microscopical observations during that time. Guillaume Amontons, who brought him vinegar containing many eels for observation, died in 1705 and was active in the Académie des sciences between 1687 and 1705. Joblot also reports he made observations on the metamorphosis of a worm in 1692 and 1693.1 1

In which way were the animals described by Joblot? He certainly did not use routine methods as in the Renaissance treatises on botany, where authors filled up several entries in a fixed order: names, morphology, generation, costums, etc. Yet Joblot’s approach remains category-specific, though without using a rigid order adopted for the description of the animal. He is much more attracted by some “remarkable phenomena” presented by an animalcule, which leads him, on the contrary, to neglect reporting on some animalcules considered too common. Thus no systematic

10 Joblot 1718 II, 5. 1 1 Joblot 1718 I, 34-36. - 65 - approach was used. Nevertheless, categories are meaningful both for the information displayed about animalcules —that will promote Joblot as the leading discoverer of infusoria until 1786^2-

- and because these categories reveal things about the context to which he belonged. He indeed scrutinized morphological aspects of animalcules, always trying to put the right name to the right shape —a fully diagnostics scheme— and named them as oval, sock, kidney, slug, swan, turtle, etc. Still Joblot, as Leeuwenhoek, Huygens or, later Eichhorn or Colombo, did not use a systematical report, and paid no attention to names, despite what has been said by historians. Anatomical observations also became morphological analysis, when he identified eggs, heart and intestine in several animals. Reasoning still plays an important part in his work; for instance he deduced that many of the animals should have eyes since they were able to avoid each other when swimming. 14 Altogether, there are about one hundred experiments

—most of these vegetable infusions— conducted over six years, that yielded between thirty and forty species described and engraved {Fig. A), for which Joblot gave further details on their morphology, behaviour, and, less important, on their anatomo-physiology. Death of the infusion animals and the determination of their limits is a recurrent theme in the works. He noted for many animals the standard duration of their life, their morphological changes after deathly and started investigating the various causes of death, such as putting a drop of vinegar in an infusion or in oysters, a procedure also used to confirm the specificity of some new kinds

12 See chapter 6.4.3. 13 Stafford 1997, 233. See chapter 6. 14 Joblot 1718 II, 5, 33, 61, 70. 15 Joblot 1718 II, 34, 61. C Ù e / e a i c œu^ L t t l clttizs i r t ^ z u r i r ^LcPoucrd, . Ft.^.

%/" . .

Fig. A. The dotted line technique used by Joblot to show the various motions of the animalcules. Animal O and R: the gyratory and straight motions demand an iconographie technique similar to that used to represent the lines of force in magnets (Joblot 1718, pi. 2). - 67 - of eels, appearing in the infusion of carnation.Joblot determined that certain animals could only live in a range of various degrees of warmth and cold.i^ Similar techniques were used previously notably by Leeuwenhoek and Power. Attention was also paid to other dimensions related to the “circumstances of the observation”, like the smell of the infusions, and to more measurable variables such as time, motion, quantity of animalcules and temperature. Time is most likely the better heeded variable along the whole book. Joblot usually reported dates, hours and duration of the observations, life span of the various species, of the infusions, succession among time of various species in the same infusion, and the experimental time used in the procedures.

He recorded for instance having boiled an infusion over a quarter of an hour. Joblot frequently kept infusions for more than one year, observing the kinds of animals that succeeded in it.19 Equally strong attention was given to types of motion of the animals, usually well described and determined by means of idioms, sometimes even compared to the much richer show of dancers .20

One of the “behavioural motions” is of course mating, which Joblot acknowledged and engraved for many species. He illustrated —with a much more precise technique than Leeuwenhoek used for bacteria^i— through dotted lines starting from the centre of the animals (we now identify as bacteria) the various sorts of their motions {Fig. A pi. 2). He also detected the alternation of several

16 Joblot 1718 II, 6, 18, 22, 28-29. 1^ Joblot 1718 II, 19. See also ibid.II, 15-16. 1 8 See Wilson 1995, 86; Fournier 1991, 182. 19 Joblot 1718 II, 15-16, 20. 2 0 Joblot 1718 II, 35, 50, 56. 21 Dobell 1932, pi. 24 Leeuwenhoek illustrated it in a letter of the 17th September 1683. - 68 -

TL-6' Cette Vlanckc contient toutrcc cjid Scsp dcplus rcnvcu^qicabd d a n s n c u j' sortes duvjiLsicns >

^ 0

Fig. B. Animal 10: the whirlpool by which certain animalcules draw smaller animalcules into their mouth (Joblot 1718, pi. 6, fig. 10). - 69 - types of gyratory and straight motions in some animals he made engravings of, with an iconographie technique similar to that used to represent the lines of force in magnets {Fig. A, animal O, and

R ).22 A close technique of dotted circling allows the delineation of effects of the little whirlpool by which some “aquatic caterpillars”

(rotifers) draw smaller animalcules in their mouth {Fig. B, animal

10).23 The same methods was used later by German scholars in the second part of the century to represent the motion of the lips in some rotifers and Ciliograda, and the motion of animalcules {Fig. C).24 For Joblot, such an interest in the various aspects of motion and in its representation probably arose from his professional environment, as well as from his personal interests. He indeed invented the first artificial magnet, and was a professor of geometry at the Paris Academy of Arts. Yet motion is not only referred to for the charm of its “show”—animalcules move “like dancers”— because the kind of motion also served as a mark enabling one to distinguish among two species of eels.25

Joblot’s book represents a good example of the systematic rationalisation that was obtainable using the microscope in the beginning of the eighteenth-century. Such a rationalisation is evident in his interest in developing five topics: 1. explaining optics and the construction of microscopes; 2 . doing research on the microscope itself; 3. giving the measures of the focusing powers used in the observations; 4. explaining general procedures enabling one to use the microscope and to conserve animals alive; 5. supplying readers with good narrative descriptions of the

2 2 Joblot 1718 II, 13-14; see also ibid. II, 64-65. 2 3 Joblot 1718 II, 54-55. A is the mouth of the animal. 2 4 See also Fig. Z. 25 Joblot 1718 II, 29. - 70 -

r/t’j & ? yf ^ J T I H .

1 T. //. m . %f/z JJ /' 0-, 0 f :

0 <, ./■ ■ ■ ' « i • 0 o / a 0 o

J 7 . ( ÿ w . c. ■" o / / : o «

iê. rt

D 9 0 1

Fig. C The dotted lines and the whirlpool in other animalcules (top; Gleichen 1778, pi. 23; left; Rôsel von Rosenhoef 1755, 593, pi. 95, fig. 5). - 71 - observations allowing their reproduction. I leave the three first points for discussing in chapter three and develop the latter two here.

On several occasions, and contrary to Leeuwenhoek, Joblot indeed showed how to use the various kinds of microscopes and explained the many fine operations necessary for accurate observations: dipping the point of a feather in the infusion to take a drop, using a pipette, handling several kinds of tweezers, sticking the glasses of the slide with gum water, nailing insects to cardboard, blowing sand to stick it to the glass, fitting tadpoles and small lampreys within a glass tube, setting the glass tube to the microscope, using a filter for the infusion, etc.^^ Each of these procedures conforms to the general scheme of showing secrets of the microscope developed by Joblot, which was furthermore integrated to the ideology of utility and relative transparency defended in the academic milieu of Paris, including the creation of a Société des Arts in the 1720s.27 Many tools, like the pipette, the tweezers, the glass-tubes and the “animalcule conveyor”, are also shown in engravings {Fig. D).28 The value of these procedures is two-pronged, being on the one hand the way to make a successful observation, and on the other hand, on the level of communication, they fully belonged to the social environment.

Such a social factor appears to have been very important to Joblot, for he often reported having done an experiment in collaboration with an anonymous someone, discussed with someone else or

2 6 Joblot 1718 I, 8, 74-78; ibid. II, 43, 62-63. 2 2 On utility in the Académie des Sciences, see Daston & Park 1998, 353- 354, Licoppe 1996, 116-124; Briggs 1991, On Société des arts, see Hahn 1971, 109-110. 2 8 Joblot 1718 I, 7, 16, 58-60; ibid. II, 18-19, 60. - 72 -

-4P

I: h

!? i

Fig. D Joblot (1718) showed many tools in the engravings like tweezers (top: pi. 3, fig. S, T, Q), glass-tubes, and “ animalcule conveyor” (pi. 7, fig. PQ, pi. 10, fig. S, T, F, L). - 73 - demonstrated the “show” of the animals to “several persons”.

People who saw the eels of vinegars through the microscope at the turn of the century in Paris stopped eating salad, and Joblot strove to convince them the creatures were so small as to be innocuous.

As an honnête homme he was delighted to “answer the difficulties

[the spectator] would have honoured me to propose on what he was seeing [through the m icr o sc o p e ]” .29 Observations were sometimes made with “a person of the higher ranking”. In other cases, some friends also made the infusions by themselves, and Joblot notified the public of their results. On several occasions, he defended a kind of moral value he imputed to the show depicted through the screen of the microscope, as being far more estimable than those showed in comedy, opera, dancing and “fights of animals of that magnificent City”.3 0

Joblot, however, was also pragmatic and on repeated occasions invited people to repeat experiments in order to see the

“spectacle” and to be convinced of it by themselves. Nothing beats empiricism:

I feel obliged to warn that a written explanation, however long it is, will never supply full understanding, one must have to manage in using all the pieces of this microscope [universal], and to prepare the objects one can observe through it. In less than two hours of conversation with someone well acquainted with such an understanding, one will learn more than what he would get in eight days of reading (...) Which is the reason why I will say only necessary things as to avoid boring people.3 1

This is saying that the transmission of knowledge always has other resources than writings, this being a current belief in Joblot’s academic environment. Consistent with such a demand for conciseness, Joblot clearly outlined the way to make infusions.

2 9 Joblot 1718 11, 62. 3 0 Joblot 1718 11, 56. 3 1 Joblot 1718 1, 59. - 74 - with cold or hot water, and unfurled before the reader’s eyes a whole education of seeing: how to observe, what to observe and what means could be used to refine the conditions of vision. He disclosed, for instance, suitable means for avoiding opacity of the infusions, and demonstrated how to take advantage of the natural conditions, such as waiting for a drop to start drying in order to slow down the motion of an animal in order to observe it b e t t e r .

He equally gave many indications on the life span of small animals according to the seasons, and illustrated the means for conserving live animals by showing which were their normal living environments.All these details, written with conciseness, aim at allowing others to reproduce observations, and are important clues in accounting for the rationalisation of his way of managing the microscope.

It would not be misleading to say that the major goal of Joblot’s book is the experimental and argued rejection of spontaneous generation. Joblot committed himself as an antispontaneist from the first pages of his avertissement: “I added to my observations some conjectures on the production of the various species of small animals which appear in the infusions. I cannot belong to the party of those who ascribe it to putrefaction”.34 in order for his reader to fully understand the hypothesis, Joblot also took the precaution of progressively introducing, throughout the book, the experimental means suitable for the rejection of spontaneism.

Parts of the major experiment, paired with their theoretical meaning, appeared separately and were set at the beginning of the

3 2 Joblot 1718 II, 62-63. Similar procedures will be used by Trembley 1747, 636-637 and by Hill 1752a, 97. 3 3 Joblot 1718 I, 16, 78; ibid. II, 5. 3 4 Joblot 1718 I, avertissement. - 75 - book (second part): comparison of two jars, corked and uncorked, with cold vinegar to test the generation of eels,^5 procedure of heating the vinegar that results in killing the small eels it previously contained. In a sense, the various aspects were settled there one by one, to prepare for full understanding of the major experiment, a play enacted in the middle of the book and immediately followed by the interpretation. Hence Joblot attacked

spontaneous generation through “experiment and reasoning”, but also using a harmonious and somewhat aesthetic strategy of organising the information. Two experiments were thus carried out starting on 4th October 1711. He made two cold infusions of hay in separate jars, of which one was accurately corked, the other left open. Two days after he observed three sorts of animals in both infusions, and deduced an argument in line both with the hypothesis and the phenomena observed: “this experiment seems likely to persuade that these animals were produced by eggs that other animals had laid on this hay, and not produced by those which were spread in the a ir” .^6

The original experiments testing the spontaneous generation of animalcules must be ascribed to Christiaan Huygens. In 1679

Huygens carried out experiments with cold corked and uncorked infusions of pepper, of which he acknowledged that both infusions generated animalcules after ten days.^'^ Yet he considered that it disproved spontaneous generation, maintaining that “all these animals come from outside or (from eggs) of the animals that float in the air coming to these putrid waters”. A year later, in 1680, a

3 5 Joblot 1718 II, 5-9. 3 6 Joblot 1718 II, 39. 3 7 Fournier 1981, 205. 3 8 Quoted in Fournier 1981, 205. - 16 - similar experiment was performed by Leeuwenhoek with an infusion of hay —likely the same year as the experiment performed by Joblot on eels of vinegar^^— and published in 1683 in

Philosophical Transactions, while those by Huygens were issued posthumously, in his 1703 DioptricaA^ Leeuwenhoek’s publication was the base for Dobell and Fournier’s claims that Joblot imitated

Leeuwenhoek and Huygens, a point I will progressively disprove by showing that, on the contrary, Joblot’s two experiments, synthesised into an experimental system, brought a rationalised solution that crowned the antispontaneist line of works, started with the experiments by the physician Francesco Redi (1626- 1698).^! However, attention to the differences between Leeuwenhoek and Joblot’s styles of experimenting already allows shifting of the issue from imitation to rationalisation. Consequences of this experiment as underlined by Joblot show that the two frameworks are totally different. Leeuwenhoek indeed wanted to provide evidence against spontaneous generation of animalcules and imagined the very same experiment as Huygens.

But Leeuwenhoek did not at first succeed in his experiment, and he later started to engage himself in a personal campaign against spontaneous generation, without having strong empirical data in hand to uphold his position, which Ruestow interpreted as a claim for social recognition."^^ I dare say that Leeuwenhoek did not manage to grasp the precise theoretical limitations conveyed by the experiment he had carried out. In other words, Leeuwenhoek

3 9 Joblot 1718 II, 2. Fournier 1981, 204. Leeuwenhoek’s protocol was based on Redi’s experiment that compared two corked and uncorked vessels, see Bernardi 2000, 41-44; Ruestow 1996, 219; Wilson 1995, 199-203; Palm 1989, 156-158; Ruestow 1984, 235-236. Ruestow 1996, 219-221; Ruestow 1984, 244-248. Palm (1989, 157-158) has related Leeuwenhoek’s attitude to the use of analogy. - 77 - did not comprehend the meaning of his own experiment, and consequently could not satisfy in this respect his microscopical and related social acts with an empirical rationale. Quite on the contrary, Joblot perceived the hermeneutic limitations of his experiment; he captured the precise hypothesis that each of the possible experimental outcomes would enable one to maintain. His first experiment indeed could not test the spontaneous generation per se --it was never an experimentum crucis in that respect— but it could be a good test for the dissemination hypothesis versus the eggs-previously-laid hypothesis.

Thus even if Joblot did imitate Leeuwenhoek, at least the Frenchman went further and adapted a theoretical framework that fitted the experiment, which allowed him to rationalise such a microscopical setting. Moreover Joblot did not rest on his laurels and carried out what has been considered the first true experiment disproving spontaneous generation of animalcules.On the 13th

October 1711, a week after the previous experiment, Joblot boiled an infusion of hay for more than a quarter of an hour, which he then put into two identical jars. One was corked immediately and the other remained open. After a few days, he saw animals appearing only in the open jar, “and not even one in that which had been corked”. He kept it closed for a “considerable time”, then left it open, and “after a few days I saw insects, which made me understand that these animals were born from the eggs spread in the air. Indeed those that could have been in the hay had been

4 3 The eggs-previously-laid hypothesis had been already stated in the early Royal Society in 1662 (Wilson 1995, 198-199), and by Gassendi to explain the generation of worms in decayed infusion (Fazzari 1999, 105). 44 Van der Pas 1973, 111; Rostand 1943, 32. - 78 - totally destroyed by the boiling water”.^5 it is striking that Joblot actually did not say in the paragraph discussing the experiments that he had disproved spontaneous generation, as from the experiment he concluded that both outcomes —dissemination and eggs-previously-laid— could be valid. Small eggs were sometimes already laid on vegetables, but other eggs could also be spread in the air, the two possibilities being but two moments of the same process. In this respect an experimental system linked the two experiments to the same objective, strengthened by strong theoretical statements, far from being only a hypothesis supported by a dogmatic feeling.The disproving of spontaneous generation was then unified within a general interpretation that synthesised many of the experiments —another way of showing that Joblot did not copy Leeuwenhoek’s atheoretical work. Here is the general rationale:

In the ancient days, people used to think that every sort of insect and other smaller animals, came from corruption. But, since several famous Philosophers have made observations, carried out with much care and accuracy on this subject, we got over this error. They have proven, with a large number of experiments and through unquestionable reasoning, that every animal, of whatever sort, comes from eggs. How can we indeed understand that the deterioration and the decay of a body in so many smaller parts could ever put together the one with the others. That it could gather them as should be done to make up living bodies able to look for something to feed with, by walking, crawling and swimming, and even to produce their own kind, as done by the animals found in plants infusions? I guess that no reasonable man can ever imagine such a situation, however efforts may be used to overcome it.^^

Displaying the ovist theory was a strategy for discarding spontaneism against which four further empirical experimental rationale were developed by the author: 1. there is no time co occurrence of the decay and of the production of animalcules; 2 .

45 Joblot 1718 II, 40. 4 6 On this interpretation see Wilson 1995, 204. 4 7 Joblot 1718 II, 44. - 79 - the variety of species of animalcules in the same infusion does not

simultaneously and immediately appear; 3. there is nothing like proportionality between the amount of animalcules and the

expansion of d e c a y 4 . di feeding relationship of the animals to

specific vegetables explains their living and laying their eggs on the

plants. Some of these arguments had already been stated by Huygens. Attention should be paid to the fourth rationale that emphasised the privileged relationship between a plant and a sort of animal, for Joblot considered it to be only part of the whole explanation. He could say about a cold infusion of a mushroom:

“There are animals that deposit their eggs on vegetables, which confirms partly what was suggested in the hypothesis”.^9 Eventually the positive “hypothesis” —such is the polite term to depict a theory— was presented with the negative disproving of spontaneism and with a synthesis of some of the previous rationale, like time co-occurence, variety of the species, feeding and breeding aspects:

I will suppose a countless number of very small animals of various species fly or swim in the air close to the earth, which (stick) to the plants that suited them. They rest there, feed and give birth to their young, while others lay eggs in which new insects are enclosed. Lastly, these animals also drop young and eggs in the air they pass through (...) The same plant can be preferred by several animals, and then becomes the deposit of eggs and young from many species of insects. Whence it follows that the infusion of such a plant will be enough to facilitate the birth, and supply everything necessary to the development of all the various animals we will successively observe in it, during all the time that the infusion will last.^ ®

Huygens’ antispontaneist view was closely based on the relation between the species of animalcule produced and the sort of plant

4 8 Joblot 1718 II, 44-45. 4 9 Joblot 1718 II, 49, see also ibid. II, 45, and Joblot 1754, 20. Joblot 1718 II, 45-46. This quotation and the second rationale {ibid. II, 44-45) bring evidence against Fournier’s claim (1991, 180) that Joblot did not observe the succession of various animalcules provided by an infusion left open during several weeks. - 80 - infused,51 but Joblot inserted such reasoning into his hypothesis along with the previous rationale. With this argument —the same later adopted by many antispontaneist scholars— Joblot could explain every result obtained. Indeed, against every speculation such as “ovism” or “dissemination”,52 Joblot precisely synthesised both competing antispontaneist explanations and showed their rivalry to be a way out. Both were right, but in order to show it, an experimental system —strengthened with consequent reasoning- had to be dealt with. Principally, the or connecting the previous competing explanations of Huygens, Leeuwenhoek, Gassendi and others,53 was transformed into and. Some animalcules thus found food and means for subsistence, and laid eggs in rotten and non- rotten plants, on plants alive and dead, plants infused and not infused. Any infusion would accordingly let animalcules appear — and an evolving series of animalcules according to the changes happening in the infusion — coming from eggs both previously and actually laid in it. This is not speculation, for the two crucial experiments by Joblot well embodied his theory. The “Huygens” experiment of the corked cold infusion of hay had served precisely to show that there existed cases where the solution of the eggs- previously-laid was fully demonstrated, and the “Joblotian” experiment —heating two infusions of which one is corked— appropriately complemented the first experiment by proving that the eggs-actually-laid solution (dissemination) was just as much proved on the whole. Spontaneism was in both cases the loser.

5 1 Fournier 1981, 204. 5 2 Joblot never mentions in the entire book “ovism” nor “preformation’ or analogous words. 5 3 Fournier 1981, 204. See Fontenelle 1708a, 9. 81

2.2 Reception of Joblot’s work and the academic context

On top of the consideration that Joblot copied Leeuwenhoek or

Huygens’ experiments,historians did not acknowledge any reception of Joblot’s book and ideas during the eighteenth- century, and most ignore him. No evidence has been brought forward that the major microscopists of his time and of the following period —Trembley, Needham, Spallanzani, Hill, Müller— read or even had knowledge of the book. On the contrary I will defend here four ideas: 1. Joblot’s book received three distinct receptions during the century,^5 which put his book among the most influential microscopical works of the Enlightenment; 2. The first apparent absence of its reception is due to a good matching of his ideas with those defended in the Paris Académie des sciences, and such reception well illustrates the routine status of the microscope adopted by eighteenth-century scholars; 3. Contrary to previous experiments on spontaneous generation, Joblot’s experiments are the first to be presented within a rationalised experimental system. In such a way, Joblot did not imitate

Leeuwenhoek nor Huygens, but improved experimental protocols invented by Huygens and others; 4. Nevertheless, the absence of a framework that could give meaning to Joblot’s works forced the abandoning of such a topic and turned the attention of

“microscopists” towards more suitable objects, such as insects or seeds.

Fournier 1981, 206, Dobell 1932, 372. However, later Fournier (1991, 182-185) changed her mind about Joblot imitating Leeuwenhoek. ^ ^ I examine in this chapter the first reception of Joblot, the second and third will be discussed in chapters 3 and 6. - 82 -

The year after the publication of Description des nouveaux microscopes, Joblot’s book was showered with praise by the

Jesuit’s news Journal de Trévoux, the main bulwark of resistance that opposed, in particular, the Académie des sciences.^^ Joblot had already published at least two articles in this journal on new mirrors he had in v e n te d . ^7 The 28 page review of his book was laudatory towards the author as much as towards the subject. The author reported the discovery of the “yet unknown animals”, highlighted the marvels of nature, quoting the “9000 species known by Tournefort”, each of which would give different animalcules when put in infusion. The utility of the microscope was displayed by the author in every manner: “Botanists will find out about the structure of the tissue, internal and external of plants”. He then listed above all the various professional uses of the microscopes proposed by Joblot, for painters, florists, writing experts, mineralogists, instrument makers, chemists, jewellers, apothecaries, oculists, glass-makers, physicians, anatomists, surgeons, watchmakers, antiquarians and engravers.A whole utilitarian society was thus revealed through the microscope. But the most striking aspect was that the Jesuits followed point by point Joblot’s antispontaneist experiments and theoretical consequences. The anonymous writer pointed out several observations taken from the book against spontaneous generation, and reported as well the hypothesis almost word for word.^^ It is not to be excluded that the author of the review could have been Joblot himself, but there is no enough evidence in to support this.

5 6 Roger 1993, 181. 5 7 Joblot 1702; Joblot 1703. 5 8 An. 1719, 1406-1411. The list is inspired from that by Joblot 1718 I, in Avertissement. 5 9 An. 1719, 1421-1425. - 83 -

However, in accepting Joblot’s inquiry, the Jesuits received a thesis that had been challenged and rejected by two famous fathers of their order, Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680) and Filippo Bonanni

(1638-1725), the latter being a contemporary of Joblot. It does not appear that Joblot’s book was reviewed e l s e w h e r e . It is possible to explain this first weak reception by several factors, aside from the too easy appeal to the decline of microscopy. First

Joblot was not a fellow of the Académie des sciences which seems a suitable milieu for the acknowledgment of his work. Elected professor of mathematics (geometry and perspective) in 1699, he was academician of the French Royal Academy of Sculpture and Painting in which he gave several microscopical talks. His colleagues were Coypel (1628-1707), Félibien (1619-1695), and other painters, engravers, and architects. If stimulated on aesthetic subjects, which sometimes appear in his book, such an intellectual environment obviously did not provide the suitable context to receive Joblot’s observations, even if the Academy proposed among its lectures naturalistic subjects, and also trained miniature painters.Joblot equally demonstrated an interest in the microscope turned into a drawing m a c h in e .62 He actually does not seem to have used other official networks aside from own academy and the Jesuits. The latter rivalry with the Académie des sciences could possibly have made him enemies there. Indeed Joblot is quoted only once by Fontenelle in Histoire de Vacadémie, in the

1731 Eloge de Etienne-François Geoffroy, regarding the artificial

6 6 I did not found evidence of other reviews, in Journal des savants and in the French journals published in Amsterdam at that time. 61 If miniature painting was an obstacle to the microscopical iconography (Ruestow 1996, 68-77), however, eighteenth-century naturalists were best being engravers, like Lyonnet, or even miniature painter like Rosel von Rosenhoef. 62 Joblot 1718 1, 44-46. - 84 - magnets Joblot succeeded in making in 1701, and not his microscopical research.^ 3

Nevertheless Joblot also kept in touch with his circle of acquaintances, mostly the scholars of the old Académie (1666-

1699) with whom he carried out several of his microscopical observations. Academicians of his own generation —in 1718 Joblot was 73 years old— like Guillaume Amontons (1663-1705), Guillaume Homberg (1652-1715) and Jean Méry (1645-1721) are quoted as friends or collaborators. He also belonged to scientific circles, perhaps to the what was left of the Académie Bourdelot during the 1680s, and to the circle gathered around the Paris apothecary and French minister Mathieu François Geoffroy during the 1670s and 1680s.There he met anatomists and physicians such as Joseph-Guichard Duverney (1648-1730), Homberg and astronomers like Gian Domenico Cassini (1625-1712) and

Sébastien,gaining the attention of the company by showing his magnets. Perhaps Joblot’s interest in microscopes was also awakened by such discussions in circles. Microscopes were indeed a shared interest in this society, for Geoffroy and Homberg wrote respectively at the turn of the century a thesis on spermatic animalcules and papers on spiders observed thanks to the m i c r o s c o p e . 66 Duverney corresponded with Malpighi, Pitcairne,

Bidloo, Boerhaave, Ruysch, therefore with the most famous anatomists, microanatomists and physicians of the period 1660- 1730. Having entered into the Académie des sciences in 1676,

63 Fontenelle [1731]1764, 93. 6 4 Fontenelle [1731] 1764, 93. On the Académie Bourdelot, the rival academy to the emergent Académie Royale des Sciences see Gabbey 1984. 65 Fontenelle [1731J1764, 93. 6 6 Roger 1993, 310. See Homberg 1708, Geoffroy 1704. - 85 -

Duverney championed collection and anatomising, was greatly interested in insects,and even conserved Swammerdam’s manuscript of Biblia naturae, which he wanted to publish, before he sold it to Boerhaave in 1727. Homberg, an MD educated by

Guericke, Boyle and Graaf, was accustomed to building microscopes and other instruments, thus rising in the esteem of the academy.when in Rome, around 1685 he invented a tripod support for the microscope, that allowed focussing adjustement, quickly used by the instrument maker Campani.69 According to the

Cartesian physicist Régis, Homberg had also written, prior to 1690, an unpublished treatise on spermatic animalcules. 7 0

Through this range of scholars, and through other scholars interested in the microscope such as Father Nicholas Malebranche, Louis Carré (1663-1711), Philippe de la Hire (1640-1718) and Nicolas de Malézieu (1650-1727), the Royal Academy could follow Joblot’s works. La Hire for instance inserted, in his 1694 Traité des epicycloïdes, a leaflet from the instrument maker Michael

Butterfield regarding the use of the microscope, while Carré and

Malézieu reported microscopical experiments and observations to the academy in 1707 and 1718. Certainly no work by Joblot could be published in the Mémoires de VAcadémie des sciences, for, according to the academic rules, only regular members were allowed to publish their texts in the M é m o i r e s But non-members of the inner circle could see their work reported by an

6 7 Hahn 1971, 87. Letter from Boerhaave to Sherard of the 1st August 1727 (Lindeboom 1962, 153-154). 6 8 Roger 1993, 310; Salomon-Bayet 1978, 130. The source is Fontenelle 1741, 89. 69 Bedini 1963, 399-400, 421. 7 0 Roger 1993, 87. 7 1 Hahn 1971, 19-20. - 86 - academician, and hopefully abstracted by Fontenelle in the annual report Histoire de VAcadémie.

The scientific culture of the early eighteenth-century Paris

Académie des sciences was characterised by some axes such as the utility of the research programme, that gave priority to technological and economical questions, as well as to the unveiling of professional secrets.Christian Licoppe has highlighted the rupture in the practices of reproducibility for physical and technical evidence in the new Academy.On the other hand, “Life sciences”, human, animal anatomy and physiology were also the focus of the academy, with anatomists such as Méry, Duverney, Homberg, Littré and Dionis, a trend analysed by Roger and

Salom on-B ayet.'^4 But another research programme has yet been ignored by historians. The germ theory to which Joblot’s experimental system related, was, at least for the Académie Royale des Sciences, the accepted flexible system, defended as such by many scholars since the rebirth of the academy in 1700. During the first forty years of the century the importance of the germ theory was well settled for animal and vegetable kingdoms, supported by the main anatomists, botanists, and most of all, by the secretary Fontenelle (1657-1757).'75 Although flexible, it was conceived as a programme, and was furthermore established with the victory of the anatomist Alexis Littré (1658-1725) over Jean

Méry on the existence of the egg in humans in 1702. Concerning animals and humans, the period 1700-1745 saw the establishment

Licoppe 1996, 116-24, Briggs 1991. On the procedure of the patent in France see Hahn 1971, 66-67. ^ 5 Licoppe 1996, 88-89ff. Roger 1993, 250; Salomon-Bayet 1978, 123ff. ^ ^ The germ theory was favourably commented by Fontenelle (1704, 52; 1708a, 9; 1708b, 49-50, 1714b, 41-42). - 87 - of the doctrine of the germ against animalculism.^^ So general was the claim that the botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656- 1708) did not hesitate in identifying germs in the mineral kingdom as the regular method of reproduction! How indeed to account for the “corne d’ammon”, a fossil shaped as a volute?^^ He stated, in

1702, that the

germ of the stones and of the metals is a sort of powder that comes perhaps out of stones and metals during the time they still are alive, which is to say that they grow (..)• One can compare the dust we call the germs of the stones to the seeds of several plants; the seeds of the ferns, of the maidenhair fern, of the mosses, of the truffles and similar plants can only be discovered with the microscope.^ ^

The early years of the century saw the botanist Charles Plumier

(1646-1706) publishing the description of the seeds of the American fern, while Antonio Vallisneri (1661-1730) in Padua discovered the seeds of the Lenticula palustrisJ^ Nevertheless, the prestige of the famous botanist —Tournefort was director of the K ing’s Jardin des plantes— was probably sufficiently important to suppress criticisms towards the “vegetating stones”. But after

Tournefort’s death in 1708, research on the seeds of the stones was quickly contested. In Eloge de Tournefort, Fontenelle excused the man who “transformed everything into what he liked the most”,80 hence taking minerals for plants. Already in 1709,

Reaumur, then a young man of 26, took the example of the formation of shells, aquatic and terrestrial, to indirectly confirm that no germs were present. Instead through both simple vision and a microscope, he detected an infinite number of small ducts in

7 6 Roger 1993, 364-384. 7 7 Tournefort 1704, 223. 7 8 Tournefort 1704, 233. 7 9 Plumier 1705, 2-3, 123, 143, see plates 2, 18, 19, 25, 142. Vallisneri 1704, 250-251. 8 0 Fontenelle OD, 1731, 4, 160. - 88 - the shell,81 showing its growth to be made by “intussusception”, by adding small particles to each hole of the “riddle”. Physicians and botanists such as Claude-Joseph Geoffroy (1685-1752), the brother of the chemist who had built the chemical tables of affinity, and Sébastien Vaillant (1669-1722) fed the criticisms, and

Reaumur questioned Tournefort’s idea even more seriously when carrying out experiments on the formation of the stones in 1721.8 2

Later, in his works arguing for a distinction between two kinds of formation, crystallisation for stones and “organic mechanism” for plants and animals, Louis Bourguet noticed that the germs of

Tournefort had soon vanished.83 But the other part of the research programme on the seeds of cryptogam promoted by Tournefort already in 169284 —following the impulse of the Italian scholars— met with many echoes in the Academy and fitted well into the general scheme of ovism, debated by nearly everyone in Europe at the same time. In the Academy, Fontenelle had strengthened the research of the germs through its link to the microscope: “perhaps we ask where are the seeds of the stones, but would we have ever discovered these of the mushrooms and of the fern without the m icroscope?”.85 Tournefort himself was enough of a microscopist to show in 1705, after Hooke, that “the microscope shows that the mold is but a flower b e d ” .8 6

8 1 Reaumur 1711, 370. 8 2 Reaumur 1723, 258. 8 3 Bourguet 1729, 78-80. 8 4 In a paper read before the Academy at the end of May 1692, concerning an “extraordinary mushroom”, Tournefort ( 1730, 121-124) considered that mushrooms should also have seeds and launched the programme. 8 5 Fontenelle 1704, 52. 8 6 Tournefort 1706, 336. - 89 -

Contrary to the claim by the historians of microscopy that the

“triumph” of the preformationist theory “depended less on the

quality of observational evidence for it, which was ambiguous and

fragmentary, than on metaphysical considerations about order and

agency”,87 many authors followed Tournefort’s empirical research

programme by applying the research of the seeds and of other

germs to many orders of cryptogam. Plumier, a disciple of

Tournefort, had displayed his discovery of the seeds of fern in

1705. Between 1711 and 1713, in the Academy, five papers were

consecrated to microscopical research carried out after Tournefort’s death by three scholars, C.-J. Geoffroy, Jean Marchant (1650-1738), and Reaumur (1683-1757) on the seeds of

the truffles, mushrooms, maple-tree, fucus, and lic h e n .88 in 1711

Reaumur assessed the state of the research and remarked that

many seeds, especially from fungi and lichen were still unknow n.8 9

The same year, he discovered the seeds of fucus, while Marchant was working on the generation of the lichen. Reaumur’s botanical

activity did not stop there. In 1722 he thought, but with some

doubts, that he had discovered the seed of nostocs.^^ From 1728

on a new actor was on the scene, Henri-Louis Duhamel du

Monceau (1700-1782), with a study of the seeds of cryptogam such as truffles in 1728.91 He also applied the programme to the

identification of the causes of the plant’s illnesses and to their

multiplication through grafting. In particular, an outcome of

Tournefort’s programme was the demand in 1728 by Bernard de

8 7 Wilson 1995, 103. 8 8 Geoffroy 1714, 26-31; Marchant 1714, 103-105; Reaumur 1714b, 293-294; Reaumur 1714c, 32-34; Marchant 1716, 233. 8 9 Reaumur 1714b, 282. 9 0 Reaumur 1724, 124-125. 9 1 Duhamel 1730a, 107. - 90 -

Jussieu (1686-1758) to establish a separate class for the fungi. During the same period, Jussieu also observed seeds of fungi and lichens, while Reaumur identified marks in stones and plaster to be lichen.92 Pre-existence and transmission of the species through the

germ was thus designated as a research programme involving the

work of many scholars of the Academy. Vegetable and animal

germs were conceived as two facets manifesting the same process,

and ex ovo omnia a programme that Fontenelle put into general use in 1707 when he reported on a paper by Tournefort on the

generation of mushrooms:

If to this speculation on the invisible germs we add that of the invisible eggs of the insects, which must be quite similar, the earth will be filled with an inconceivably endless number of vegetables and animals already completely formed and shaped in miniature, which only wait to appear in large through some favourable accident.9 3

Along with botany, the microscope was applied to germs other than those of animals. Are not “The seeds of plants and the eggs of the animals (...) the same thing under different names”? wrote Fontenelle, already in 1702.94

Most of these works required microscopes and lenses as routine tools of investigation. Though advertisement seems to have been

avoided, these studies were undertaken within the framework of a research programme —germ theory— and allowed the start or the

establishment of new naturalistic fields of research. Notably the

studies on regeneration already begun by Claude Perrault (1613- 1688), and carried on by Reaumur in 1712, on hermaphroditism by La Hire, Amontons, C.-J. Geoffroy, Méry, Reaumur, on

9 2 Duhamel 1730a, 107; Duhamel 1730b; Jussieu 1730, 379; Reaumur 1731, 188. 9 3 Fontenelle 1708b, 49-50. 9 4 Fontenelle 1704, 52. - 91 - parasitism by Tournefort, Reaumur, Geoffroy, Duhamel, Deslandes, were all microscopical subjects launched in the seventeenth- century and to which the French academicians sometimes brought significant contributions; all this prepared for the 1740s boom in natural experimental research. These research programmes presupposed interaction of an important number of scholars who employed the microscope, and were able to bring criticisms to the meetings of the Académie. We can measure the importance of the

Paris academic community in comparison to the Royal Society during the same period. After 1700, in London there are few scholars still using the microscope. In the Royal Society, Leeuwenhoek himself supplied more than half of the papers in the Philosophical Transactions.^^ But Leeuwenhoek became unreachable and isolated after 1703 because of the lack of scholars able to repeat and consequently understand his observations. The anonymous C.H. in 1703 claimed Leeuwenhoek to be a reliable observer and repeated some of his observations with a Wilson microscope, while the same year the anonymous C. was one of the last British scholars to discuss Leeuwenhoek’s observation, actually to enter into a controversy of priority with h i m . 96 Two letters from Leeuwenhoek to James Jurin were eventually published in the Philosophical Transactions in 1723, on the diameter of blood g lo b u le s . 97 Contrary to this situation, the

French academic community represented a critical mass, that is sufficient scholars to launch and keep a dynamic of the production of knowledge that filled the different branches of the experimental natural history programme. The following table A clearly shows, by

9 5 See Fournier 1991, 17. 9 6 C.H. 1703, 1358; C. 1703, 1494. 9 7 Leeuwenhoek 1723a, Leeuwenhoek 1723b. See Rusnock 1996, 121-122. - 92 - comparison with the Royal Society, that the critical mass existed in

F rance.

Table A. Frequency of microscopical papers per author in Phil. Trans, and M.AdS 1700-173Q98 Phil. Trans. Mémoires AdS Texts N Authors Texts N Authors 66 1 Leeuwenhoek 22 1 Reaumur 16 1 Fontenelle 5 1 C.-J. Geoffroy 4 2 La Hire, Marchant 3 2 Derham, Jurin 3 3 Carré, Duhamel, Helvétius 2 5 Morland, Breyn 2 8 Tournefort, Reneaume, Cowper, Sloane, Littré, Guinée, Jussieu, Bradley, Deslandes, Poupart, 1 28 1 19 110 36 95 35

The number of authors who published papers is similar in both academies, though there are more papers in the Philosophical Transactions. There are 35 authors of 95 papers in M.AdS and 36 authors of 110 papers in FT. But the important difference relates to the integration of the works done within a scientific community. Of the 110 papers, Leeuwenhoek signed more than half (66). This clearly shows that the critical mass was attained in the Paris Academy, with two aspects: 1. there are 16 scholars writing more than one paper, and 2. there is no real gap between the leader

(Reaumur) and the base, but a relatively good continuity. The situation is exactly inverted in the Royal Society. The base is weak, while the summit is too strong, and there is a huge discontinuity between Leeuwenhoek and the base. Moreover Leeuwenhoek did not live in London, which greatly restricted his participation in the social dynamics of the Society; contrary to what happened in Paris.

^ ^ I have not mentioned the names of scholars who wrote only one paper. - 93 -

Nevertheless one should not conclude that microscopy was not represented in the Philosophical Transactions. Notably the research by James Jurin (1684-1750) marked a new approach to the microscopical analysis of b lo o d .99 Still the comparison established very clearly the presence of a skilled community in Paris,

During the first decades of the century, the French community followed various topics, essentially vegetable physiology, and produced a consistent number of papers. Between 1700 and 1730, there are peaks and slumps for each academy. There is a period of more intense production, between 1710 and 1720, with 4-5 papers on microscopy per year. This period of development coincides quite nicely with the decline of microscopy in the Philosophical Transactions, as shown by the following chart 1 of the respective frequencies of papers on microscopy published in the French Academy as compared to the publications by the Royal Society.

Chart. 1. Frequency of microscopical papers in Mémoires AdS and in Phil. Trans., per five years.

40 MAdS 35 -- PT 30 -- 25 -- 20

10 -- 5 --

1700- 1705- 1710 1715 1720- 1725- 1705 1710 1715 1720 1725 1730

Important differences stem from the above chart: first the decline of microscopy appears to be a phenomenon only visible in

9 9 On Jurin’s research, see Rusnock 1996, 14-17, 35-37. - 94 - the Philosophical Transactions, and this occurred around 1700- 1720, and not between 1690 and 1710400 Between 1700 and

1715-1720, the number of papers dramatically falls, and reaches just 10% of the production of the previous century. The British peak for the years 1720-1725 relates to Leeuwenhoek’s last publications which account for two thirds. Second, a striking result is the entirely independent rhythm of microscopical publication between 1700 and 1730 of the two academies. The slopes of both curves are indeed mainly symmetrical, so that the peak reached in

1710-1715 by the French academy corresponds to a slump in

England, while the contrary is true for the 1720-1725 period. From this chart it clearly appears that the Philosophical Transactions did not supply a model for the French Academy, whose development of microscopical studies was autonomous, due to the follow-up of its own programme.

To revert to Joblot, the French peak in the research in 1710- 1715 coincides moreover with his major research period. It is thus probably in respect to the Paris Académie des sciences that Joblot’s work could acquire part of its meaning. Joblot most probably followed the research by the academicians for he was at least well aware of Tournefort’s research programme, since he wrote: “We have already discovered the seeds of many plants, which we were convinced, without any reason, not to have such, like these of the ferns, of the mosses, of the truffles”.^

Tournefort 1702 words were reproduced here almost verbatim, and by 1718, seeds of fern, lichen, truffles had actually been

100 1690-1710 are the dates given by Mazzolini (1997, 219) for “various parts of Europe”, and from the 1680s by Fournier 1991, 17. 101 Joblot 1718 I, 45. - 95 - claimed to have been discovered by Tournefort, Plumier, Reaumur,

C.-J. Geoffroy and Marchant. But on the other hand, the demonstration by Joblot did not bring particularly new results but rather mainly the one expected by the Academy. Indeed, his discovery fitted all too well the academy programme to be considered revolutionary. It was clearly conceived as an expected outcome, especially because the spontaneous generation belonged to the repudiated ghosts that the microscope helped to chase away:

The moderns, either through the microscope, or by a certain accuracy in their research, which characterises them as well as the microscope, discovered the seeds of many plants we always believed them not to have. ^ ® 2

Thus Joblot, like Reaumur or C.-J. Geoffroy, mainly applied and generalised to new objects a theory they sometimes acknowledged to have been ascertained by Francesco Redi and Marcello Malpighi.

There are two other relatively indirect influences that led to Joblot’s experiment acquiring its meaning in the French academic context: one from Holland, the other from Italy. The Dutch influenced the shape of the main experiments on infusion through microscopes, while the Italian influence moulded the ovist cryptogamie programme later focused on in the Académie des sciences. The influence of the Italian programme came directly to the Paris Academy through a series of correspondences with

Fontenelle, Duverney, Bourdelot and other scholars. In the period

1700-1730, Malpighi, Redi and their pupils (Vallisneri, Lancisi (1654-1720), Lorenzini, Marsigli (1658-1730)) were quoted by the main scholars who were using the microscope in the Academy:

Fontenelle 1708b, 46, - 96 -

Fontenelle, Reaumur, C.-J. Geoffroy, Morand, Duhamel, Helvetius,

M aupertuis.103 Joblot implicitly referred to Redi when speaking of philosophers that had disproved spontaneous generation. The

French anatomical programme and the interest for microscopes since the end of the seventeenth-century allowed ovism to install itself as a “flexible paradigm” within the academy. Indeed the ovist quarrel took place in Italy in the last two decades of the seventeenth-century, over the precise point of the seeds of mushrooms among other cryptogam. The first images of

Microfungi were engraved in Hooke’s Micrographia, and were followed by Malpighi who depicted microscopic fungi on putrescent substances in a plate of Anatome plantarum (1679). Leeuwenhoek observed as well some Mucor in 1680, notably some beer yeast identified now as Saccharomyces cerevisiaeA^^ But the question of the origin of microscopic and cryptogamie plants was first posed in Italy. In the 1680s Bonanni had presented arguments and observations defending an Aristotelian version of spontaneous generation of many species, especially m ollusk.i^s Tbe ideas expressed in Anatome plantarum against spontaneous generation of fungi —a topical issue for Malpighi— were challenged by Giovan

Battista Trionfetti (1656-?) professor of botany at the University La

Sapienza in Rome. In a pamphlet published in 1685 the latter even turned Malpighi’s argument against him, and managed to claim that the generation of fungi, and Titimale came from putrefied

103 Geoffroy 1709, 102; Fontenelle 1711, 44; Fontenelle 1712b, 72, 76; Marchant 1714, 105-106; Reaumur 1714b, 283-284; Reaumur 1717b, 344; Helvetius 1719; Geoffroy 1726, 320-321; Reaumur 1729, 269-273; Reaumur 1730b, 316; Duhamel 1730b, 342; Morand 1730, 406; Duhamel 1731/1729, 356; Reaumur 1732, 57; Duhamel 1732, 324; Maupertuis 1733; 226-227. ^ 04 Ainsworth 1976, 58-60. 105 Bonanni 1681, 38, 41-48. - 97 -

m a t t e r . 1 0 6 Malpighi quickly organised “empirical resistance” in

October 1685 by sharing the experimental work between his friends Bellini, Redi, and Cestoni. They particularly had to test

generation in Euphorbia as Trionfetti had stated it to be

engendered without seeds. The pharmacist Diacinto Cestoni (1637-

1718) —who also described the acarus of the scab with Bonomo in

1687107— was given the responsibility of finding the seeds of marine algae, though he also worked on the seeds of f u n g i.1 08

Between 1685 and 1689, Malpighi tackled the generation of fungi but did not manage to identify the seeds. Important successes were nevertheless obtained from this research programme, even if it took seven years for Cestoni to bring to light in 1692 his discovery of the seed of an alga.i09 However, the year before, Observationes circa viventes was published by Bonanni, who attacked Malpighi and the circle of Galilean scholars with new experiments that aimed at showing putrefaction to be the main cause for the generation of algae and insects.im The ultimate answer to this came after Malpighi’s death in 1694, through the works of his pupil Antonio Vallisneri. The publication in 1696 of Vallisneri’s Dialogues on the curious origin of many insects, contains a dialogue between Pliny and Malpighi that confirmed that the

theories of the former —thus those of Bonanni— did not

correspond to empirical data. As a commentary, Vallisneri could

say that eggs of the animals and seeds of plants were but the same

106 Trionfetti 1685, 24-29. 107 See Ghesquier 1999, 28-29. 108 Fazzari 1999, 117-119. 109 Fazzari 1999, 122. Cestoni's discovery of the flowering and method of reproduction of Poseidonia Oceanica, was communicated to Redi in a letter of the 30th of July 1692 (Baglioni 1940, 57-60), and published by Vallisneri under Cestoni's name in 1697 {ibid., 61-66; Cestoni 1697, 121). 110 Bonanni 1691, 125 argued that Lenticula palustris was generated ex putri, like flee {ibid., 305). - 98 -

thing, a statement repeated by Tournefort and Fontenelle, that

came to be the basis for the new programme of experiments in the Académie des sciences. The discovery of the method of generation of Lenticula palustris by Vallisneri in 1704 added a new case to the

framework of the germ theory that perhaps led to the conversion

to ovism of the most important antispontaneist authors. The

refutation of spontaneous generation caused the relinquishment of

the whole old system of classification, a system that made the

distinction between animals as being either perfect or imperfect, and of which only the former generated through eggs and seeds. The only genera whose generation remained a headache for the

Italian naturalists and physicians were fungi, of whom the best

microscopists, such as Malpighi, Cestoni, Redi, Bellini, Marsigli, Landi, Lancisi, and Vallisneri failed to discover the way they reproduced, and were obliged to acknowledge a half-way solution.m Fungi were considered up to the publication by Micheli in 1729 not to be generated from putrefaction nor eggs, but

coming from the fermentation of the lymph of the plants and from an abnormal growth of their fiber.^i^

Contrary to the criticisms of Malpighi’s anatomical programme made by the Bolognese physicians Paolo Mini (1642-1693) and

Giovanni Girolamo Sbaraglia (1641-1710) that discredited the

Fazzari 1999, 127. Marsigli sent in 1714 to Lancisi Dissertatio de generatione fungorum where he acknowledged the fungi to come from the earth and from wood (Marsigli 1714, 7-8, 40). Lancisi arrived at rather the same conclusion than Marsigli, stating that, with a few exceptions, the seeds did not account for the generation of fungi (Lancisi [1714], iv-v). Eventually, in his Nova plantarum genera Pietrantonio Micheli’s (1729, 156-157) discovered a way of generation of fungi in the agaric in 1718 (Ainsworth 1976, 50-51, 66-69). Vallisneri 1733 III, 406, and Landi 1726. See also Letter from Vallisneri to Marsigli of the 20th February 1705 (Generali 1991 I, 301). - 99 - microscope, a major stake of the “cryptogamie quarrel” was not the microscope, but instead the status of experimental method, on which scholars strongly diverged. The legitimacy of experimental method for providing understanding of the nature of spontaneous generation was raised by Bonanni in 1691, an issue well grasped by

Malpighi who “did gather the true danger of [Bonanni’s] Observationes. They implicitly nullified the idea that experimenting could be of any help in deciding between the two theories”. T h i s strengthened a strategy beforehand adopted by Bonanni, who asked to what extent could one give credence to the “narrated observations” of his opponents, such as those by Martin Lister

(1638-1711) on the generation of mollusk, while he accepted other reports comforting his opinion.11^ The MD and disciple of Malpighi Giorgio Baglivi (1668-1707) joined the antispontaneists in 1698 with adding his microscopical observations of the eggs of the spider Tarantula, and of the eggs of oysters.Further debates carried on in the Venice journal Giornale del letterati dTtalia by other scholars such as Antonio Conti (1677-1749) and the physician Francesco Maria Nigrisoli (1648-1727) between 1712 and 1717, still addressed similar q u e s t i o n s . 1 j f experiments were challenged as a methodological framework, the microscope was not attacked in these controversies, being considered by both parties as a routine tool for undertaking inquiries. Bonanni’s

113 Cavazza 1997, 131-134, 139-140; Wilson 1995, 232-235. 11^ Fazzari 1999, 124. 11^ Bonanni 1681, 41, 45, 47. 116 Baglivi 1704, 550-552. 11^ Nigrisoli (1712, 227-249) drew the existence of seeds in cryptogam through a metaphysical and preformationist theory of “seminal light”. Antonio Conti in his 1716 review of Nigrisoli’s book asked for experiments, not to draw conjectures without empirical basis (see Fazzari 1999, 127; Boaretti 1990, 107-108; Bernardi 1986, 222-228). - 100 - microscopes were indeed among the best available in Italy at the end of the seventeenth-century.^i^

Concerning the Dutch influence, it is time to tackle the issue of the originality of Joblot, and synthesise the above-mentioned hints regarding this issue. Clifford Dobell considered time ago that “in

Joblot’s writings there is no direct reference to Leeuwenhoek’s discoveries, but much internal evidence of im itation”. ^ 19 More recently, Marian Fournier deemed Joblot’s research to have followed the same general pattern as that of the Dutch and British investigators of animalcules, Leeuwenhoek, Hartsoeker, Huygens and Harris, “a pattern composed of surveying several kinds of infusions, noting the various kinds of animalcula that succeed each other in time, estimating the numbers of various kinds, investigating the effect of cold and heat and the effect of isolating the infusion from the a i r ” . 120 Much of my previous rationale nevertheless shows that Joblot was not influenced by Leeuwenhoek, but was a lot more in line with Hartsoeker and Huygens. Still it displayed something new. Joblot acknowledged having attended some of the lectures given by the former in Paris during the summer of 1678. Huygens was actually the tutor there, and Hartsoeker was the pupil, so that almost unavoidably, Joblot heard of and perhaps knew Huygens. Second, there are some similarities in both terminology and experiments showing that Joblot is closer to Huygens and Hartsoeker, who wrote in French, than Leeuwenhoek. For instance Joblot used the same term as

Huygens in 1678 to qualify the animalcule: “a small drop of water

Fazzari 1999, 118. 119 Dobell 1932, 372. 120 Fournier 1981, 206. - 101 -

(...) seems like a large pond in which one can see an endless number of fishes s w i m m i n g ” . Pepper infusions were experiments

Joblot repeated and analysed in other terms, such as looking for feeding and motion. Third, both experiments on cold, boiled, corked and uncorked infusions were first carried out by Huygens.

As early as December 1678, Huygens experimented on boiled and frozen uncorked infusions in which he could see the devastating effect of warmth and cold on the animalcule, but he did not deduce from the experiment anything regarding spontaneous generation. He only maintained, in 1679, his antispontaneist view on the basis of cold corked infusions that produced animals. Leeuwenhoek did rather the same during the 1680s. Joblot gave a new interpretation to all these experiments, and actually performed the decisive experiment for the first time. Most probably the influence of Huygens on Joblot should be acknowledged for Huygens published in 1703 Latin Dioptrica, a discipline in which Joblot was well acquainted and on which he himself published some papers during the same period. Joblot most probably read the Dioptrica and started to carry out the experiment in 1711. But there is a missing link. Perhaps the

Dioptrica also influenced someone else, for the summary by Fontenelle of a letter read by the academician Louis Carré in 1707 also reveals striking similarities to Huygens and Joblot’s later experiment:

A philosopher, friend of M. Carré, of whom we already spoke several times previously, believed on the ground of some experiments he had carried out, that the animals visible in the water through the microscope, did not multiply there, and that they hailed from little invisible flies which left their eggs in the air. Indeed, since these animals are kinds of little worms, it would be quite natural, as well as for many other worms, that they come from some winged species. But the observer was disenchanted with his

^21 Huygens 1730, 608. - 102 -

opinion. He boiled water and manure mixed together, and filled two same phials with it, which he left to cool until mild. He put two drops of water in one of these phials, which he had taken from a vase in which the water was already filled with animals. Eight days after he found this phial filled up with a huge quantity of animals of the same species compared to those of the two drops of water. In the other phial, he saw nothing, though apparently the manure could have yielded some animals. Both phials were very tightly corked. And thus we have established the multiplication of small animals in water, which is even better shown if it is true that this philosopher saw them mating. It is true enough that he saw them uniting by couple.l22

Such an experiment synthesises quite well the two influences of Italian and Dutch experimentalism in the French academic context

of the early eighteenth-century. The “philosopher’s” experiment

clearly shows the importance of Redi’s ideas in the early eighteenth-century Académie des Sciences. Indeed the initial hypothesis assumed by the anonymous scholar corresponds to the interpretation of the experiment undertaken by Redi on flies during the Summer of 1667 and corrected by Vallisneri in 1704.123

And the method of conducting the experiment is likely influenced by Huygens’ experiments on animalcules. Nevertheless, the author was ahead of both influences in creating a new experiment and increasing the precision of the interpretation, which is to say that rationalisation of the experiment was attained. Indeed this

experiment was a new one —by changing minor points— but it also

allowed the Redian theory to be challenged through microscopic

species. The microscopic animals were shown to interbreed as

other common species, and the Redian theory of which animals originated in eggs laid by winged species could be seriously

challenged by the direct mating theory.

122 Fontenelle 1708a, 8-9. 123 Redi 1668, 146-147. - 103

A most important aspect of the “philosopher’s” experiment is that it is probably the first attempts to not only rigorously test the generation of animalcules, but also to link such an experimental procedure to a consistent interpretation. Historians who reported on this text did not notice the rupture between this text and the previous experiments on spontaneous generation. ^24 A t the opposite, both Huygens and Leeuwenhoek in 1680 did not understand the experiment they were undertaking when wishing to test the spontaneous generation through corking cold pepper- infusion previously observed as being free from anim alcules. 125

Discovering that there were animalcules in the corked jars, both Dutch scholars continued to claim antispontaneist discourses. As we have seen, the experimental system promoted by Joblot supported his experiments, and provided adequate rationale for closing the debate. The genealogy of the antispontaneist experiment can thus be represented in the table B:

Table B. Steps of the rationalisation in experiments on spontaneous generation of animalcules

Author date work experiment infusion animalcule interpret. date public. rational.

Huygens 1 1678 b.u. / f.u. pepper dead / dead none 1703 Amst. yes?

Huygens 2 1679 c. / u. pepper pres. / pres. antispont. 1703 Amst no

Joblot 5-1680? c. / u. vinegar pres. / abs. air necessary 1718 Paris yes?

Joblot 6-1680 b. vinegar dead antispont. 1718 Paris no

Leeuwenh. 1680 c. / u. pepper pres. / pres. antispont. 1687 London no

Huygens 1692 c. / u. pepper pres. / pres. antispont. no

An. Carré 1707 b.a.c. / b.c. manure pres. / abs. mating 1708 Paris yes

Joblot 1 10-1711 c. / u. hay pres. / pres. e.p.l 1718 Paris yes

Joblot 2 10-1711 b.c. / b.u. hay abs. / pres. e.a.l /antisp. 1718 Paris yes

124 Fournier 1991, 183. 125 For other accounts, see Bernardi 2000, 42-44; Ruestow 1996, 219-220. - 104 -

Abbreviation and signs used in the table, a, animals added to the infusion; b, boiled; c, corked; f. frozen; u, uncorked; abs, absent; e.p.l., eggs-previously laid; e.a.l., eggs actually laid; pres., present. When not specified with b., the infusion was made with cold water. Each condition of the experiment is separate by a slush (row “experiment”) whose outcome appears respectively in the row “animalcule”.

This table shows that the first experimental protocol combining the two aspects of corking and boiling the infusion is the one by the anonymous “philosopher” friend of Carré. The first experiment to combine boiling with both corked and uncorked samples was conducted by Joblot. Moreover, experimental creativity is a process which evolves here step by step. There are indeed four original experiments: Huygens in 1678, Huygens in 1679, Anonymous in 1707, and Joblot (2) in 1711. It took more than thirty years to find the combination that would later be accepted as the basis for the standard way of testing spontaneous generation. It is equally interesting to note the fact that the plants that were used changed as the rationalisation for the work changed. Infusions of pepper were accounted for by explanations which forced the facts, while infusions of hay and manure —a very similar matter— coincided with a closer proximity in rationale.

One would of course like to answer the question who was that anonymous “philosopher”, friend of Carré? There are actually striking similarities with the work by Joblot. He repeatedly acknowledged mating of the animalcules, and his experimental system brought acceptance to both the previously-laid and actually-laid eggs theories. Nevertheless, no “crucial experiment” was undertaken to show to what extent mating could be a way of generation. The anonymous experiment —as well as other experiments summarised by Fontenelle— is not one reported by Joblot in his book, and no experiment is reported for the period - 105 -

1694-1709. It is equally possible that Joblot had read Huygens,

read “the philosopher”, read both or neither of them, but not that

Joblot himself was the anonymous philosopher. Indeed, the procès-verbaux of the Academy session for the 18th of May 1707 show that the letter received by Carré was written from an

anonymous author from Lyon, probably the microscopist Louis

Puget ( 1 6 2 9 - 1 7 0 9 ). 126 n can not be Malebranche, as stated by

Robinet and recently, by Bernardi, because Malebranche was in

Paris by that t i m e . 1 2 7 Moreover, as a member of the academy,

Malebranche would have been quoted namely. Eventually the status of the “philosopher’s” experiment —a one page summary by

Fontenelle in the Histoire de VAcadémie des sciences— will shed

light on the apparent absence of reception of Joblot’s views. On top of the fact that he belonged to another academy, advertisement of his views suffered from the culture of anonymous quotation, but most of all by the fact that the antispontaneist experiment for “little animals” had actually already been done in

1707, and that Joblot’s experimental system coincided with the flexible antispontaneist doctrine which the academy pursued for

cryptogam and anatomy.

2.3 Reasons for an apparent lack of reception

Though the study of animalcules by Joblot and other scholars

matched the antispontaneist paradigm supported by the Paris

126 pY 1707, t. 26, f° 193-194. The title is ‘Expérience sur les petits animaux que l’on voit dans l’eau avec le microscope, extraite d’une lettre de Lyon’. 127 5 ee Robinet 1961, 771. But Malebranche was in Paris in May 1707, and present at the academy session of the 7th and the 14th of May 1707 (Robinet 1961, 749). Bernardi (2000, 48) took Robinet’s interpretation for grant. - 106 -

Academy, it actually formed the crowning and the end of an experimental cycle of works begun with Redi, Malpighi, Leeuwenhoek, Huygens and certain French and British scholars. In the middle of the century, the observers and scholars were well

aware that the line of the classical microscopists of the

seventeenth-century could be traced to Joblot and even to Reaumur. The physicist Pieter van Musschenbroek (1702-1761), for instance, quoting every well-known microscopist, placed in

1739 Stelluti, Hodierna, Pierre Borel, Power, Hook, Grew, Malpighi,

Leeuwenhoek, Bonanni, Griendel, Joblot and Reaumur in the same t r a j e c t o r y . 1 2 8 But if the microscopical works were known to the scholars, they already served materialistic ideas such as those defended by Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d’Argens (1704- 1771). In the anticlerical Lettres Juives ou correspondance philosophique, he stated that “before the invention of the microscope, we ignored that vinegar contained an amazing quantity of worms. It was denied that little fishes were in w a t e r . ” 1 2 9 Nevertheless, if the animalcules were known by scholars to be somehow organisms for viewing through the microscope, Joblot’s research actually marked the beginning of a twenty-five year silence in research on animalcules. Probably such a situation could be accounted for by two factors, the proximity of the animalcules he studied with the spermatic animalcules, and the epistemological status of Joblot’s works, touching on experimental repetition.

128 Musschenbroek 1739 II, 594. On Stelluti, Hodierna and Borel, see Ruestow 1996, 37-39, 58, 107-108; Fournier 1991, 45-50; Belloni 1969, 185; Freeman 1962, 175; Singer 1914, 25-28. 129 Argens 1738 IV, 3. - 107 -

1. The relative discredit brought to sensitive microscopical subjects such as spermatic animalcules —from the controversial issue that opposed partisans of eggs to those partial to the animalcules— probably also helped to compromise the chances of microscopy in establishing itself as a discipline. Spermatic animalcules and animalcules of the infusions were indeed lumped together by opponents to Nicholas Andry (1700), such as Daniel

Tauvry ( 1 6 6 9 - 1 7 0 1 ) . Thus the works on animalcules of the infusions probably suffered from the proximity with the animalculist thesis supported by Leeuwenhoek, Hartsoeker and

A n d r y . 131 A consequence of this was that the quarrel ceased to be brought before the public from the beginning of the century on.

After Andry’s Treatise on worms (1700) and Etienne-François Geoffroy’s thesis (1704) translated in French ''pour les Dames'' one had to look to Latin texts such as Shtiring’s Spermatologia (1720) to find extensive discussion on the subject. If the Royal Society accepted Leeuwenhoek’s papers dealing with spermatic animalcules, this was a proscribed subject in the French Academy, whose Pyrronian philosophy led to the rejection of any subject for which empirical grasping could not be managed unambiguously. 132 Research on the animalcules of the infusions, though sometimes represented in the meetings of the academy, was only represented in reports by Fontenelle. This strategy of lower visibility contrasted with the papers put out in the M émoires. It was not considered

130 Andry 1741, 178-179. On the importance of Andry’s thesis, see Roger 1993, 166. On the development of the animalculism controversy, see Bernardi 1986, 157-163; Farley 1982, 20-25. 131 The quarrel surrounding the thesis maintained by the rector of the Sorbonne, Andry (1741, 158-161), in his 1701 Traité des vers on the fecundating power of the spermatic animalcules did not relate to the accepted “existence of these animals” (Bourguet 1729, 80), established with the microscope, but to their use for generation {ibid., 80-93). 132 Roger 1993, 183-184. - 108 -

then that the “bad microscopes” —an argument almost non existent

before the middle of the century— had caused the decline of research in animalcules. Especially, the microscopical objects were

still not known by scholars with sufficient morphological and

classificatory precision to give birth to any take-off in the science

of animalcules in the early eighteenth-century.

2. If Joblot’s works represent the final outcome of the seventeenth-century wave of research on animalcules, the

framework by which the naturalistic study of animalcules could

acquire a heuristic meaning was either not interested in the topic (Latin natural historyg) or was incapable of revitalising ideas. Concerning animalcules, the natural historical framework where Joblot’s results could be heuristically integrated focused on other objects, which introduced a huge discrepancy compared to the consistent interpretation he achieved. Indeed the process that usually follows a “discovery” is the attempt to extend it to other cases or species. Such had been the case for the disproving of spontaneous generation by Redi, which gave incentive to many

other research projects. It was first expanded within a “horizontal

series” of insects by Redi, to the Acarus of the Scab by Bonomo

and Cestoni, to the lice of the orange-tree and of the cabbage by Cestoni, to spiders and mollusks by Baglivi, to mosquitos by

Lancisi, as well as to Torpedo by L o r e n z i n i . Tournefort’s

programme was progressively realised by himself and other

scholars, detecting the seeds of cryptogam in certain genera and

species. But a huge difference is still to be found between Joblot

^ ^ ^ Bonomo 1687, Lancisi 1717. On Lorenzini's studies on the Torpedo, see Guerrini 1999, 53-69. - 109 -

and Redi’s w o r k s . ^^4 por the latter, the plants and animals on

which the study was carried out were already listed, determined

and classified somewhere in a text of the Latin natural history tradition —by Gesner, Aldrovandi, Moffet, Bauhin, Ray— and

scholars almost never had to find both a new plant and a new

experiment. There lies the main problem for reproducing Joblot’s

experiment, showing that the reproduction of experiments for naturalias, as opposed to mainly physical phenomenon studied by Shapin and Schaffer, and Licoppe, was dependent on a particular cognitive constraint. To reproduce a naturalistic experiment in which too many things were new, procedure and objects, raised unsolvable problems. Not that the repetition was impossible, but it could not take on a heuristic meaning, and its major value lay in the social extension of an agreement over a phenomenon. This was no demarcating difference with other social agreements over common phenomena such as “the sun produces light”. But the demarcation that makes a kind of social agreement become more

than social and conventional is related to another kind of non- experimental transformation operating on naturalia. I claim that the naturalia on which all the seventeenth-century authors of the

first wave of research worked were not species, but specimens. The keepers of the morphological Latin tradition of natural history,

were not interested in these kinds of specimens —the animalcules—

before the second part of the eighteenth-century. As a consequence, the knowledge of the first wave of research suffered from a lack of cumulative comparison between determination of specimens, but most of all, from a total absence of morphological

This is a different interpretation from that recently defended by Bernardi (2000, 46-49) on the continuity of the experimental protocol from Redi to Joblot. - 110 - and systematic organisation of the specimens. Accumulating and organising knowledge of naturalia might have been balanced for the reproduction of experiments to acquire more than a social meaning. A heuristic meaning —as an extension of the discovery to other species and to new discoveries— can not be acquired if people do not deal with species, as a shared common concept of the morphology and classification of naturalia. The ignorance, in the Latin natural history tradition, of the animalcules of the infusions was the main hindrance to the first wave of research on animalcules becoming a heuristic trend more than socially partaken.

And indeed, though Joblot had also carried out a “horizontal series”, i.e. he had observed animated life in a hundred infusions that produced different animalcules, most of his animalcules were being seen for the first time. Perhaps they were not observed entirely for the first time, but there were few opportunities to having them match previous observations. On top of that, since the conditions of vision and of drawing were different between Joblot and previous microscopists, the animalcules had known practically no previous existence, since they did not exist, along with easy keys of recognition, in previous texts. Modern biologists enjoy identifying such rotifer or bacteria in Leeuwenhoek or Joblot’s works, hence supplying a retrospective existence as species to these animalcules. But such an attitude —which was invented in the second half of the eighteenth-century— was totally unthinkable at the time of Joblot and until the middle of the century. Indeed, both the object studied —animalcules— and the kind of experiments, appeared to be new, thus creating a huge gap between Joblot’s work and the standard ways of repetition and generalisation of - Ill - knowledge. Repetition of the crucial experiment, and further identification of the animalcules according to their infusions both had to be carried out, which was probably too much variation to be controlled by the academic world. Eventually, the lack of repetition of Joblot’s experiments well shows that if the repetition of experiments was conceived as a social a c t , ^35 in the case of the practices of the microscope, the objects themselves, or especially their size, carried weight in the possibility to repeat experiments. This is not far from saying most of the observations on animalcules did not have the status of a fact. Rationalisation was the process by which the objects themselves became progressively conceived as facts by scholars, the microscope being conceived as the means for research. The acquisition of the status of “matter or facts” for a community also depended on many constraints, and there are “facts” which, in a way, have a transitory status, belonging to a kind of purgatory of the empiricism.^36

135 Garber (1995, 195) has considered that the Royal Society invented a new conception of the repetition as opposed to the previous one where the number of repetition was enough to “convince the auditor that the result was a genuine experimental fact,” In the new conception, the fact must have been repeated “by a number of different persons.” If this was the case, the Royal Society should never have accepted Leeuwenhoek’s observations, of which many were unrepeatable, 136on matter of facts, see S&S 1985, 162-163, Between chapter 2 and 3, a chapter on Insects, ambiguity and hermaphroditism should be included, which is available in manuscript A, C h a p t e r 3

P r o d u c t io n a n d V is ib il it y o f M i c r o s c o p e s

IN THE E i g h t e e n t h -C e n t u r y

3.1 Changes in visibility in the European market of the microscope in the first half of the century

Since insects had provided a rationalised object for the practices of the microscope in the 1730s, one would not be surprised that the number of microscopes built began to rise, leading to a sharp increase in their manufacturing at the beginning of the 1740s. Although historians have placed no particular emphasis on this period, they usually report the invention of several new models of microscopes, the awakening of fashion for chambers of physics and natural history, the importance of the Cuff microscope, and the expansion of the

London trade.i Before this time, in the late years of the seventeenth-century, the manufacture of microscopes had been marked by a decrease in visibility, to which corresponded a shrinkage that profoundly reduced the extension of international exchange around 1700. Up until 1700, trade of microscopes comprised an international dimension, relatively speaking, which decreased after 1700 when the trade began more local and less visible, remaining so until the 1740s. Though historians believe that the British captured a large part of the European instruments

^ Nowak 1984, 21-22; Heilbron 1982, 205ff; Turner [1976], 8-11; Daumas 1953, 217-225; C&C 1932, 136-141. - 113 -

market,2 I am more confident using primary sources to

understand the market of microscopes as having always been torn between certain pressures of internationalism —the

influence of foreign models, the international advertising and

exchange, the privileged relations among countries— and the

demand and needs of local cultures. Moreover, there is no unique

model for the marketing of microscopes, and it appears that many European regions managed particularism and

internationalism very differently. Such tensions and

idiosyncrasies characterised the microscope market since its

beginning in the second half of the seventeenth-century. Privileged contacts indeed existed between Italy and England, England and Holland, and, to a lesser extent, between Holland, Germany, the Northern countries and France. Travelers like Balthazar Monconys (1611-1665) visited every part of Europe in

the 1660s. In Tuscany, Redi availed himself of two of the Grand Duke’s microscopes, a Roman and an English, in 1668.3 Malpighi,

who probably owned microscopes made by Eustachio Divini (1610-1685) in Rome, also received lenses from the British

optician M e llin .^ The British also worked with Italian

microscopes. Essays of a Divini microscope were reported in a

1668 Philosophical Transactions, Boyle used a Roman

microscope, and in 1716 Richard Bradley said he used a Campani

microscope. In 1686, Campani also advertised a microscope in the Leipzig journal Acta Eruditorum. Of course, these examples must not be overemphasised, because there is no evidence that

2 Brenni 1991, 450; Daumas 1953, 123-124. 3 Redi 1668, 69. ^ On Malpighi’s microscope and the Italian market for instruments, see Bennett 1997, 64-70; Bedini 1963, especially 410-415, 418. On Mellin, see C&C 1932, 44, 104-105. - 114 - the proportion of foreign microscopes in the entire European market at the end of the seventeenth-century exceeded a tenth of the microscopes scholars used to make their observations. An important aspect of the “international” dimension of the practices of the microscope that helped the “industry” to establish itself in England in the second part of the seventeenth- century, was that no international patent rights existed to prevent the usurpation of rights. British instrument makers were active in imitating, adapting, exploiting and producing continental inventions such as the screw-barrel and the slide-bolder by Campani, the focussing adjustment by Homberg, the screw-barrel microscope by Hartsoeker, the new combination of lenses by

Fabri and Divini, the field-lens by Johann Wiesel and Monconys, the movable body and the plane mirror by Hertel, e tc .5 Nevertheless, the skillfulness of the British craftsmen was in bringing perfection to small details thus improving the instrument as a whole. As well, they integrated instruments into an expansive marketing culture, in part already promoted by the

Italians, which was now characterised by advertisement, competition, profit, growing mechanisation and productivity that increased visibility and access to microscopes for the scholar community. Throughout Europe, the circulation of models and new concepts for the microscope lasted up until the early 1700s.

In contrast to the triangular Italian-British-Dutch visible practice of exchange, the French and German contexts each promoted less visible, though not autarkic, forms of exchange in the trade of microscopes, within important urban centres like Paris,

5 See Bennett 1997, 68-70; Bedini 1963, 416, 421; C&C 1932, 21-22, 41, 106- 107. - 115 -

Nuremberg and Erlangen. In France, some academicians were absorbed in devising microscopes for their own work, while the

Parisian engineers and practitioners such as Butterfield (1635-

1724), Gratellié, Depovilly, Chapotot, Bion (c. 1652-1733),

Lefebvre (1650-1706), Gallon, Le Mariée, Pouilly, Le Bas, his

vidow, and Jean Langlois were active at the turn of the century.^

They probably filled an important part of the demand for microscopes from French academicians and physicians. In the provinces, other opticians and instruments makers were active.

Villette (1621-1698) was working in Lyon, supplying lenses and microscopes to Louis Puget, François Lamy, and probably also to the philosopher Malebranche who was also in touch with Butterfield and Joblot.^ Villebresseux made microscopes in Grenoble; Chérubin and Jean de Hautefeuille (1647-1724) worked in Orléans.^

The beginning of the eighteenth-century saw this European impetus for exchange undergo a major schism, that encouraged a withdrawal of artisans to their own countries and cities, with the exception of the Dutch Republic. Supported by an old tradition

that dated back to the 1650s, Dutch instrument workshops were

still active in the first half of the eighteenth-century. They had a

good reputation throughout Europe, and maintained privileged relations with North Eastern European countries, and with

^ Butterfield, Chapotot and Depovilly (in 1686) built simple microscopes designed by Huygens (Turner 1991, 30; Fournier 1981, 201). The optician Gallon was in touch with Huygens, Malebranche and Puget in the late 1670s (Robinet 1961 XVIII, 134-135), Le Bas supplied lenses to Lamy (Puget 1704, 66). Daumas (1953, 111-112) reported on the microscopes made by Le Mariée, Pouilly, Gratellié at the end of the century. Langlois was a pupil of Butterfield. On Mme Lebas, see Daumas 1953, 101. 7 Puget 1704, 66; Robinet 1961 XIX, 695. ^ See Monconys 1665 I, 3ff; Hautefeuille (1703, 5-7, 19-21) was in touch with Picard and Cassini. - 116 -

Portugal where Dutch instruments are still in some collections.

Although they specialised in selling nautical instruments, microscopes were also manufactured by many of the Dutch workshops. The workshop run by the Musschenbroek dynasty in Leyden had customers everywhere in Europe, though principally in Germany at the turn of the c e n t u r y .^ Jan van Musschenbroek

(1687-1748) collaborated with the professor of physics

‘sGravesandes (1688-1742) and created full cabinets of experimental philosophy, a conception that greatly inspired the physicist abbé Nollet —a disciple of Reaumur— when he met Dutch scholars and instrument makers in 1736.^0 Those of the Musschenbroek dynasty and other practitioners sold many pieces of chambers of physics to the universities of Marburg, Upsaal and Coimbra, including microscopes. In Coimbra for instance, there are still microscopes from Musschenbroek, Nollet, Adams, Nairne, Martin and Culpeper. Some Dutch workshops also specialised in producing optical instruments, like the workshop of the Van Deijl. The business was usually handed down from father to son, and was active sometimes for three generations, that is to say almost one century. The Musschenbroek business was kept alive between the 1660s and the 1740s, that of Metz, between 1665 and the mid eighteenth-century, that of Van der

Bildt between 1730 and the 1810s, that of Van Deijl, in

Amsterdam, between 1740 and 1809.^ ^

The stabilisation of professions related to the microscope was also most advanced in Holland in regards to drawing and

9 De Clercq 1991, 83-85. 10 Torlais 1987, 28-29. 1 1 De Clercq 1991, 79; Daumas 1953, 328. - 117 -

engraving. Benefiting from a two century old tradition of the visual arts, Dutch engravers and drawers had a fine reputation all

over Europe, with masters like Frederick Ruysch (1638-1731),

Van de Laar, Bernard Picard, Van der Schley, and Van der Spik

who specialised in anatomical drawings. The possibilities of

finding good microscopes, good drawers and optical machines to help in Holland favoured the development of professionalisation

of artists specialised in scientific illustration. 12 in England the

expansion of optical workshops did not coincide with an

iconographie development before the second part of the century;

indeed, after having finished his studies in Leyden, Albrecht von Haller, who visited the anatomist Cheselden in London in August 1727, deemed the skeleton of the latter's Osteogeny to be not as good as those drawn by Vesalius.^^ In Holland, after the renowned anatomical drawers who collaborated with physicians such as Boerhaave (1668-1738), Ruysch, Muys (1682-1744), Albinus (1697-1770), Haller and Gaub in the first half of the century, young drawers began in the 1740s illustrating insects and invertebrates. Van der Schley and Pierre Lyonnet brought an iconographie contribution to the development of microscopical research whose principal object was insects up until the middle of the century. 14 Lyonnet’s skills were so fine that he was asked

by Trembley to draw the plates of his Mémoires. Bonnet wished to have the plates of Traité d ’insectologie engraved by Lyonnet, but Reaumur had meanwhile suggested employing engravers from

Paris. 15 In a small country like the Dutch Republic, instrument

12 See Giglioni 1998, 395-396; Alpers 1984, 201. 15 Hintzsche 1968, 24. 14 See Trembley 1744a, vi-xi. 15 Trembley to Bonnet, the 4th of October 1743 (Dawson 1987, 228). - 118 -

makers, drawers and engravers created a more dynamic general

network that included microscopists, scholars, editors, printers

and publishers, as well as, at the end of the chain, reporters who reviewed, criticised and diffused the intellectual production. The seven-years war halted this production. Such conditions were not satisfied all over Europe, it being not unusual to find scholars

who complained about lacking a good drawer, an engraver, a good publisher or a craftsman, The Dutch Republic created a professional milieu that allowed Abraham Trembley’s research on polyp to develop under optimal conditions and subsequently to be diffused such that it had a major impact in Europe.

The withdrawal of British and of continental instrument builders to their own respective countries begs comparison to the strategy devised by scholars for reducing visibility of the microscope in their writings. Throughout Europe, microscopical “tags” in the titles of printed material were abandoned during the first forty years of the century, avoiding “microscope” and related terms. Following is a chart of the number of microscopical writings in five European countries, having titles contain (“positive title”) or do not contain (“negative title”) a term relating to microscope.

^ ^ Bonnet 1745, xii-xiii; Bonnet to Trembley, the 5th of September 1743 (Dawson 1987, 227); Corti also complained (Manzini 1988, 26). - 119 -

Chart. 2. Number of positive and negative titles from 1700 until 1749. per 10 years and for each country. 1700 - 1749 1700 - 1749 1700 - 1749 1700 - 1749 1700 - 1749 00 10 20 30 40 00 10 20 30 40 00 10 20 30 40 00 10 20 30 40 00 10 20 30 40 09 19 29 39 49 09 19 29 39 49 09 19 29 39 49 09 19 29 39 49 09 19 29 39 49

30 -r

20 --

10 -

0 1—1 I h l y i 111— t •10

•20

5 0 -

6 0

England France Germany Holland I ta ly

A “positive title” is a title containing a word related to “microscope”. A “negative title” refers to a text concerning microscopy or microscope, without a term related to “microscope” in its title. Positive titles appear in the positive zone and measure the visibility, while negative titles appear in the minus zone, and measure production without visibility. Each five columns represent the evolutional frequency of texts published in a country, between 1700 and 1749. Each column represents 10 years. These numbers are rather underestimated. Further inquiries would reveal a higher number of texts. But, most likely visibility would not change significantly.

The chart reveals several trends. It explains in greater detail my claim in chapter 2 regarding the drop in the number of publications in Britain. It appears that a decrease of visibility, which occurred between 1700 and 1720, was accompanied by a decrease in the number of texts in the 1710s and the 1730s, regardless of the fact that about half of the texts written up to 1723 came from Leeuwenhoek (which are of course taken into account in this chart). The chart also confirms an idea relating to the French attitude towards the microscope. Namely that a steady - 120 - and considerable number of publications, although scarcely visible, demonstrates that in France the microscope definitely was a routine instrument. Italy shows a pattern similar to the French one, but with half of France’s production and almost no visibility.

Germany and Holland demonstrated particular models of development. In Germany, the number of texts increased gradually, leading to a take-off in the 1730s, a decade before the 1740s take off there marked by an increase in visibility. The Dutch supply a final model of writing production, in which a sudden acceleration in the 1720s corresponds to three factors. Holland was a European centre for printing and publication, a centre for anatomical works, and a forum for journalistes, whose reports on other scholars’ microscopical works form about a third of my Dutch data. Generally speaking, this chart confirms that, in relation to the production of microscopical texts, France and England followed two distinct models, contrasting each other in their rhythm, visibility and production. The regime of active visibility and decontextualisation defended by the British appeared to be very sensitive to factors such as the social representation of the microscope, which was able to induce a drop in both visibility and production, which occurred for example during the early years of the century. The method adopted by the French in the seventeenth- century, and by the Italians in the early eighteenth-century, was actually much less dependent on such a factor. In other words, from 1700 onwards, when the representation of the use of the microscope was affected, only the British felt its effect, leading to the decline of their production. The other countries had their own way of producing microscopical texts, each maintaining a - 121 - particular relation to the binary visibility-production, and each having its own rhythm of production.

These numbers essentially show that the decline of the first decades of the century was a phenomenon that touched England, and, to a lesser extent, Holland and Italy. These countries had indeed experienced their first visible increase in using the microscope during the previous century, and, in the eighteenth- century, their receding patterns were influenced by each other. In the case of France, there was actually no change in production, the first four decades displaying a relatively stable number of microscopical texts. Regarding visibility, France, Germany and Italy confirmed the adoption of lower visibility for the microscope, though for distinct reasons. The French scholars attempted to rationalise and routinise the instrument, a process better conducted behind the closed doors of academies which fitted the economical organisation of work. German scholars probably came up against the limits of their enormous territorial market, marked by a linguistic frontier, while the Italians, affected by the controversy between Malpighi and Sbaraglia that took place in the

1690s, also made the microscope more routine, but waited for the

1760s to reintroduce larger visibility for microscopical research.

3.2 New models and styles in producing microscopes

If chart 2 represents variation in the production of European microscopical texts during a half century, it also provides subtle clues to the demand for microscopes. For instance in England the increase in the number of texts, from the 1730s to the 1740s, - 122 - mirrors the London increase in demand for instruments.

Nevertheless, these numbers do not signify the same thing in each

country, because the production of microscopes throughout Europe was under very different regimes. The demand for microscopes was kept alive differently in each particular country, international exchanges becoming infrequent until 1740. Yet classic and new models of microscopes continued to be produced.

In London, microscope makers such as Edward Nairne, Edward Scarlett and George Lindsay were active, the Wilson simple microscope was launched in 1702, and in 1725 the Culpeper compound microscope rose in prominence, though there is seldom evidence that the British microscopes were bought by foreign scholars before the 1740s. In France, the production of microscopes followed the previous status of lower visibility. Perhaps this is related to the failure of certain attempts to institutionalise the relationships between scholars and craftsmen in an academic framework other than the Académie des Sciences. Indeed the ephemerous Société des Arts, created around 1728 and torpedoed by the Académie in 1733, gathered scholars and several engineers and microscope makers such as the clockmaker Henry Sully, Gallon, editor of the Machines et Inventions Approuvées par r Académie, and Marc Mitouflet Thomin.i^ Three-lensed microscopes and two improved simple microscopes inspired by

Hartsoeker and by Huygens, both called microscope à liqueur^

(microscope for the infusions),are mentioned especially in the

17 See Hahn 1971, 109-110. 1 ^ The French name for this microscope derives from its function. It allowed microscopical observations of infusions, called “liqueur” in the milieu of the Académie des Sciences. - 123 - milieu of the Académie Royale des sciencesA^ These instruments were built by Butterfield from 1678, by Nicolas Bion, Chapotot, Lefebvre and Langlois, and one of these models was the French

equivalent to the W ilson type.^® However, obstacles to a more

precise identification of the manufacturers derive from French

scholars who referred only to the types of microscope but seldom to manufacturers namely. These craftsmen built compound microscopes as well, but their production seems to have been limited to supplying the French demand. In addition to using a different name for the French equivalent of the British Wilson microscope, one of the best evidence of the French independence from the British culture of using the microscope is provided by a letter of the physicist Abbé Nollet. He had advertised, since 1738, several models of microscopes from his Paris workshop. In the early 1740s, the Geneva physicist Jean Jallabert begged him for a “double microscope”, the current British name designating the compound microscope. Nollet did not understand the request, and asked

what do you mean exactly by double microscope: does this mean that you want two of them, or you want a microscope with several spare lens; My microscopes have three lenses, with five objective lenses that vary the degrees of force.^ ^

Up to the early 1740s, even a physicist and creator of instruments like Nollet did not know the British terminology. Indeed in France the compound microscope was named “three glasses microscope”.

A microscope à liqueur was used by La Hire (1730, 425) in 1693. 2 0 See Ruestow 1996, 26; Fournier 1989, 591-593. 2 i Letter from Nollet to Jallabert, the 10th of February 1741 (Benguigui 1983, 104). 2 2 Joblot 1718, 63-64; Bion 1723, 117; Duhamel 1732, 314; Thomin 1749, 132, Magny 1753, 46. - 124 -

Such a half self-sufficient market, centered on Paris, explains why French craftsmen lacked specific advertising strategies. While the British practitioners printed trade-cards, published leaflets in London scientific journals and newspapers, as well as loose sheets, in order to advertise their models, their French colleagues issued big treatises on the making of instruments, thus mixing the educational and advertising functions. Nicholas Bion’s 1709 Traité de la construction et des principaux usages des instruments de mathématique became a classic, issuing six editions in forty-three years, five German translations reprinted and an English translation.23 Of course, the microscopes are lost in the large number of descriptions of other instruments by Bion, as well as in his plate {Fig. H).24 Joblot’s 1718 Descriptions de plusieurs microscopes was perhaps a good advertisement for the King’s engineer, Lefebvre, providing one could read the whole book in order to find Lefebvre’s name quoted only twice. The optician Claude-Simon Passemant gave the formula of his brass alloy in his

1738 book and his colleague Thomin instructed readers on how to grind the lenses in his 1749 Treatise of optical mechanics. W hen Abbé Nollet set about selling whole chambers of physics, he publicised his business with an entire educational programme, both in his 1738 catalogue of instruments called Programme for a course of experimental physics, and in the voluminous 1743-1747

Lessons of experimental physics. But no loose sheet or leaflet were used by them. The attitude of the French manufacturers who concealed advertising behind technical education contrasts with

2 3 Paris 1709, 1716, La Haye 1723, Paris 1725, 1751, 1752, Frankfurt 1712, Leipzig 1713, Nürnberg 1717 and 1727, Nürnberg 1721 and 1728, Nürnberg 1726 and 1741, London 1723. 2 4 Bion 1723, 114-118; plate 10, fig. I, L, K, M. - 125 -

^loTuJi^ ^hciem £,.

Fig, H. Bion's 1723 design for a plate of the Cabinet's instruments, including four microscopes lost in the plate (Bion 1723[1709] pi. 10, fig. I, K, L, M). - 126 - the marketing strategy soon adopted by the British. The French advertising style also related to the academic policy of revealing professional secrets. Academies —not only the French— fought to make public the diffusion of certain hidden techniques, to register, evaluate and control people’s inventions, as well as to promote research on trade secrets and lost secrets. Reaumur, for instance, who discovered methods of dying, of making artificial pearls, steel, ceramics and papers, published many of his results in Mémoires de r Académie des sciences. On microscopes, Joblot’s attitude diverged from that of practitioners who concealed their trade secrets. Joblot, like Bion, gave full instructions for building several types of microscope and not, like the British artisans, simply an advertisement of the product.25 Comparison of Joblot’s 1718 plate for the microscope à liqueur, with Wilson’s 1702 design for a simple microscope outlines the difference between the diffusion of secrets and protectionism {Fig. I).

Joblot made comments about the plate, indicating that the figure replicated the exact size of the microscope, such that anyone, skilled enough in turning, could attempt to build the same instrument. Turning was indeed a very important skill of instrument makers, which allowed them to make almost every component of a microscope. Both the Wilson and Lefebvre-Joblot models were based on Hartsoeker’s 1694 model; Hartsoeker had himself given enough information on its pieces and mechanism for anyone to reproduce it.26 it would however be misleading to differentiate French from British on this mere point, since a certain disclosure of practical knowledge and know-how, in contrast to

2 5 See Daumas 1953, 109. 2 6 Hartsoeker 1694, 175. See Daumas 1953, 63-64. Pi .y

F ig .V

Fig. I. Comparing Wilson’s 1702 design for a simple microscope (left: fig. I) with Joblot’s 1718 plate for the microscope à licjueur (right, plate 5) highlights the difference between advertisement (Wilson) and diffusion of secrets by Joblot. - 128 - instrument makers, characterised academics. The ideal aim of academic communities was indeed opposed to that of the craftsmen. As a rule, academicians had to describe publicly the means employed in order to repeat experiments, including instruments, while manufacturers, at the opposite, concealed their trade secrets.27 Being an academician and a maker and retailer of instruments, abbé Nollet felt himself to be in an in-between position in regards to publicising his methods of manufacturing and thus emphasised the utilisation of his instruments.28 in

Germany, the mathematician Christian Gottlieb Hertel (1683-1743) indicated several methods for grinding glasses in his 1716

Comprehensive instructions on grinding glass. A mathematician such as Robert Smith (1689-1768), in his 1738 comprehensive System of Optics, also made known many recipes for constructing microscopes and grinding lenses, as did the Neapolitan scholar Giovanni-Maria della Torre in 1749, and in 1763.29 At the opposite end of the spectrum, a craftsman like Georges Adams, who in

Micrographia illustrata of 1746 translated Trembley’s and Joblot’s books, did not mention the first part of Joblot’s book, which revealed precise blueprints for microscopes which could be considered close to trade secrets.

Concerning the use of microscopes, the French and British developments of the Hartsoeker type supply valuable signal of the importance of the instrument in both countries. Before the 1740s, when Cuff designed a new Wilson-type, adjustable to a base, the microscope à liqueur seems to have been used more for scientific

2 7 See for instance the case of France, Hahn 1971, 66-67. 2 8 Salomon-Bayet 1978, 390-398. 2 9 Smith 1767, 619; Della Torre 1763, 60-71. - 129 -

work in France than the Wilson was in England. In the forty years before 1740 the Wilson was only referred to by the anatomist

Cowper and by the anonymous C. H., while the French microscope

à liqueur continued to be singled out, by Lamy, Poupart, de la Hire, Joblot, Duhamel du Monceau, and probably Réaumur.^o These data match what Georges Adams wrote in 1746 about the Wilson microscope which he considered to have been abandoned soon after being invented. According to Adams, it was Lieberkhun, who, by fitting a Wilson to his solar microscope, rejuvenated this microscope, “esteemed the best” up until that time.^i Nevertheless, while the French artisans forsook the simple microscope à liqueur which was not referred to after the 1730s, the British, German and Dutch manufacturers still built Hartsoeker-Wilson models during the period 1740-1770, but apparently not for a long time afterwards.32 This type, therefore, was dismissed in France before the middle of the century and was replaced by new models made by Passemant, Nollet, Thomin, Magny, Georges, and other unknown instrument manufacturers. However, Henry Baker’s powerful and targeted advertising for the Wilson-Cuff microscope in his internationally published books kept alive the demand for such an instrument, which continued almost up to the time of the French

Revolution. But the 1755 Ellis-Cuff model of a simple aquatic microscope lead to the gradual neglect of the Hartsoeker-Wilson type after the 1760s.33 Indeed both the Wilson and Ellis microscopes fulfilled a similar function, namely the observation of

3 0 Cowper 1702, 1181; C.H. 1703, 1357; Puget 1704, 66; Poupart 1706, 238; La Hire cadet 1714, 280; Joblot 1718, Duhamel 1732, 303; Duhamel 1733, 180; Duhamel 1735, 73. 3 1 Adams 1746, 12. 3 2 Daumas 1953, 332. 3 3 See Ellis 1769, 141; Della Torre 1763, §33; Magni 1776, 30; Delius & Clemens 1766, 13; Wilke 1768, and Richter 1788, 33. /y. y:

m - m m -

U) o

Fig. J. A better handling of the objects and more stability characterises the Ellis-Cuff aquatic microscope (right: Ellis 1755, last plate) in contrast with the Wilson-Cuff which requires slides (left: Baker 1753[1743]). - 131 -

microscopical water animals seen by reflection, but the aquatic microscope allowed a much better handling of the material than

the Wilson, whose absence of stage still required slides to fix the infusions (Fig. J). The stake of such competition was also related to

the position adopted in order to observe through each microscope. The Wilson, as it was called in Britain, and in Germany the Hand microscope, might be handled and directed towards the sky, a position that did not allow lengthy observations for want of

stability, which was supplied by the Ellis type. In 1748, Buffon criticised the simple microscope and praised the compound microscope which addressed the need for stability. Before the elimination of both types of microscope à liqueur in the 1740s, certain French and Dutch instrument makers and scholars —Joblot,

Musschenbroek, Trembley, and Lyonnet— had already by this time chosen a solution that gave priority to stability even in simple microscopes, but they designed a much more flexible structure, with sock-and-ball mounted lenses and a fixed foot or rack (Fig.

K).

With the problem in the diffusion of creativity throughout their own country, and a language unknown to other European scholars, the Germans actually followed a model of advertising similar to the

French one. In Nuremberg, wood microscopes appeared at the end of the seventeenth-century, promoted also in treatises of optics and physics. In the early eighteenth-century, the Germans imported some instruments from France, Holland and England,^4 and the design and building of microscopes and optical machines was progressively developed in Germany between 1710 and the

3 4 de Clercq 1991, 83. - 132 -

Fig. K. The flexible structure, with socket-and-ball mounted lenses of Trembley’s simple microscope (top; Trembley 1747, pi. 7) and of Lyonnet dissecting microscope (bottom: Lyonnet 1762). - 133 -

1730s. While advertisements also appear in educational and technical treatises, there are thus only rare clues pointing to the

existence of active workshops. In Augsburg the tradition of optics

and microscope manufacturing was transmitted from Johannes

Wiesel, who had been a correspondent with Huygens since 1654, to

leronimus Ambrogius Langenmantel (1641-1718), Cosmus Conrad Cuno (1652-1745) and later to Georg Friedrich Brander. Some of the German scholars were elected professors providing they could manage a whole cabinet of physics, including microscopes, for their demonstrations. Between 1694 and 1703, the Marburg professor of physics Johann Daniel Dorstenius bought 60 instruments to Musschenbroek, of which four were m i c r o s c o p e s . ^ ^

Theodor von Balthazar’s 1710 work on micrometers, the study by Johann Michael Conradi in 1710 on practical optics, the works by Hertel and Johann Georg Leutmann on grinding and cutting glasses, all reveal a continuous interest in designing m icroscopes.^6 The latter’s book, first published in 1719 in Wittemberg, went through at least five editions in 20 years. In Frankfurt am Main, Michael

Bernhard Valentin (1657-1729) also dedicated a few chapters of his 1714 General exhibition of arts and naturalia, to the design of optical machines, to microscopes and to the discoveries he made using t h e m . 37 Besides his work on insects published in 1734, Cuno had been devising and making microscopes since the end of the seventeenth-century, and in a 1730 book wrote on microscopes and optical m achines.38 The Nuremberg school of medicine, mathematics and natural history continued to develop practical

3 5 See de Clercq 1991, 90, 107-108. A similar tradition existed in Italy. 3 6 See C&C 1932, 104. 3 7 Valentin 1714 I, chapters 15 and 16. 3 8 C&C 1932, 33; Cuno [1730]. - 134 -

optics, cultivating successively the heritage of Johan Franz

Griendel (1631-1687), Johannes Zahn (1641-1707), Johann Heinrich Müller, Albert Daniel Mercklein, and Johann Gabriel

Doppelmayer (1671-1750) who also translated Bion’s treatise on scientific instruments in 1726.^9 A typical concern of the German

scholars, they translated treatises on optical instruments over the

entire century, adding to their own traditions the benefits of

oth er’s w o r k .^ o It is likely that the German countries, who did not

actually experience a “golden age of microscopy” as Bologna, Florence, London and the Dutch Republic in the previous century,

also did not face the problem of reducing the visibility of their microscopical works during the eighteenth-century. In this respect, the German situation is close to the French one. But while French practices of the microscope were above all the prerogative of the Académie Royale des Sciences during the first forty years of the century, in Germany, it was taught at the university, at least from the late 1720s in Nuremberg, Augsburg, Halle, Wittemberg, Marburg, Danzig, Frankfurt, Leipzig and Erlangen. Further archive research would be necessary to clarify the existence of workshops, which, except in Nuremberg, were probably small though active in some of these cities.^ i

For Italy, the existence of workshops in the eighteenth-century,

and more information about certain craftsmen has only recently

^ 9 Müller 1721, chap. 7 on “microscopiorum phenomena”. Mercklein (1737) tried to improve the grinding of lenses. Doppelmayer 1717, 1730, Bion 1726. On the Nuremberg microscopical tradition, see De Martin 1983 45-47; Geus 1976, 133; De Martin 1973, 11-13. The following books were translated into German: Passemant 1738, Smith 1738, Baker 1742; Nollet 1770 (Erfurt, 1771-1773); Priestley 1772; Toffoli 1796. ^ ^ In Leipzig for example Johann Leupold and Christian Schober ran w o rk s h o p s . - 135 -

been established thanks to the works of Alberto Lualdi. During the last decades of the seventeenth-century, important microscope

manufacturers established themselves in Rome, though

instrumental and optical workshops existed in cities like Bologna,

Brescia, Milano, Naples, Florence, and V e n i c e . ^2 These cities were

to continue the tradition of instrument making. Rome counted six major competing instrument makers —Giuseppe Campani (1636-

1715), Eustachio Divini (c.1610-1685), Piccini, Jacob Lusverg

(1636-1689), Carlo Antonio Tortoni (1640-1700) and Marco

A ntonio C e l i o - - ^ ^ and many important Italian scholars had a

microscope from Rome or long to perform observations with a Roman microscope. Some of Cestoni, Malpighi, Redi, Marsigli and probably Baglivi’s microscopes came from Rome, and Bonomo, who described with Cestoni the itch-mite, complained about not having a Roman microscope.Thanks to the Roman Accademia fisicomatematica, the reputation of these instruments crossed the borders of Italy. Religious men were also active microscope makers before such dynamic production. The Jesuit Filippo Buonanni,

himself located in Rome, the most known among religious

craftsmen, invented a much advanced horizontal microscope in

the early 1690s regarded by his contemporaries as being even

^2 Following are the names of the main optical instrument makers. In Bologna: Paolo Belletti (17th c.), Carlo Antonio Manzini (d. 1678), Eustachio Manfredi (1674-1739), Vittorio Stancari (1678-1709); in Naples: Francesco Fontana (1580-1656), Giovanni Giustino Ciampini (1639-1698); in Florence: Filizio Pizzichi; In Brescia: Bernardino Bono (around 1710). Other cities had also various workshops: Urbino, Padova, Modena, Mirandola, Livorno, C re m o n a . On these instrument makers, see Lualdi 2000, Bedini 1963. Baglivi worked in Rome and said he used a compound three lenses (Baglivi 1704, 551) and a compound four lenses microscopes (Baglivi 1700, 4- 5) probably made in Rome; Redi 1668, 69; Bonomo 1687, 5; see Bedini 1963, 418. Boyle 1772, II, 25 mentions that microscopes from Rome were used in London to search for the eels of vinegar. - 136 -

better than those of Campani and Tortoni.^5 Upon entering the

eighteenth-century, the Italian market underwent a delocalisation and a relative change in visibility, although the naturalists and

certain physicians still continued to apply microscopes to their

research.If Rome had been the example for competing and

creative production, after Campani’s death in 1715, the Urbs lost

its prominent place. Domenico Lusverg (1669-1744) and

Domenico Selva (7-1758) in Rome, Lorenzo Selva (1716-1800) and Biagio Burlini (1709-1771) in Venice, and Pietro Patroni (ca 1676- 1744), and François de Baillou (ca 1700-1774) in Milan made microscopes and other instruments.47 Certain of these businesses

were also handed down from father to son, by the Selva (1700- 1810) or the Lusvergh (1660-1830), pursuing thus the same “dynastic regime” of the Adams or the Musschenbroek. Although these workshops perpetuated microscope making, at least in Rome, Milan, and Venice, during the first half of the century, their spreading and a relative stagnation in demand probably did not stimulate rivalry among them, as existed in a centralised city like London. Between 1700 and 1740, using the microscope was also promoted in certain universities (Padua, Florence, Urbino), journals (in Venice), in many academies such as the Bologna academy from the 1720s, Florence, Siena and Milan academies,4 8

and by numerous scholars who worked individually or under

private patronage. For example, Pietrantonio Micheli of Florence discovered the method of reproduction of fungi in 1718 and

4 5 Fazzari 1999, 118. 4 6 Marsigli 1714, Vallisneri 1710, 1713, 1721, Bourguet 1729, Mazzucchelli 1736, 10-11. 4 7 On the Lusverg, see Todesco 1997, 94-95; Daumas 1953, 91-92. On Patroni, Baillou and Burlini, see Lualdi 1995, 1996, 1999. 4 8 On the Milan academies, see Lualdi 1995, 672-673. - 137 - described, using the microscope, hundreds of cryptogamie species in his 1729 Nova plantarum genera. Antonio Vallisneri, professor of medicine in Padua, promoted microscope for research up until his death in 1731.

During this period, the demand for microscopes probably slowed down with respect to the previous century, but it was also characterised by a lack of advertising strategy. Patroni, for instance, had an international reputation, but no leaflet from him is known.^9 From Baillou, Burlini and Selva there remain only a few leaflets. Modern collections of microscopes preserve only a few instruments signed by eighteenth-century Italian instrument makers.50 But one can not deduce from this that Italy was in a

“state of decline of the industry of instruments during the whole eighteenth-century”.51 The question to be dealt with is actually much more difficult for Italy than for England because of the simple fact that these countries had intensely different regimes not only for the kind of social network of practitioners and models for their microscopes, but also in the geographical spreading of urban centres, and marketing strategies for advertising and selling instruments. London and Paris grouped to gathered the vast majority of craftsmen, according to their activity, in certain districts. In England, they promoted, especially from the 1740s, on competing methods of marketing and advertising. By contrast, and as in Germany, the Italian artisans were dispersed throughout the country in small capitals, each a small political state.52 Scholars

4 9 Lualdi 1995, 674. 5 0 Four microscopes by Patroni are known (Lualdi 1995, 687). Burlini was active between 1730 and 1760 (Lualdi 1999, 216). 5 1 Daumas 1953, 342. 5 2 On attempts to recover the Italian instrument makers, see Lualdi 2000, Bertini 1993, Dragoni 1991. - 138 - also turned to family networks. In a 1743 experimental investigation aiming to repeat Bonnet’s work on regeneration of the water worm, Francesco Ginanni mentioned microscopes and a

“very bright lens” polished by his brother Francesco with a “focus of 13 degrees in the Roman palm divided in 60”.^^ During the first half of the eighteenth-century, information about Italian microscopes and their makers was usually displayed in private correspondence, and very seldom in printed text. Though they frequently mentioned microscopes, scholars such as Marsigli, Baglivi, Bellini, Cestoni, Vallisneri, Micheli, Lancisi, Janus Plancus

(Bianchi), Antonio Cocchi, Francesco and Giuseppe Ginanni,

Giuseppe Monti, etc., gave almost no further information about their microscopes and manufacturers. During the first part of the century, the Italians adopted a regime of slight visibility and their microscopes were known mainly within the peninsula. After the binocular model by Patroni made during the 1720s it is not before

1749 that a new type of microscope appeared in Naples. Father Giovanni Battista della Torre had tried by this time to renew the interest in simple globular microscopes and invented a new kind of spherule microscope he advertised in his books of physics.Other models were to follow in the second part of the century.

Another factor tended to obscure the use of the microscope. As an instrument of optics, the microscope had a place in every course of physics and belonged to regular chambers of physics, notably for the demonstration of the properties of light and the

^ ^ Ginanni 1747, 266. Torre 1763, xiv-xv, 35. - 139 - relativity of magnitude.55 Like everywhere in Europe, chambers of

physics flourished in Italy with the diffusion of newtonianism for

certain at the universities of Padua (Poleni), Rome (F. Jacquier in La

Sapienza), Pisa (Guadagni), Bologna (Laura Bassi), Turin (Beccaria)

and Urbino (Luciani and Moriconi). Some of these instruments came from the Musschenbroek, Nollet and other British

workshops, but supplies were also obtained from many local craftsmen.56 The integration of the microscope into the didactic

course of experimental physics in universities fits with the decline in visibility, as the microscope was associated with the standard courses of lectures that led to the normalisation of experimental physics. As was typical in Italy during this period, the production of instruments —and of microscopes bought for lectures of physics-- endured during the entire eighteenth-century, though its visibility was almost nil. Chapter 3.3 will attempt to account for such a situation for workshops in France and Italy.

3.3 From changes in shape to changes in production

The production of the microscope was also determined by its practice and by the particular needs expressed by scholars for features, morphology and improvements. Notably, the shape of microscopes influenced the kind of position taken for observation, the style of science practiced, and, indirectly, the demand of

scholars for microscopes. It is indeed difficult to draw morphological and even more, physiological conclusions about

5 5 See Daumas 1953, 187. Musschenbroek 1739, 18, 42, 585-595; Nollet 1753 I, 50-56; Brisson 1781 II, 135-145 included the term “microscope” in his Dictionary of Physics. 5 6 Cavazza 1995, 717. - 140 -

animalcules from the flickering images observed through a hand

microscope. In this respect, the death of Leeuwenhoek marked the

end of an era and helped to determine the fate of the practices of the microscope up to the 1740s. In his will Leeuwenhoek had

bequeathed 26 of his microscopes to the Royal Society which

arrived in England in 1723. As a kind of eulogy read before the

Society, Martin Folkes introduced the microscopes, each of which

had a particular object fixed with glue, though several objects had broken off, during the travel. Registers from the hand of Leeuwenhoek were added to the gift that enabled the fellows “to

examine many of those objects, on which he had made the most

considerable discoveries”.57 Among the objects were blood globules and desiccated animalcula in semine masculino. The rest was composed of tiny parts of insects, animals or plants: eyes of gnats and flies, fibres of fish and tongues, hairs of various origins, parts of bones, organs of spiders, vessels of plants, and so on. Folkes balanced the qualities of the microscopes with the skill of the observer: “However excellent these glasses may be judg’d, Mr. Leeuwenhoek’s discoveries are not entirely to be imputed to their goodness”. The judgment, experience and assiduity of the man

each played a role, creating a sort of mythical standard for

microscopical investigation: “it can be imagined any other person

can do, that neither has the experience, nor has taken the pains

this curious author had so long done”. Folkes particularly reminded his audience that the microscopes sent to the Society were proofs of Leeuwenhoek’s skills in preparing objects. But the results of this analysis turned out to be rather deceptive. Folkes recommended his listeners not to

5 7 Folkes 1723, 447. - 141 -

rashly condemn any of this gentleman’s observations, tho’ even with his own glasses, we should not immediately be able to verify them ourselves.^ ^

This passage is highly significant and indicates the status the Royal

Society granted to Leeuwenhoek’s observations. They had to be accepted regardless of the fact that other scholars were unable to repeat them, even if they had Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes in hand.

There could hardly be a better description of the elitist microscope.

As a result it sounded more impressive that the man was reliable, rather than that his observations were reproducible, and thus assimilable to the general network of scientific data. This is another sign of the absence of integration of Leeuwenhoek’s works with the scientific network, resulting in the heroisation of the man himself as a kind of reliable curiosity: “There can be no reason to distrust his accuracy in those others [discoveries] which have not yet been so frequently or carefully exam in’d”.^9 if many scholars before and after Leeuwenhoek acknowledged that his method for making and using microscopes were unknown, the solution that

Folkes proposed —to accept, despite any repetition, his observations because the man was reliable— only served to shelve the problem. It is certain that Leeuwenhoek contributed to the formulation of important skills. Still his attitude impeded these skills to be turned into standards, both for making microscopes and for its use. Witnesses for this fact are not lacking: “I had not”, reported Archibald Adams in 1710,

an opportunity of examining Mr Leeuwenhoek’s glasses particularly, which is a favour he allows to none.^®

^ ^ These quotations, Folkes 1723, 452. 5 9 Folkes 1723, 453. 6 0 Adams 1710, 24. See Roffredi 1770a, 9; and Wilson 1995, 90. - 142 -

Leibniz equally begged Leeuwenhoek to divulge the secret of his microscopes, as well as his method of observation to scholars. No tradition of these skills could thus be transmitted, conserved and improved up by the contemporary and subsequent generations of scholars.In a sense, this was a waste of time: “We are under very great disadvantages for want of the experience he had”,62 said

Folkes before the Society. The decrease in microscopical publications in Britain in the period 1700 to 1730, as well as the low number of quotations of Leeuwenhoek in the first part of the century should probably be linked to his resistance to publicising his know-how and knowledge of the microscope. Contrasting with the pathetic appeal from Folkes to “pursue those enquiries”,63 the studies on microscopical topics like blood, animalcula or the anatomy of tissues, ceased in Britain between 1723 and 1740. Except for rather episodic remembrances as opposed to references given by Sloane or others,64 the Leeuwenhoek “legacy” in England was buried by the time of, and probably long before, the scientist’s death. In Britain the years 1723-1725 saw the last breath of seventeenth-century microscopical research. Leeuwenhoek’s posthumous papers were published in 1723, and Folkes’ paper was actually closer to a funerary address or an apology than an eulogy.

Other scholars who used the microscope had similarly their works published before 1725. James Jurin (1684-1750), one of the rare people who had improved the techniques of weighting and measuring blood corpuscles in the late 1710s, did not reply to the

61 In this meaning, which I believe to be the historical one, there is n o existing Leeuwenhoek legacy, unless we want to consider a will to be written for people not yet born... 6 2 Folkes 1723, 452. 6 3 Folkes 1723, 453. 64 Sloane 1733, 100. - 143 - criticisms raised in 1722 by the Italian scholar Pietro Antonio

Michelotti on the separation of bodily fluids.The works by

Patrick Blair on vegetable physiology and the compilation of naturalia that included microscopical works by Richard Bradley

(1688-1732) had also been published in 1720 and 1721, respectively. Moreover, the microscope by Culpeper (1660-1738), said to have been promoted in 1725,^6 did not actually produce particularly obvious echoes, and no one ventured to speak of animalcules any more. Even with Stephen Hales whose 1727 Vegetable Staticks was also very quiet on the subject of microscopes, it is not before the mid-1730s that new perspectives on using the microscope appeared.

Both simple and compound microscopes presented certain problems related to the vibration, venue of light, fine adjustment screw, and to fitting the objects. At high magnifications, the very small distance between the specimens to be observed and the objective or lens caused problems in lighting the object, and both

Wilson and Culpeper’s microscopes did not allow the alive setting of parts of taller creatures. For instance still in December 1761

Albrecht von Haller, who could not observe parts of a full egg being disturbed with the tripod of his Culpeper microscope, asked Charles Bonnet for other solutions.New microscopes invented since the middle of the thirties, and by Cuff later, solved these two problems. But here astronomical research influenced the 1740s development of microscopy. A telescope using mirrors had been invented in the 1610s by Father Zucchi, a Jesuit from Parma, and

^ ^ Michelotti 1721. For a biography of Jurin, see Rusnock 1996, 8-22. Culpeper’s leaflet does not give a date. See C&C 1932, 108-115. 67 Sonntag 1983, 250-251. - 144 - later, in 1672, Newton designed his catoptric microscope, believing that the optical limitations of the lenses could not been overcome. In 1728 the French instrument maker, Jacques Lemaire, presented a new catoptric telescope to the Académie des sciences. This kind of project was taken up and applied to the microscope, because

Robert Barker, in 1736, and Robert Smith in 1738, claimed to have improved the catoptric microscope, using two mirrors. Newton’s reflective microscope needed only one metal mirror, while those of Barker and Smith had two.^^ Both fitted a large concave mirror in which an ocular with two lenses had been set in the middle, the light, therefore, being reflected in a second smaller mirror {Fig.

L).^9 In Barker’s, the distance between the object and the mirror was between nine and 24 inches, leaving enough space for manipulation, changes in light and larger objects. Barker first submitted the principles of the catoptric microscope to the Royal Society in 1736, but the instrument was judged to be not very efficient.A second model released in 1740 was much better, and this microscope continued to be sold for some y e a r s . 7 1 It had three advantages over the common microscope: first, the object could be exposed to any degree of light and not be perturbed by the small distance of the objective to the object as was the case for the refracting microscope. Second, the object did not need to be transparent. Even opaque objects could be highly magnified. Third, this technique allowed the magnification of small details of whole creatures, and allowed one to observe the circulation of the blood.

^ ^ Barker 1736a, pl.; Barker 1736b, 432; An. 1740, 165. 6 9 Barker 1736b, 433-434; Smith 1767, 124. 7 0 In 1736, the microscope was but “an essay of a construction, to which one should come back to improve it” (An. 1740, 166). Later, an improved microscope was presented (An. 1740, 168). 7 i It was used at least until 1745 (Parsons 1745, 260-261) and probably by Needham in 1750. 7?tL rujiL C ^.

y.My^Ji

Fig, L Barker's 1736 catoptric microscope or double reflecting microscope (left), and (right) Barker’s 1740 improved catoptric microscope (Barker 1736a; Barker 1740, 170). - 146 - and any kind of motion in a live animal 7^ Among the different steps in the history of increasing freedom of form and function of the microscope, the catoptric microscope gave way to the possibility of experimenting on live beings and improved the flexibility in light use.

Two new microscopes were also invented in the late 1730s. In 1738, during the English leg of his grand tour of Europe, the German MD Johann Nathaniel Lieberkhun (1711-1756) demonstrated the concave mirror which carries his name, and two new microscopes, the solar microscope and the simple microscope for opaque objects before certain craftsmen and other members of the Royal Society.A few years later improved versions of these microscopes were being sold by Cuff and by other British manufacturers. Along with the catoptric microscope which signaled the revival of the market for microscopes, the two new models brought to England by Lieberkhun allowed the instrument maker to sell a minimum of five different types of microscopes in the early 1740s. As a consequence the microscope acquired better visibility in the titles of leaflets and in certain microscopical research. A period of fifteen to twenty years had therefore been necessary to clear away the outdated context of dealing with and producing the microscope.

7 2 Barker 1736b, 434-435; An. 1740, 165. 7 3 C&C 1932, 189. - 147 -

3.4 Henry Baker and new strategies for an emerging m arket

After Leeuwenhoek was discarded on the continent, his definitive rejection was still to come. Although the morphological

improvements of the microscope during the 1740s were often

ascribed to John Cuff and Henry Baker, historians did not point out that it was explicitly linked to a rejection of Leeuwenhoek’s way of practicing the microscope and devising the instrument.^4

This indeed would not fit the scheme of the heroisation of Leeuwenhoek. In 1740, Henry Baker took the opportunity to investigate Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes and gave anew an account of them, adding a comparative description of their powers to the previous presentation delivered by Folkes in 1723. It is of significance that Baker occupied himself with the quantification of microscopes, for this anticipated what would become, in the 1760s, both a fashion and a need for scientific rationalisation.

Among the 26 microscopes by then in possession of the Society, and according to Baker’s computations, the best power had a magnification of 160 diameters.Folkes had already acknowledged that if Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes did not magnify as much as did common microscopes, their distinctness was, nevertheless, very good, and indeed Leeuwenhoek preferred “brightness and distinction” to powerful magnification.^6 Baker went further recognising that the microscopes were doubtless not the powerful microscopes of the Dutchman considering some of the most minute things they were able to distinguish, notably the

^4 For a biography of Baker, see Turner [1974]. I systematically give the magnification in diameter. 7 6 Folkes 1723, 451. - 148 - semen masculinum. He also compared Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes to a recent microscope made by Cuff that belonged to Folkes, now P.R.S. It was a Wilson pocket microscope, described in 1740 by

Baker, and later by Cuff in a leaflet.The six powers, from numbers six to one, displayed the following magnifications: 16-26-

44-100-160-400. Baker admitted that certain microscopes by

Leeuwenhoek could have had better magnification than Cuff’s strongest power,^8 even if Leeuwenhoek very frequently excluded the highest magnification.”79 Moreover, Baker included various information involving especially recent advances in building microscopes, that directly led him to reject the microscopes of Leeuwenhoek:

I hope I shall not be imagined to intend any disrespect to this famous man, if I suppose, that our present Microscopes are much more useful and convenient that these of his. (...) Let us reverence him as our great Master in this art. But the world since must have been strangely stupid, if it could have improved nothing, where there was room for so much im p ro v e m e n t. ^ ^

The improvements did not concern glasses, but the morphological structure of the microscope, and the ways for fixing objects. Many of the microscopes sent by Leeuwenhoek to the Society still had minute objects attached to them, a fact that led Baker to posit that

Leeuwenhoek built one microscope for every object he looked at.

Assuredly this was not an economic way of proceeding, which explains why Leeuwenhoek made so many microscopes.He in fact mixed up the two functions of seeing and attaching the object, bringing both of them into the same rigid structure, and, said

7 7 Baker 1740, 512-513; Cuff [1742], Baker 1742, 9-13. 7 8 Baker 1740b, 513. 7 9 Baker 1740b, 510-511. 8 0 Baker 1740b, 514-515. 8 1 Ford (1991, 137) mentions 566 microscopes made by Leeuwenhoek. - 149 -

Baker, “making an intire and separate microscope for every object he was desirous to keep by him in readiness to shew his friends”.^^

This important paper by Baker highlighted the problems linked to the style of science promoted by Leeuwenhoek, which can be characterised both by the absence of any criteria of economy in his work, and of a modern solution brought to the problem of the repetition of observation.

To this very lack of economy. Baker opposed contemporaneous know-how of microscopes and technical inventions. For instance, there was the invention of isinglass (called elsewhere ichtyocolla),83 a fine and transparent membrane of talc placed in slides to capture the object:

Had Mr. Leeuwenhoek known this way, it would have saved him a vast deal of expence and trouble.^

Invented in the seventeenth-century, slides had already been available for camera obscura since the second half of the seventeenth-century, and were illustrated in the microscope of Bonanni, 1692, as well as in the original Wilson from 1702.85 The distance between Leeuwenhoek’s method and the new style and diversity in manufacturing microscopes advertised by Baker was even recognised by the reporters of Amsterdam, in their abstracts of the 1740 Philosophical Transactions. In Bibliothèque Raisonnée a reporter wrote: “instead of the needles, on which he fastened his objects, isinglass had been invented in-between which the smaller bodies can be confined, without being squeezed out”.86 Moreover,

8 2 Baker 1740b, 515. 8 3 Encyclopaedia Britannica 1771 II, 830 “Ichtyocolla”, 850 “Isinglass”. 84 Baker 1740b, 515. 8 5 See Bedini 1963, 421 on slides and slide-bolder. 8 6 An. 1746b, 325. - 150 - in a Leeuwenhoekian microscope, it is impossible to see the same object through successively different powers without touching and removing it from the pin. Removing the object from one microscope to attach it to another is an operation that almost unavoidably alters the state of the specimen. One solution to this problem was, of course, not to detach the object, but rather the lenses from the body of the microscope, in order to avoid any external contact of the object. Since the end of the seventeenth- century, the two functions of fixing and seeing had already been split and related to two different elements of the microscope —the tube and the stage— and instrument makers, following Hooke, Huygens and Divini, fitted interchangeable lenses.

In contrast to the improvements at the end of the 1730s, what was the Leeuwenhoekian conception of practicing science? His treatment of the object, through the rigid relation between vision and attaching, presupposed many features. First, the relation between vision and the microscopical object was viewed as absolute, as each object fixed to the microscope could not be removed or changed without altering. Second, there were very few possibilities for repetition of the observation by other scholars without Leeuwenhoek microscopes, since repetition was strictly dependent on a particular microscope to which was attached the object. Third, the fact that, until his death, Leeuwenhoek did not stop to build his microscopes, could mean that these aspects were not considered by him to be problems. Indeed he had a different attitude, as he himself explained in a letter to the Royal Society in which he presented his method as best for proving a new discovery. He attached an object to a microscope and left it there - 151 - for years in order to let people see it.87 Again the Dutch reporter jumped, as in the following passage:

When he makes a new discovery, which he assumes one can raise doubts about, he leaves the object before the microscope during much time, and sometimes whole years, until it is consumed by insects, in order that various peoples may see it.8 8

This kind of museological and local way of conceiving scholar communication did not correspond to the current framework of scientific repetition that ran in exactly the opposite direction. To be credited as such, a discovery made in a country had to be repeated by other people, and among the duties of scholars was supplying the community with comprehensive means to allow for the repetition for their observations.89 in particular, Garber defended the idea that the Royal Society promoted the independent repetition of observations thus performed by other people.90 In Leeuwenhoek’s conception, the relation between the observer and the microscope was univocal, and for instance no variations in the circumstances of the observation could be obtained, as to look for sources of variation and of stability. One microscope concurred with each observation, that could lead to a discovery. Of course the mere structure of his microscopes was consistent with his method of discovery, which was very much dependent on local circumstances; people had to look through his and only his microscope to ensure that an object appeared in the same way its drawing. So that questions regarding the artifact, emerging through comparison and series of observations, so rich an issue it would revitalise the practices of the microscope, could

8 7 Leeuwenhoek 1722, 73. 8 8 An. 1723, 44. 8 9 S&S 1985, 59. 9 0 Garber 1995, 195-196. - 152 - not be raised nor solved by him. In this way, Leeuwenhoek’s practice was much closer to that of alchemists, or quacks, who displayed, through a camera obscura, an unique show to everyone who wanted —and paid— to see it, than to that of the scholar’s networks which demanded everyone reveal their means of observation to others in order for everyone else to do the “same” thing. The reception of Baker’s paper acknowledged this contrast.

Indeed a 1746 report of Baker’s paper in Bibliothèque raisonnée noted that “the art of using the microscope has much improved from Leeuwenhoek”.

If Baker’s criticism was on the cusp of a trend, his involvement in the new field was also a social strategy. Several factors account for Baker’s commitment to the microscope. The change in context, that had recently turned microscopical topics into an emerging fashion, commanded his performance, as also did more pressing circumstances. Baker had indeed attended Lieberkhun’s demonstration of new mirrors and microscopes two years before,92 during which Cuff, who shared a sort of business with

Baker, launched his production. Baker came before the Society with the printed leaflet of the microscopes, while Cuff sold Baker’s books, which were good advertisements for the instruments. Baker advertised the new models of microscopes made by Cuff, and of course praised them as the very best available in England at that time. From this time onwards, the Royal Society was to regard Baker as one of its most advanced referees for microscopes. Baker was indeed awarded the Copley medal in 1744 for his work on

9 1 An. 1746, 325. 9 2 Baker 1740b, 516. - 153 -

crystallisation, work for which the improvement of the Cuff

microscope was claimed to have been requested by B a k e r . ^ 3

In 1742 Baker published Microscope made easy, a kind of compiled manual of the use of the microscope, which was followed by several editions and translations. Actually it was an act of

advertisement, in tune with the decontextualisation of instruments promoted by British physicists from the 1 7 2 0 s . ^ 4 Baker compiled,

abstracted and copied everything existing about microscope, such as Leeuwenhoek’s plates he had found in the archives of the Society. Baker’s work was received by a vast audience, owing to the fact that he employed two means of diffusion, through his own books, with a large network of translators, and through the network of the Society. The book quickly received a second revised and enlarged edition which included new things such as the description of the discovery of the polyp.The 1743 edition served as the original text for the French and Dutch translations, both from 1744, such that two years after its original publication, the book was available in French and Dutch. Three German translations appeared between 1753 and 1 7 5 6 . The European reception of Microscope made easy revealed the feeling that it had all been seen before. Reporters from the Bibliothèque Britannique in Amsterdam wrote that

Mr Baker had compiled here a quantity of facts, observations and experiments; and if it does not have the elegance of novelty, everything is at least adapted to the views of the author.^ ^

^3 Turner 1991, 36; Turner [1974], 63. 9 4 Licoppe 1996, 152-157. 9 5 The book was announced in Autumn 1742 (An. 1742b, 457), and reported in 1743 (An. 1743a). 9 6 Zurich 1753, Augsburg 1754, Zurich 1756. 9 7 An. 1743a, 186-187. - 154 -

The tone adopted for the review hy the editor of the Journal de

Trévoux of a 1754 French translation was somewhat analogous:

We of course know that many of these curiosities are but results found in other books. Still a good compilation in that genre is always praiseworthy.^ ^

These passages suggest that in France and Holland, i.e. in Catholic and Protestant countries, reporters and their public were aware of what had already been done in that field:

On that subject [circulation and globules of the blood] (Baker) gathered experiments of every kind, made on several sorts of animals, experiments which are nowadays known by everyone.^ ^

Baker’s strategy was not difficult to understand. He aimed at taking the Master’s place in the newly born and profitable market of microscopical research, by contrasting Leeuwenhoek’s technique to modern advances, and by using the Royal Society he had just become a member of in March 1741 as a lever. Baker’s initial relation to the microscope was doubled guided by prestige and commercial strategy, much more so than by creativity, a fact acknowledged by eighteenth-century scholars. Such a strategy perhaps stifled some projects born during the same time, and at least some proposals analogous to Microscope made easy were abandoned. The three page leaflet. Treatise upon microscopes, conceived by Joseph Harris was, for example, sent to the

Bibliothèque Britannique and published in Spring 1742. The book should have been composed of six chapters, systematically treating the following aspects: 1. Experiments on the limit of the naked vision; 2. Simple microscopes, with the cut of the lenses and their magnifying powers; 3. Double microscopes, new ways to build

9 8 An. 1755a, 701. 9 9 An. 1755a, 702. - 155 - them, along with reflection and refraction microscopes; 4. Various methods used for measuring the size of minute objects, new instruments about that. 5. Camera obscura, ways of painting through the microscope; 6. The particular advantages of each microscope, the discoveries made with them.i^® Publication was announced for the following year, giving a precise date of the 25th of March 1743. The announcement was published in the winter

1742-1743 edition of Bibliothèque raisonnée in the section reporting news from London. Yet this treatise remained unpublished.

A final influence on Baker and other compilers of microscopical research of the 1740s was Joblot’s Descriptions et usages de plusieurs nouveaux microscopes. Though the initial reception of

Joblot’s work marked the end of seventeenth-century research on animalcules, scholars and particularly, instrument makers of the forties prepared a second response to it. Joblot’s book was indeed the first treatise on microscopical research that contained both comprehensive methods of designing and using the microscope and scientific observations of a class of microscopic beings. This kind of text was new for the following reasons: 1. Joblot’s book was not a republished collection of previous articles, as was the Arcana Naturae from Leeuwenhoek. 2. It synthesised three genres: the technical-instrumental genre showing microscopes and the method for building them, the methodological genre that taught applications of the microscope, and the scientific genre illustrated by experimental series carried out with the microscope. 3. The treatise dealt only with microscopical subjects, and not with other

100 Harris 1742, 212-213. - 156 - disciplines such as some treatises by Henry Power, Hooke,

Malpighi, and Zahn. Before Joblot the three genres were usually mixed, or one of them was excluded. Leeuwenhoek’s Arcana Naturae did not even give a figure of a microscope, as was also the case in Malpighi’s treatises.Hooke’s 1665 Micrographia, Father

Bonanni’s 1691 Observationes circa viventia, and Griendel’s 1687

Micrographia nova all included some illustrations of their microscopes, but only a few indications about the details of dimension and construction. For instance they only gave an outline for developing the technical characteristics of their respective microscopes, but not plans, means or methods of construction. In

Joblot, the technical presentation and the experimental series were united in the same book with separate functions.

Therefore Joblot’s book served as a literary model for important British texts on microscopes and their use that were published from 1740 to 1800. In other words, Joblot’s book created the genre of the “handbook of microscopy” that was followed and later modified by Baker, Benjamin Martin and Georges Adams. The latter’s Micrographia illustrata translated texts from Joblot —not the section on microscopes— and Trembley in order to serve as examples of research done thanks to the microscope. But he replaced the section on Joblot’s microscope with the description of his own microscopes. In a similar way the two books by Baker (1742, 1753) also advertised the technical description of John

Cuff’s microscopes and displayed scientific data. Nevertheless, in other books of microscopical research the example of Joblot had but little influence, from the point of view of literary form. If

Bennett 1997, 64. - 157 - several scholars after Bonanni and Hartsoeker —Needham, Trembley, Ellis, Lyonnet, La Taille, Spallanzani— provided figures of their m icroscopes ,102 continental treatises did not usually mix advertisement for microscopes with scientific research, except for the sake of reproducibility. The French instrument-makers usually described their microscopes but only added a rough outline of their scientific applications. Nicolas Bion in 1709 and 1723, Passemant in 1738, Nollet in 1742 and Thomin in 1749 gave technical descriptions and brief passages indicating the usefulness of the microscope.

Both because of its advertising strategy and its new morphology, the invention of the Cuff compound microscope around 1743 had a serious impact on manufacture of the microscope. Abbé Nollet for instance in his 1738 Programme of a course of experimental physics, as well as in his 1743 Course of experimental physics, described certain microscopes, in particular a wood and ebony microscope purchased in 1741 by the Geneva professor of physics Jean Jallabert on behalf of a 21 year old young man: Charles Bonnet (see Fig. M).i03 After the Cuff model began to be marketed from 1743 on, Nollet stopped the production of his wood microscope and made a model close to the Cuff, as did other instrument makers, such as Claude Paris (1703-1763), Claude-

Simon Passemant (1702-1769) and Alexis Magny (c.1715-1777) in

Paris, Burucker (1728-1801) in Nuremberg, Reinthaler in Leipzig,

t02 Trembley 1747, 655; Needham 1750, last plate; Ellis 1755, last plate; Lyonnet 1762, 24; Spallanzani 1773, 4. On the 1st of August 1741, Bonnet acknowledged receiving the Nollet microscope (Bonnet to Cramer, BPU: Ms Suppl 384, f° 83), with which he performed the observations of his 1745 Traité d’insectologie. - 158 -

TJM.1.I.LE l'0N fI.-x . T u il.

Fig. M. Abbé Nollet’s figure of a wood and ebony compound microscope, of which a specimen was bought by Bonnet in 1741 (Nollet 1753 I, pi. 2). - 159 -

Ring in Berlin, and Carl Hindric Westberg in Stockholm .104

Nevertheless, in addition to a morphological model which actually

continued to be improved on with an adjustable foot and stiffened

by following recent methods for dissecting m icroscopes, ^0 5 the

Cuff symbolised another kind of victory. It tended to value certain

metals —brass and copper-alloy— as paradigmatic compared to other materials such as wood, ivory, vellum, cardboard and

s i l v e r . 1 0 6 Previously Culpeper and sometimes Wilson models also

made of wood turned out to have been built in brass from the middle of the century onwards. Wood, from the 1740s, was put aside and thereafter found mostly in pedestals, such as in chestnut microscopes by Ayscough, Nairne, or Dollond, in simple microscopes (Ellis-Cuff, Dollond), in French and German specimens of box microscope either by Thomin, Marie, Brander or Tiedemann {Fig. N), and in dissecting microscopes where wood served as a plate, such as in those by Lieberkhun in 1745 and by Lyonnet in 1762.

According to Lewis Munford, the passage from water/wood to

metal/coke/steam is typical of the emerging industrial revolution,107 and the rise in fact of the new material for

instrument making therefore fits the classical scheme of the spread of industrialisation through Europe, namely the British were followed by France and then by Germany. From the middle of the

century, the French manufacturers began making their pieces from

104 Needham 1750 contains a plate of the Cuff (made by Passemant); La Taille 1766, last plate; Sigaud de la Fond 1784 I, 49, pi. 3; Ledermiiller 1764, 2. On Westberg (1720-1769), see Pipping 1977, 81. 105 Tiedemann in Stuttgart, Georges Adams in London, Dellebarre in Holland and in Paris made such microscopes after 1770. 106 Turner [1976], 8-9. 107 Munford 1974, 189; see also Jacomy 1990, 210-211. Us AyscougKj Single and Compmitid MICROSCOPE. -tv*' i. ,f fornewing bodi transparent and opake Directs . •^■rxs^S' d ifi S- V J-JI ^ J^V (&)

S.xft.

Fig. N. Various microscopes showing wood to serve for pedestal and box, in France (left: Thomin 1749), in England (centre: Ayscough 1750) and in Germany (right: Tiedemann 1785). - 161 -

brass, and sometimes bronze and other alloys. Nollet, Passemant,

Magny, Thomin, Georges, Chaulnes, Jean-Baptiste Chiquet,

Letellier, and dozens of other craftsmen progressively conformed

to the new distribution of functions of each material. The German

speaking countries adopted the new material only in part, although their advanced metals industry could have easily supplied scholars with good and cheap brass. Nuremberger workshops, for instance, continued to build microscopes with cardboard and wood.

However, since the 1740s, the scattered microscope makers — Maijen, Mitsdorffer, Milchmeyer, Biirucker, Ring, Campe, Geisler, Voigtlander, Brander, Hoffman, Degermann, Zeiher, Brinkman, Benecke, Rheinthaler, Oppelt, Tiedemann, Hardy— gradually exchanged brass and copper alloys for wood. Nevertheless,

Brander, perhaps the most famous among them, was still building wood microscopes up to 1770. As well, wood was being used in Sweden at the time for a microscope that belonged to the mathematician and practitioner Johann Carl Wilke ( 1 7 3 2 - 1 7 9 6 ).^08

In Italy wood and ivory were among the traditional materials

seventeenth-century instrument craftsmen such as Campani,

Divini, Celio, Tortoni and Bonanni had continued to use. Patroni’s

binocular microscope dated 1722 was made of wood. When the

price of brass decreased from the 1760s, the Italian instrument makers made much more use of brass.Of the microscopes made in Italy in the second half of the century, few were built out

of wood, a material that was increasingly abandoned.

The general shift to brass prepared the microscopes of the 1760s and later to follow the new tidal wave of quantification that

108 Pipping 1977, 220. 109 Lualdi 1999, 219; Lualdi 1996, 620. - 162 -

would soon overrun Europe. By doing this, the microscope

followed the path opened up by a much larger trend that had gradually substituted metallic materials to wood for instruments

and mechanical structures. In England, during the first part of the eighteenth-century, the shortage of wood and the increasing

demand for metals, to which corresponded a reduction of the

price, contributed to the switch from wood to metal. The price of

metal continued to go down during the entire century throughout Europe. By the end of the century metallurgy was active in different ways in England, Belgium, France and Germany, giving new power to the industrial trend of the first half of the

eighteenth-century, led by the textile industry. At the end of the century, scientific instruments in every country were not only now made more and more of brass and metal, but such widespread use of metal alloys was one of the conditions that would allow the standardisation of manufacturing and measure which would soon increase the possibility to attaining greater precision and

standardisation in building microscopes.

3.5 Social and political cultures of the microscope: two styles of producing microscopes, in France and Italy

When focusing on both microscope making and usage in the main European countries considered here, important differences emerge, mainly indicating that the profession followed the general trend, although with its own particular features. Almost

concurrent to the industrial revolution, the take-off in the production of scientific instrument, of which microscopes were a small part, took place in Britain during the 1740s and the whole of - 163 -

Europe followed the trend between one and two decades later,

although with very different methods for negotiating the

relationship between visibility and production. In order to capture

these differences, I will now present a comparative analysis of the method of marketing used in several European countries, balanced

with an examination of the practices of scholars in referring to microscope makers.

It has been said that compared to the English dynamic context,

the production of scientific instruments and microscopes was backwards in France, Germany and Italy during the eighteenth- century. To begin with France, this country cultivated, over the eighteenth-century, a half self-sufficient conception of the microscope, very different from the British methods of advertising, and this conception was responsible for the French lack of visibility —but not of production— of microscopes and their use. French privilèges and the status of the Académie des sciences, who absorbed but also in a way concealed microscopical works from the end of the seventeenth-century, are probably in part responsible of this particular conception of marketing and advertisement. Indeed Maurice Daumas and Paolo Brenni explained eighteenth-century French “technological backwardness” on the basis of the social organisation of work which masters controlled through corporations. Established in 1583, the guilds were specialised in one kind of work, caster, glass maker, mirror- manufacturer, gilder, etc., and had the law on their side in order to block almost anyone doing similar work who did not belong to the community. In the second half of the eighteenth-century obstacles were many to entering the communities that largely only the sons - 164 -

of masters could access such a privileged The building of a

microscope, like other scientific instruments —and as well as a lot

of manufactured goods— required the participation of several

craftsmen, whose masters could stop work for any reason, in a

time when “such division did not any more reflect the needs of a

new type of production”.m In England, although division of labor

and corporation also existed —in London the Spectaclemakers company gathered optical instrument makers— the absence of the regime of privilege and the declared ideology of the competitive

entrepreneur turned out to multiply the possibilities of

collaboration between practitioners, and, for instance, subcontracted work was quite common. Several craftsmen could collaborate on finishing a piece, demonstrating a junction of competence, and not hampering the process of producing an instrument in a half industrial way.^^ go widespread was the

practice of contracted work, that Gerard Turner has demonstrated that decoration tools on British microscopes could not be used as clues to discovering the original maker, because one microscope maker gave pieces to be decorated in many different binding

workshops, probably depending on competitive prices.^In

France, subcontracting could happen providing that corporations

accepted it or received taxes, and, because of the absence of

competition, such control over the craftsmen’s work created serious obstacles to the building of scientific instruments, particularly in Paris. In consequence, as shown by Daumas, the

Turgot (1889, 173-174) denounced the established practice according to which some communities denied access to anyone other than masters’ sons. According to Daumas (1956, 131), masters’ sons were exempted from creating the final chef d’oeuvre. 111 Brenni 1991, 450. 112 Nuttall 1979, 9. 113 Turner [1966], 99, 103-106. - 165 -

conditions of labour did not favour the French, at least for

launching a preindustrial production. Indeed, one of the goals of

the corporations was to avoid the introduction of competition into

a very protectionist organisation of work.

However, instrument makers could employ several ways of

escaping the yoke of corporations, either through religious

protection, connections with the milieu of the Academy, or

obtaining Lettres patentes, a special authorisation delivered ad personam to escape corporative rules. For instance, Alexis Magny, a maker who had made microscopes for wealthy people in the 1750s, could freely built his microscopes and lenses because he was working in a Paris abbey, where craftsmen were exempt from

corporate rules. He was also protected by the Due de Chaulnes, one of the aristocrat inventors who belonged to the Academy. Before the system of licenses. Lettres patentes and privileges existed from the mid sixteenth-century in order to protect the rights of an inventor to diffuse his invention. In the eighteenth-

century, they were awarded for a period of twenty years.The

“King’s engineer”, the academicians and the instrument makers

close to the Academy or to the short-lived Société des Arts could

also escape the barriers put up by corporatist unions. For instance, a King’s engineer could freely advertise his microscopes or related

instruments, usually within the framework of technical handbooks

of optics, physics, or in scientific papers, like those of Nollet,

Thomin, Passemant, Magny, Chaulnes. Contrary to the unknown masses of craftsmen, close in number and skills to those of

114 pv AS 1727, f° 221. - 166 -

L ondon,^15 the King’s engineers could gain a reputation through

such advertising, though the French instrument makers did not have, as in England, a culture of advertising that made frequent use of separate leaflets and loose sheets. While there remain extant dozens of separate leaflets and trade cards printed by British microscope makers, in France this practice was rarely employed before the last quarter of the eighteenth-century, with a few exceptions such as Passemant.^^ This is an extremely important factor for the visibility of production of microscopes in the eighteenth-century. I believe that the whole “history of microscope-y” is hedged by the fact that this culture of advertising existed in England, and to a lesser extent in Holland during the entire eighteenth-century, while it could not exist in France because of this major obstacle. The corporations combatted every type of non-standard activity and of course, every sign of competition, like advertising. As a consequence, we are much less informed about eighteenth-century microscopes and their management in France —as is the case for Italy, Germany, Russia and probably Spain— than in England and Holland.

From the last quarter of the eighteenth-century onwards, historians noted a sharp increase in the production of instruments in France due to the new generation of instrument makers born between 1740 and the early 1760s: Lenoir, Mégnié, Fortin,

Haupois, and, particularly for optics and microscopes. Rochon,

Other unknown French opticians and microscopes makers whose existence was established by Nachet, Daumas (1953, 352-353) and by other historians were active in Paris from the 1730s, like Jean-Baptiste Noël Chiquet (ca. 1722-1791), Tournant, Marie, Nodos, Choppin, Jacobi, Louvel, Say, Segard, Gilbert François, Lestang, and many others. 11 ^ There remain several advertising texts by Passemant, one of which, put in Needham (1750), was used later (Daumas 1953, 218). - 167 -

Letellier, Dellebarre, Jecker, Richer, Charles, Rochelle, Carochez, Huel, Putois, Lerebours, elc.H'^ Daumas related this increase to

attempts such as the creation of optical workshops and of the corps of patented engineers.i^^ However, this trend must be seen

in light of the political endeavour to abolish monopolies and

particularly jurandes (corporations) by the French economist and

minister Anne-Robert Jacques Turgot (1727-1781). In 1776, he

brought about a radical ruling formally dissolving corporations, a

law that encountered many obstacles in practice, especially in the provinces. Such a strong political act aimed at an economic target. It was explicitly designed to free labour from all sorts of privileges, and to open the market to competition.^ Although Turgot was relieved of his duties in 1776 and the Ordonnance sur les jurandes was removed, it stimulated, directly or indirectly, competition, advertisement, visibility and the establishment of workshops. This year, Dellebarre returned to Paris and established his workshop. In 1777 a Paris Société d'émulation pour l'art, le commerce et l'invention, was founded, and it led to the creation of some important optical workshops. The year later, in 1778, Claude-

Mammès Pahin de la Blancherie (1751-1811) created the Salon de la correspondance générale, an organisation in which many artists, scholars, manufacturers, engineers, including among them women met during a decade. Needham, d’Alembert, and many other

scholars met craftsmen at the Salon and forged together a new

style in instrument making, in which the practitioners of science worked closer collaboration with the manufacturers. Needham for instance, tested Dellebarre’s microscope at the Salon, which he

117 See Daumas 1953, 353-377. 11^ Daumas 1953, 354. 119 Turgot 1889, 178-184. - 168 -

declared to be very good. Richer presented his glass micrometers

which were tested with Dellebarre’s microscope. An exhibition of machines was mounted in January 1782 during which Dellebarre

and Richer presented their d e v i c e s . 120 This new impulse for

instrument making was still however encountered obstacles.

Indeed, although the power of the corporations was diminished, up

until 1786 certain instrument makers were inconvenienced by procedure, and the corporations seized or even destroyed their

tools or their parts. 121 in March 1791, during the Revolution, the

legislative Assembly definitively dissolved the communities and the jurandes, suppressing the principal political and juridical obstacles to the building and free marketing of scientific instruments, among other goods, in order to follow the emerging technological transformation later called the Industrial Revolution.

Regarding the Italian workshops, extant collections only show a few instruments signed by Italian eighteenth-century instrument makers, and from this poor evidence historians have considered that instrument making was in decline in Italy during the

Enlightenm ent. 122 As in France, as we have already saw, the culture

of advertisement was limited in Italy. From the second part of the

seventeenth-century Italy began to abandon Latin, and the rise of

the culture of national language from the 1750s onwards, strongly diminished its scientific interest in other countries’ eyes. Moreover Italy had a regime very distinct from that of England and France, as regards the marketing strategies used to advertise and sell

120 See Guénot 1985, Hahn 1971, 106-107 and Duchesne 1800 IV, 269-270. Pahin de la Blancherie published a journal between 1779 and 1788, the Correspondance générale pour les arts et les sciences, which stopped because of Pahin’s debts. 121 Daumas 1953, 134-136. 122 Daumas 1953, 342. - 169 -

instruments. The social network of instrument makers and the

wider geographical distribution of instrument making techniques

followed rules very different from abroad. The centralisation of

instrument making in London increased thanks to competing methods of marketing and advertising information. Paris also

housed the vast majority of French instrument m a k e r s . ^ 2 3

Conversely, and as in Germany, the spreading of Italian instrument

makers throughout the country softened market relationships, and

makers probably made parts of their instruments under demand. In the second part of the century, better or lesser known lay craftsmen ran workshops making among else, microscopes in Milan, Venice, Rome, Florence, Parma, Brescia, Modena and

V icen za. 124 Other cities such as Urbino continued their former

seventeenth-century tradition of instrument making. Some of the opticians, such as Lorenzo Selva in Venice and Antonio Conti in Lucca, were in touch with mathematicians. Like several academies on the continent during the 1760-1780s, Selva, Conti and

Boskowich attempted to ascertain the formula for flint-glass,

necessary for making achromatic objectives. 125 in Brescia

Bernardino Marzoli managed to make achromatic objectives for microscopes by the early nineteenth-century. And, in Venice, Father Bartolomeo Toffoli built a new pocket microscope and a

new machine to grind microscopical lenses in the early 1790s, the

description of which was translated into German by Huth in 1796.

Nevertheless, instrument makers seemed to have promoted but a

123 Brenni 1991, 450. 124 These are Biagio Burlini, Lorenzo Selva and his two sons, Bresavola, Giovanni Battista Rodella, Pozzo, Isidoro Caspar Bazzanti, Samuele Fazzi, François de Bâillon and his sons, Angelo Gozzi, Giovanni Merlugo, Bartolomeo Toffoli, Bernardino Marzoli. Lualdi (2000) listed more than 30 other eighteenth-century Italian optical makers, who made telescopes, lenses, etc. 125 See Proverbio 1989, 326-327. - 170 - poor visibility, and very few leaflets have been recovered. As in

France, for other reasons, the culture of advertising was limited in Italy. Although Italian historians of instruments have started to recover this heritage, with promising works that may be able to

shed light on many unknown workshops,another factor, neglected by Bedini, Brenni and Lualdi must nevertheless be taken into account in order to understand instrument making in the eighteenth-century Italy. In fact, religious craftsmen, isolated in a monastery or working for universities, probably represented a significant part of workshops, and competed de facto with laic m e n . 1 2 7 They took some of the work the craftsmen would otherwise have gotten, and made their instruments at very low prices, some friars even worked for f r e e ! 128 The heritage of the seventeenth-century was responsible for this situation: Zucchi,

Kircher, Francesco de Terzi Lana, Manfredi Settala, Matteo Campani, Tortoni, Bonanni, were all scholars who died before

1730, built microscopes or related instruments and were religious men. One can understand how the division of the craftsman’s work between monks and laymen created serious obstacles to the professionalisation of instrument making, and largely limited the development of the profession. Working in monasteries the monks followed rules of discretion; they did not put their name on their microscopes and other instruments they built, and furthermore

126 See the works of Lualdi 2000. 127 There are evidence of this situation for microscope, optical and other instrument makers. Frà Francesco da Fiorano (Emilia) made a microscope in 1743; Father Francesco Reggio (1743-1804) made optical instruments in Genova. Father Leto Guidi (1711-1777) made at least telescopes in Valleombrosa. Many other religious men were instrument maker. 128 In 1769, Spallanzani informed his colleague that the religious men had received orders not to accept any invoice for their work, except for work done for the university (Spallanzani to Rovatti, the 6th of December 1769, Di Pietro 1987 VII, 140-141). - 171 - they did not need to advertise their models. Religious men were

even so organised as to be distinguished as inventors and/or

craftsmen; some of them built certain particular known types of

microscopes and other conceived of new models. The community of Somascan friars from Naples, and the network of Lazzaro

Spallanzani reveal the impact of religious men on the practices of

the microscope and on microscope making in the second part of

eighteenth-century Italy.

Himself a priest, Spallanzani’s interest in microscopical research had first been awakened during his years in the seminar (1745- 1750). He was to stay in touch with many religious colleagues with

whom he exchanged more scientific and technical information about microscope than religious information —a topic virtually absent from his ten volumes of correspondence. Spallanzani thus belonged to a network of north and central Italian religious scholars who worked with the microscope (Felice Fontana in Florence, Bonaventura Corti in Modena, Roffredi in Turin, Giovanni

Battista Beccaria in Turin, Fortis and Michele Colombo in Venice)

and he had particularly close ties with almost unknown friars who

built microscopes and scientific instruments, such as Frà Fedele (?- 1790) and Frà Modesto (7-1778). The two were Capuchin friars

from Modena, and specialised in making every sort of scientific

device. After having worked over many years to supply the female

physicist Laura Bassi and other scholars with scientific instruments

at the University of Pavia, Count Firmian, who patronised Spallanzani, hired both of them as official instrument makers in 1774, for the recently rebuilt University of Modena. Between 1770

and 1774 they built several microscopes after Lyonnet’s model, for

Spallanzani, for Count Firmian, for Rovatti, Laura Bassi, perhaps - 172 - later, one for the Siena anatomist Pietro Moscati, and for the

Geneva minister and naturalist Jean Senebier.i29 Spallanzani performed his observations on the circulation of blood in the frog with this microscope. In Turin other priests who corresponded with Spallanzani, such as the physicist Giovanni Battista Beccaria and the microscopist Maurizio Domenico Roffredi (1711-1805), brought improvements to the solar m icroscope. Spallanzani was also interested in the simple microscope of Frà Giovanni Battista di

San Martino, as showed by their correspondence in the 1780s.

In Naples the interest in the microscope dated back at least to the 1740s and was shared especially by the community of Somascan friars. Frà Giovanni Maria Guevara succeeded in making strong spherulars lenses by the early 1740s. Later he was to build microscopes, one of which can probably be identified as the one signed Johannes Guevari 1752 in the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers of Paris.^^i Along with Guevara, with other friars and scholars such as the physician and botanist Domenico Cirillo, Frà della Torre continued to improve the method of working spherules and invented a simple microscope in the early 1750s,

similar to a number of unsigned models in various collections.

With observations with his microscope showing the blood globule as a ring divided into six little bags, Della Torre launched a important quarrel in the 1760s in which scholars from Italy, France, England, Germany and Switzerland participated. During the

See the letters from Spallanzani to Rovatti, 6th of December 1769, 18th of September 1780 (Di Pietro 1987 VII, 140-141, 248); Spallanzani to Firmian, the 20th of April 1773 (Di Pietro 1985 V, 268); Spallanzani to Rangone, the 22nd of January 1774 (Di Pietro 1987 VII, 20); on Laura Bassi, see Cavazza 1999, 193. 130 ciardi 1999, 219. 131 Daumas 1953. - 173 -

1770s, new enthousiasts were gathered and young scholars such as

the anatomist Antonio Barba, Saverio Macri and Don Vincenzo

Mazzola also made spherules.^^2 with these microscopes, Barba

was to carry out several observations on the structure of cryptogam, and on the anatomy of the brain, which however, were

not conclusive. Other naturalists such as Macri and Filippo

Cavolini probably also used such microscopes to study the

biological development of marine animals. Also in the early 1780s, Mazzola claimed that he had managed to build achromatic objectives for the m icroscope. 134 During the late 1770s, another priest from Vicenza, Frà Giovanni Battista da San Martino invented a new simple spherule microscope, which can probably be identified as one of the unsigned microscopes of the former collection Nachet and the Golub Collection at the University of California in Berkeley. 135

These two examples, the religious network of Spallanzani and the Somascan friars of Naples, are typical of eighteenth-century

Italian practices of the microscope, and illustrate a style different from that of the French, showing “commissioned” production for a kind of private “market” of microscopes, which escaped public visibility. The examples show that the need for microscopes could be supplied by several types of local craftsmen and largely explain why the professionalisation of instrument making did not emerge during the eighteenth-century in Italy, even if there where many instrument makers. First, the friars did not need to maintain their

132 Della Torre 1776, 34. 133 Barba 1782, 1819. 134 Mazzola 1782, 328. 135 A specimen of the San Martino microscope probably belonged to the Nachet collection, see Nachet 1929, 19, n° 13. - 174 -

artisanal production in order to live, a factor that strongly restrained the emergence of a professional identity in Italy.

Second, they had a completely different relationship with the

market, competition and visibility, avoided naming themselves and

escaped advertising their production. It is only for new models

such as Guevara, della Torre, San Martino and Mazzola’s that there was poor advertising —not with leaflets— in Della Torre’s handbooks of physics and microscopical research, in a rare Italian

treatise on the microscope and its use by the MD Giuseppe Maria

Lupieri in 1784 {Fig. O), and in Barba’s b o o k . 1 ^ 6 But still their production, like that of Spallanzani’s friends, was not thought of in term of the market. This commissioned and private regime of production is probably the reason why Joseph Jerome Lalande (1732-1807) during his mid 1760s journey to Italy, did not see very many craftsmen working. He should have gone to visit an abbey.

A second aspect of the so-called leadership of British instrument makers —based on the culture of advertising— is related to the

diffusion of foreign microscopes in Europe. According to Daumas

while the Dutch workshops produced instruments of international reputation, especially nautical ones, the production of instruments in France and Germany followed local regimes, while in Italy there

were no more workshops with international reputation. 1^7 The

French, German and Italian workshops supplied the local demand,

and “for instrument of higher quality, the Dutch scholars, like their colleagues in other countries, preferred to ask British

136 Della Torre 1749 II, 1763, 1776, Lupieri 1784; Barba 1819, 17-23 described Mazzola’s microscope, an improved version of the Ellis model. 137 Daumas 1953, 138. - 175 -

Fig. O. San Martino’s unknown simple microscope (Lupieri 1784, last plate). - 176 - suppliers".138 There are of course certain indications that strengthen this interpretation, obviously in the case of astronomy, the achromatic telescope made by Dollond in 1758 being inimitable by continental workshops almost up until the end of the century. But recent new data also show that, both in the case of chambers of physics and of microscopes, the so-called international spread of British instruments should be strongly relativised.

Indeed, a source of information, which has been almost completely neglected by historians of the microscope, are the citations of microscope makers by scholars who performed microscopical observations. Of the approximately 2000 eighteenth-century printed sources that mention microscopes I was able to examine, less than 10% referred to a type of microscope (solar microscope, compound microscope, etc.), and only 9% to a particular instrument maker. If we look at any catalogue of microscopes in a museum or in a collection, it appears that the proportion of signed microscopes is relatively close to that number. Auctioneers and curators of museums know that few eighteenth-century continental microscopes are signed, which contrasts with the higher proportion of English microscopes signed. As a consequence, signing a microscope was not a common practice of continental instrument makers during the eighteenth- century, and the practice of signing must be related primarily to the strategy of marketing and visibility mostly embraced by British instrument makers. As proof of this, imitating a signature on a microscope —usually those of Dollond and Cuff— can be

138 Daumas 1953, 138. - 177 - understood as a strategy adopted by British and continental workshops in order to sell their microscopes, because these names had a good reputation. This method of falsification, especially in

France, presented the double advantage of avoiding a suit engaged by a corporation, and even saving expenses for advertising by co opting the names of prestigious instrument makers, and along with the name, a bit of their culture of visibility. The corporations could always crack down on a workshop’s advertising as well as on its instruments, through the corporatist guard inspections, which exempted protected craftsmen. After 1776, French instrument makers also had to invent a new culture of visibility, which became the standard only between the Empire and the Restoration, in the early decades of the nineteenth-century. Thus putting a name on an instrument is not a natural or a biological phenomenon. This attitude was strongly rooted in the political and economic free- market culture promoted by British society which entered the new world of industrial production by the first half of the eighteenth- century. Since historians of the economy have shown that France,

Belgium and Germany followed this economic trend between 1770 and 1830,139 the low-visibility behaviour of eighteenth-century continental instrument makers appears to fit in well with this general tendency.

The table C shows the amount of citations of microscope makers

(from now on MM) by scholars —except for leaflets— for each country, as well as several ratings.

139 See Verley 1997. - 178 -

Table C. Citations of MM by scholars for each country nMM/Country Number of citations of MM from: (n) DE IF H tot TOT % t/T t/n N %N/n D 30 42 17 1 2 4 66 750 9.5 2.2 150 20 E 20 1 26 3 30 340 8.8 1.5 97 21 I 16 3 31 12 6 2 54 160 39.7 3.4 75 21 F 6 1 6 7 370 2 - 79 7 H 3 1 3 3 7 138 5 - 30 10 S 3 1 2 3 87 3.4 - 40 8 G 1 1 1 13 - - 5 - C 1 1 1 21 --- d 1 3 1 4 14 -- 2 - R 2 -- 10 - Tot 51 81 16 14 11 173 % auto/heter. 82/18 32/68 75/25 42/58 27/73

Explanations of the symbols used: n Number of scholars by country who quoted one or more MM D, E, I, etc. Germany, England, Italy, France, Holland, Sweden, Geneva, Denmark, Russia tot Sum of the citations of MM, by country TOT Sum of the papers citing microscopes, by country % t/T Ratio of MM cited to the papers citing microscopes, by country t / n Mean of the number of microscopes cited by authors, by country N Number of authors citing the microscope, by country % auto/heter. Frequency of makers cited by their nationals and by foreign s c h o la rs Hyphens in the ratings columns mean that the amount of data is too small to be useful. The numbers in bold are discussed in the text.

The table suggests different trends according to country. The rows indicate data on the country of the citing authors, while the column supply data on the country of the makers. The British makers are the most cited (81), by their nationals and by foreign people (Italian and German). German makers come next (51) but they are quoted mainly by their nationals (42), as is the case with the Italian makers (12), while the Dutch are under-represented.

French makers are almost not cited (14), and seldom by their nationals (6). Regarding the different cultures of citation, the

Germans, British and Italians are practically equal (%N/n = 20 -

21) although the amount of data is not comparable. In term of the number of microscopical papers, the Germans produced twice as much as the British, and 4.5 time as much as the Italians (750, - 179 -

340, and 160 papers respectively). A large difference exists with

France, which clearly reveals itself as a country where scholars did not quote instrument makers, although the amount of microscopical papers is comparable to that of the British (340 versus 370).

An analysis of the citations of MM shows two distinct groups.

The British and German were similar, with 15 and 16 names of MM cited (not in the above table); the Italians and the French were also similar but with half MM cited, 8 and 7, while the Dutch had 2 MM cited. 140 In addition to the above table, the data confirm that the

British produced microscopes incorporating advertising, and that certain of their microscopes were purchased abroad, especially by Italian scholars. In France there is almost no trace of a British microscope, and the reverse is also the case. The Germans actually accumulated the larger amount of works over the century (750), an important amount of microscope makers, comparable to France and England, and especially translated every technical treatise published abroad. Germany had started to compete very seriously with British optical hegemony already in the 1760s, but it did not compete for an international market. There were many instrument makers, whose production was made fruitful and tested by the applied mathematics tradition, and who did not, as is often stated by historians of microscopy, spend their time making toys for the elite. This is another cliché of the history of technology and

140 British MM cited, Adams, Ayscough, Cuff, Culpeper, Dollond, Ellis, Lindsay, Marshall, Martin, Mellin, Ramsden, Scarlet, Short, Watkins, Wilson. German MM, Baumann, Brander, Campe, Delius, Gleichen, Hoffmann, Lieberkhun, Milchmeyer, Mey, Mittsdorfer, Reinthaler, Ring, Rudolph, Stegmann, Schmiedel, Streicher. French MM, Villette, Le Bas, Lefebvre, Magny, Passemant, George, Dellebarre; Italian MM, Campani, Patroni, Bono, Guevara, Della Torre, SanMartino, Merlugo, Mazzola. Dutch MM, Lyonnet, Musschenbroek. - 180 - microscopy. Historians have reported that European production of optical instruments and particularly microscopes was intended for elite and aristocratic people, and used as toys.^^^ But there are two methodological biases that allow one to contest such assertions.

First, since they belonged to aristocratic and wealthy people, the microscopes examined by these historians were more likely to survive and be conserved along with a knowledge of their historical background. When cheaper microscopes, unadorned and perhaps even without a signature, were bought by an anonymous scholar, they did not have the same “probability of historical survival” as those of the aristocracy. Second, the only sources considered by historians of the microscopes and of the instruments are the extant instruments, few papers on microscopes, handbooks of optical and experimental physics, leaflets, and seldom correspondences. The whole range of scientific texts containing fundamental information concerning the use and the kind of the microscopes has never been exploited. Except the works by British historians, it is only recently that archival sources concerning Dutch and Italian workshops have been studied showing their place within European exchanges. On the contrary, my data show the presence of a large scientific and technical framework in Germany, which was to become important in optical and microscopical knowledge by the beginning of the nineteenth-century. 142 Thanks to price lists, leaflets, but also historical notes and instructions, the German scholars and craftsm en —Optikus and Mechaniker— began to advertise their

141 Bennett 1997, 72; Mazzolini 1997, 219; Brenni 1991, 450; Turner [1987], 378-385; Turner [1973], 19; Bradbury 1967, Daumas 1953, 336-353. 142 On Fraunhofer’s enterprise, see Jackson 1994, 552-557. I also refer to the transformation of German natural history into developmental morphology between 1780 and 1830 (Lenoir 1982, 54-111). - 181 -

microscopes from the 1770s onwards, in widely read journals such

as Hannoverisches Magazin, Journal von und fUr Deutschland,

Technologisches Magazin, and many others. 1^3 Eventually a

different situation emerges from the second group (France, Italy),

where referring to microscope makers could reflect cultural styles

of relationships between scholars and craftsmen. In France, the

data reveals enormous discrepancies between the large number of extant craftsmen involved in microscope making, the amount of microscopical papers published (TOT) —both close to the data for the British— and the almost absence of the quotation of MM. The

ratio of the collective number of authors citing microscopes and citing MM is 21 for England, Italy and Germany, while it drops to 4

for France (%N/n)! Such a situation can be interpreted with two key aspects that still reflect the same cultural style: the lack of advertising and the almost self sufficient market of the microscope.

The tendency to not cite microscope makers can be considered paradoxically as a sign of the démocratisation of eighteenth- century practices of the microscope, but only within local communities. The attitude of the scholar who reported the name of the maker of his instrument touches on two main issues:

quoting for the purpose of advertising, or for the purpose of

enabling an audience to reproduce an experiment. Nevertheless,

the absence of this method of citation, especially within a social

community such as an academy, can also be understood by the fact that everyone, in a particular community knew enough of the

author’s work and instrument, and of the network of instrument

Brander 1769, Goeze 1772a, Kastner 1779, An. 1781, Hofman 1785, Tiedemann 1785, Stegmann 1786, Junker 1791a, Burucker 1792, Brander 1792. - 182 - makers in order to understand what kind of microscope was used. Working with routine instrument on small-scale though not invisible objects, and the presence of naturalised iconography made the use of such kind of information superfluous. The

Académie des sciences considered during the whole century is typical of this style. Between 1700 and the 1730s, European scholars, who had adopted the microscope as routine instrument, did almost not quote instrument makers. For all of Europe, on a total of about 400 printed papers, books and reports published between 1700 and 1735, it is ten authors who referred to the makers of their microscopes, and most of them were British and

G e r m a n . More of these authors would probably emerge with further research, but the tendency is such. As a consequence it is impossible to know directly from the printed texts the kinds of microscopes which were used by Reaumur, Breyn, Vallisneri, Marsigli, and many others. This way of proceeding contrasts sharply with the routine use of the microscope during this period. Not quoting the makers diminished the visibility of the instrument and contributed to the strategy of crediting the microscope as a standardised tool. Along with the absence of mentioning the microscope makers and the magnification used, the new conception of democratising microscope paradoxically made use of every strategy to avoid focusing on it. The corresponding objects— insects and cryptogam (but also others)— and the iconographie method in usage fit such an interpretation. Enabling other scholars to reproduce the observation did not necessitate, at

Except for leaflets, and of course Leeuwenhoek, the following scholars referred to instrument makers: Zahn 1702, Cowper 1702, 1181; C.H. 1703, 1357; Cowper 1703, 1390; Puget 1704, 66; Bradley 1716, 488; Joblot 1718 I, 6; Mazzuchelli 1736, 10-11; Hertel and Cuno. - 183 - this time, giving too much contextual information on microscopes and microscope makers.

The data and the meaning of quoting instrument makers changed in the early 1740s. The table D shows the ratio of citations of microscope makers according to period.

Table. D. Ratio of citations of MM according to the period

P erio d % 1700-1739 4 1740-1759 20 1760-1799 76 T ot. 100

As a general conclusion in terms of production of microscopes the English were not the “leader in microscope making” but were promoters of an internationalist conception similar to their attitude towards their colonies; they imported brute material and conceptions from abroad, but never sold or showed off their technologies. The British culture of advertising partially associated with the scholarly world was the ideological promotion of their manufactured goods which aimed to indoctrinate everyone with the cliché of the optical empire. On the contrary, the German strategy — perhaps close to that of Japanese industrial development in the nineteenth-century — tended to promote their internal market by increasing the exchanges within the Vaterland, an activity whose function probably participated in the contemporaneous elaboration of a national consciousness that were to emerge over the two following centuries. The Germans absorbed and assimilated knowledge and technical practices from everywhere, within a conception of knowledge that could not fit the French or the Italian conceptions. Indeed there seems not to be - 184 - an equivalent in Germany of the Italian and French seventeenth- century quarrels between the moderns and the ancients. With no equivalent in Europe, the scientific journals of Gottingen, Leipzig and later Berlin reported every existing paper and book published in Europe and launched a systematic tradition of considering science, which supplied a good foundation for Linnaeism to be established in the 1760s. Microscopical research was considered by the Germans as an emerging science.

The French conception could probably be regarded as the most opposed to the British, at least in terms of the contrast between visibility and production. Throughout the entire eighteenth- century, except for Needham —a British— and Buffon, there is almost no visibility of the microscope in French original titles, although the production of microscopical texts is equivalent to that of the British. The most intriguing situation is given that almost no British microscope makers were cited in France during the century, Britain and France were to have an equal production of microscopical texts. This means that the impact of the British advertising policy was about to become nil in France, which had had enough of its own production of microscopes. The kind of democratic microscope the French promoted is symbolised over the entire century by the attitude of avoiding visibility. Italy presents a different situation, where the lack of visibility was based on another type of a socio-economic regime of work. The Italians clearly did not aim at any sort of industrial production of microscopes, although the optics and natural sciences that emerged were cultivated in several cities, using many different means, methods, publics and objects. - 185 -

With the differences among the various countries in style of reporting on microscopes and microscope makers, it is still difficult to evaluate, more precisely, the production of microscopes in countries other than England. The British and the

Dutch are the only countries where an economic logic close to capitalism was already established in the eighteenth-century, which is perhaps the reason why they were analysed by historians of microscope using categories coming from this kind of economic model. Indeed in this model, there is almost equivalence among visibility, the market and production. Through the examination of three totally distinct contexts, in France, Italy and Germany —to which other states of Europe could bring new and particular examples— the limits of the capitalist model appeared more clearl. Indeed, each of these countries managed to support an entirely different kind of relationship between visibility and production, which, in contrast with the capitalist model, was close to an underground regime, in its disproportion between visibility and production. Production and exchange of goods existed without particular advertisement. The Italian way of commissioned- building microscopes strongly limited the need for advertising and market strategies. In France, despite the heavy presence of corporations and the adoption of this underground regime, the

French microscope makers produced enough instruments to fulfill the national demand, and to export some of them. In comparison to England, these two communities of a relatively similar number of scholars and geographical concentration —Paris and London- published the same number of papers by using both their own local production of m icroscopes.1^5 of course the British could

Including Leeuwenhoek. - 186 - add to this their international market, which represents about 4% of the microscopes mentioned by all scholars, although it probably represented between 5 and 10% of the European market. In Italy, the use of a language scarcely shared, the geographical dispersal of workshops in many parts of the peninsula dominated by several political regimes, and sharing of the work among two communities with such different goals in terms of recognition, advertisement and professionalisation, are perhaps the main factors that led microscope making and its use to be perceived by other European countries as having a weak visibility. If the underground regime existed in France, it was a consequence of the law, while in Italy it was more the result of a geographical and professional dispersal.

To conclude, Germany provided the most intriguing surprise, because of its large number of microscope makers. Indeed they represented the largest number of craftsmen cited by scholars during the last four decades of the eighteenth-century. Also endowed with a scarcely shared language, cryptic to scholars in other countries, the German market for microscopes, as in France and Russia, was reinforced by mathematicians and physicists who followed and debated its advances. Far from being underground from its countrymen’s perspective, Germany’s optical tradition and its workshops thus had enough resources and wealth to supply microscopes to the scholars of Germany. The price of the Adams microscope was indeed much higher than that of a German compound microscope in 1782, of a better quality, according to the research Goeze, and other p e r f o r m e d . The number of craftsmen corresponded to the amount of microscopical work that

146 Goeze 1782, 451. - 187 - made Germany, during the second half of the eighteenth-century,

the main country in which a style of microscopical research was to

develop intensely so as to lay the new foundation on which the future German science could later be built. C h a p t e r 4

A b r a h a m T r e m b l e y , t h e P o l y p a n d N e w D i r e c t i o n s

FOR Microscopical Re s e a r c h

For his 1744 work on the regeneration of the polyp, the Genevan scholar Abraham Trembley (1710-1784) has been considered by some historians as the founder of biology.i Born in Geneva,

Trembley worked in Holland as preceptor from 1733 and started his research on the polyp during the early 1740s.^ The historical accounts of Trembley’s discovery have emphasised both the impact of the Dutch context, the richness of the many procedures he invented for testing regeneration, and its rhetoric of conviction.3 Contrary to the interpretations of the discovery by

Lenhoff, Dawson and Buscaglia, the importance of Trembley and of the polyp in the Europe of the early 1740s stemmed not only from the discoverer’s experimental skills, the property of this “marvelous creature” or from the heritage of the Dutch context. Indeed Holland probably supplied him with an excellent context where everything functioned for the production of microscopical texts, although the country was oriented much more toward anatomical rather than naturalist productions. Subtle anatomy remained among the main microscopical objects of study, in

Holland, which was to change with the arrival of the polyp. A

1 Lenhoff & Lenhoff 1986, 16; Schiller 1974, 185. 2 Baker 1952, 12-16. ^ On the influence of the Dutch context, see Dawson 1985, 1987, 86-88, 183-184; for an account of the experiment thesis, see Baker 1952, 170-187 and Buscaglia 1985; and Lenhoff & Lenhoff 1986, 14, 20 for synthetic charts of the discoveries and procedures. On Trembley's rhetoric of conviction, see Buscaglia 1985, 1998, 330-331. - 189 - particular point neglected by historians was Trembley’s international network and his strategy of communication. He was able to attract the attention of the French academician Reaumur with his accurate reports of observations, and by raising the question of the ambiguity of the species for an unknown creature.^

His correspondence with Reaumur, and then with the President of the Royal Society, Martin Folkes (1690-1754), allowed him to enter the academic world. I will show that Trembley’s experimental skill were to gain in visibility because of his particular strategy of communication. Furthermore, by contrast with the poor, misinterpreted reading of the polyp by historians of the microscope, 5 my concern is thus to bring new material and interpretation in order to illustrate the impact Trembley had on microscopical research. In regards to Trembley’s impact on the use of the microscope, I will particularly focus on three points; the strategy of communication, Trembley’s technique of sending polyps, and the reception of the polyp in Europe. Along with his skills in experimenting and reporting observations, these aspects gave him all the necessary conditions to supply the microscopist with a new natural object, other than insect. I will then look at how a feature of the polyp, that of its being an aquatic organism, linked it with subsequent eighteenth-century research on infusoria and marine organisms. As we will see, the polyp opened up new paths for microscopical research.

Another issue concerns the relation of Trembley’s polyp to metaphysical and religious arguments, and Aram Vartanian has regarded the polyp as being among the causes of the emergent

^ Dawson 1987, 100-105. 5 Wilson 1995, 203; Ford 1985, 107-109; Turner 1970, 411. - 190 - materialism of the 1740s.^ Jacques Roger has also drawn lines of separation before and after the 1740s, considering that with the apparition of the polyp, “the new scientific thought [was] a philosophy”.7 Following a similar path Virginia Dawson has made public evidence, through the publication of the correspondence between the two cousins Trembley and Bonnet, that the latter was particularly interested in metaphysical and religious issues.

Dawson aimed to demonstrate that their pragmatic way of experimenting was imbued with several metaphysical presuppositions. 8 Similarly, other authors have emphasised the influence of the marvelous properties of the creatures which served as experimental object —polyps and lice— on the establishment of a new form of naturalised metaphysics. 9 But first off, there exist only very partial descriptions of the changes that took place during the 1740s, and very few accounts of the impact of Trembley’s and Bonnet’s works. Where did these changes occur? At what level of the scientific realm? For what kind of public? Were the people publicly speaking of metaphysics the same as those who were experimenting? What were the positions held by academies, by reporters in the debate? And what was the debate exactly? Each of these questions has already received different answers although usually including a poor description of Trembley’s impact, and historians have especially neglected to describe the strategy of communication mastered by him. All of the experimental, contextual and object theses seem to me insufficient particularly for explaining Trembley’s impact on the European scientific and

^ V artanian 1950. ^ Roger 1993, 749. ^ Dawson 1987, 155-156. 9 Barsanti 1997, 68-70; Stafford 1997, 233-235; Wilson 1995, 203; Ford 1985, 109-111. - 191 - cultural realm. Wilson’s cliché where she claims that with the discovery of regeneration, “plastic forces reentered natural philosophy with a vengeance”^0 is especially unacceptable, because it lets the reader believe that Trembley brought before the public such metaphysical assertions. Wilson should thus have explained what the relation is between her view and the fact that there is not even one word relating to plastic forces, soul or metaphysical questions in Trembley’s 1744 Mémoires, even in his criticism of spontaneous generation as being influenced by prejudice. Similarly, Virginia Dawson has underlined the influence of theology on Trembley, and has discussed Trembley’s rejection of Locke’s material soul to argue for the importance of philosophy in

Trembley’s t h e o r i e s . But the question is to what extent such a belief, set down in Trembley’s Day Book, influenced his experimental practice and his reports of observations. I would contend that before 1775, there was no trace of Trembley’s public commitment to these issues.

The discourse about the soul was certainly a subject of actual discussion renewed by the discovery of regeneration, but the polyp had also a strong effect on scientific organisation of research. It consisted of a clear thrust that strengthened the distinction between scientific and metaphysical reasoning, which sealed the intellectual autonomy of a biological practice that was to emerge institutionally during the first half of the nineteenth-century.

Consequently, I subscribe to Barsanti’s thesis in which the polyp and other wondrous creatures established the ground for future

10 Wilson 1995, 203. 1 1 Trembley 1744a, 309. See Lenhoff and Lenhoff 1986, 37: “The M ém oires say nothing regarding preformation”. 12 Dawson 1987, 127-129, 184. - 192 - biology. I will however limit myself to describing the changes that occurred during the 1740s and bring forward an explanation which appeals to Trembley’s style of communication, and its impact on using the microscope, a field of transverse practices that forms an important chapter of eighteenth-century natural sciences. The fact that the soul and the forces were issues almost never raised in the early scientific texts of Bonnet and Trembley and in the correspondences between Bonnet and Trembley with Reaumur and

Folkes, shows that the academic style of omitting metaphysical subjects was among the important strategies of communication. Such a conscious choice, linked to exceptional circumstances, had the effect of reinforcing the separation of two spheres, the public sphere in which the question of the soul could sometimes be raised, and the specialised and technical realm strengthened by a dramatic increase of visibility and production in microscopical research. Historians emphasised the emergence of a public sphere during the Enlightenment, in relation to scientific activity, which “elevated a certain kind of objective knowledge to a privileged place in élite culture”. T h e distinction between the infrastructural practices of the natural experimentalist science and the superstructural and ideological discourse on the soul, both fields which started to interact through some new issues like “regeneration” and “unbelievers”, is a sign of the cultural modernity of the epoch for which the polyp of Trembley played the role of a driving force.

1 ^ Broman 1994, 139. - 193 -

4 .1 A model for scientific communication, the European spreading of the polyp and the “democratic microscope”

One of the main problems on the fringes of microscopical world, dealt with poorly during the seventeenth-century, was the live transport of microscopical animals. In the case of larger animals, living, dead or stuffed, the skills and methods used for their transport had been progressively improved from the time of the Renaissance. Quadrupeds brought alive or dead from America, Africa and Asia were usually destined to adorn museums and zoological gardens, and seldom intended for physiological i n q u i r y . But still, carrying dead animals, especially overseas, raised particular problems of conservation, including decay, and being gnawed and eaten. Smaller objects were less problematic. In 1703, the French scholar Puget from Lyon sent the dried cornea of several insects to Father Lamy in Paris, to be observed with the m icroscope.15 Still even in the 1720s, the journey of small live organisms was not such an easy task. Edmund Barrel, Rector of Sutton in Kent, felt unable to pack the one and two year-old specimens of mistletoe he wanted to send to the Royal Society, and had to postpone it until the next y e a r .i^ Sometimes scholars managed to send live insects, like for instance Hans Sloane, who mentioned such a souvenir in 1733. He asked Leeuwenhoek to identify an “enbane” maggot, said to be useful for toothache, and forwarded “it wrapt in silk to Leeuwenhoek, at Delph in Holland,

14 For a list of the physiological inquiries on digestion, see Salomon- Bayet 1978, 447-450. 15 Puget 1704, 66, 74. 16 Barrel 1727, 215. - 194 - where it arrived safe and a liv e ” 4 The dispatching of live aquatic creatures raised particular problems of another type, since they had to be conserved in their natural environment. Furthermore, even catching such a creature could be a real problem, and scholars were dependent on seamen. In the seventeenth-century, rare were the scholars who, like the botanist of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Paolo Boccone, went on such marine expeditions to catch c o r a l . And, in the preface to Marsigli’s 1725 Histoire physique de la mer, Boerhaave explained that if someone wanted to catch living organisms from the sea, one should take the trouble to go to the coast, ask seamen to be taken out in their boats, or at least ask them to fish and bring in some of these creatures for further observation.19 After Boccone, Marsigli used a simple method for observing coral in its natural environment. Immediately after gathering it, he put it in a large glass jar filled with sea-water, placed the jar in a room at the same temperature he had measured in the sea, let it settle, and could thus quietly observe the coral undisturbed. Thanks to this forerunner of the aquarium, in December 1706 Marsigli observed, within half an hour, minute things coming out of the “branches”, attached to tiny holes, which he interpreted as being the flowers of the c o r a l . After considering it a mineral, Boccone for example, coral turned out now to be a vegetable.^i If this idea was strongly criticised and progressively abandoned all over Europe between 1742 and the

17 Sloane 1733, 100. 1 8 Boccone (1674, 6, 39-40) traveled to the coast of Sicily in 1670 and of Holland in 1673. 19 Boerhaave, Preface, in Marsigli 1725, 4-6. Marsigli 1707. Marsigli's first “laboratory” was in Cassis, south of Marseilles (Baker 1952, 118). For a detailed account based on the manuscript report by Marsigli, see McConnell 1990, 57. ^1 In 1706, Marsigli did not believe the coral was a mineral (McConnell 1990, 54-55), an opinion advocated by the botanist Pierre Magnol (1638-1715). - 195 -

1780s, the procedure of putting the coral or other marine specimens in sea-water out of the sea became a standard appearing and improved upon for every non ichthyological research in marine zoology afterwards .22 Of course scholars also continued to travel by themselves in order to make observations —a journey that could take between two days and a week. In 1727 Jean-André

Peyssonel (1694-1759), a collaborator of Marsigli’s, sent a paper to the Paris academy in which he claimed that the flowers of coral were actually small animals.23 Reaumur required evidence for the new thesis, which probably lead to one of the first attempts at transporting live coral over a long distance:^^ “specimens had been placed in vessels of sea-water and carried to him by men walking on foot the whole way from Marseilles to Paris (more than 500 miles). The material naturally reached him in a decayed condition and he did not see the p o ly p s ” .^5 As a consequence, Reaumur could not reproduce Peyssonel’s observation and strongly opposed the publication of the latter’s paper in the Mémoires de r Académie. In the middle of the century, the controversy was common knowledge, as revealed by a report of John Ellis’ 1755 Natural history of the corallines in which the author of Journal étranger reckoned the difficulty in observing coral in its natural condition to be among the causes of the coral quarrel:

As these productions are very delicate, and the polyps wrinkle as soon as they are exposed to the air, it was not a small effort to find them in their natural condition, in order to examine them with the microscope; which

2 2 When I speak of marine zoology in this chapter, it usually does not include ichthyology. 2 3 For a detailed account of Peyssonel’s discovery and his manuscript Traité du corail, see McConnell 1990, 63-65. A former collaborator to Marsigli, François-Xavier Bon (1678-1761) claimed priority over Peyssonel for the discovery of the animal nature of the coral (McConnell 1990, 59-61). 2 4 Reaumur 1729, 270-271. Reaumur presented his mémoire the 9th of August 1727 (PV AS 1727, t. 46, f° 280-287v) but Peyssonel was not quoted in it. 2 5 Baker 1952, 119. 196 -

is, perhaps, partly the cause why there have been so much dispute about their true nature.^ ^

In such a context where almost everything had to be created from

scratch for transporting living creatures, Abraham Trembley

played an important role as he succeeded in preparing travelling

microscopic animals whose “marvelous properties” could hence be communicated to everyone regardless of the distance. Trembley was asked about the method for sending the live unknown

creatures he had found in late 1740 by Reaumur, who requested

the former to forward him the beings in a letter dated 15 January 1741:

If you were to have enough of these small bodies to deprive you of several of them, it would perhaps not be impossible for you to enable me to see them, by sending them in a very small bottle filled with water, through the post.

Trembley sent the first parcel with fifty polyps on the 16th of February. On the 27th, Reaumur received the bottle with the dead polyps, and suggested that the Spanish wax used to cork the bottle had deprived the organisms of any air and proposed to use just a cork. Meanwhile he asked for Trembley’s permission to read his

letter that consisted of the description of the first experiments on

the polyp’s regeneration. Reaumur read it before the Académie des

sciences in the course of three meetings, on the 1st, 8th and 22th of March 1741.^8 On the 16th of March, Trembley sent anew

twenty polyps to Reaumur, in a larger bottle. In order to secure his

packaging, Trembley had conducted experiments on the bottle

itself, by putting three polyps inside the real bottle and took them

2 6 An. 1755b, 75. 2 2 Reaumur to Trembley, the 15th of January 1741 (CRT 1943, 17). See also Dawson 1987, 100-110. 2 8 PV AS 1741, t. 60, fol. 76, 80, 88. - 197 - for a walk of seven leagues (25 miles).29 After having completed the “experimental trip”, the polyps seemed fine, and Trembley could thus send them for the real journey to Paris that lasted between four and seven days. About a week later Reaumur received the creatures alive, and that very evening repeated the experiments carefully described by Trembley. Either in the meeting of the 22nd, or between the 22nd and the 25 th of March, Reaumur demonstrated the polyp to the “entire academy”30 and, with it, to “the court and the city”.31 Spectacle, and experiment —with naturalia— were thus combined a few years before the well-known experiments on the Leyden jar by the Abbé Nollet.32 On the 25th, having consulted Bernard de Jussieu, who already knew a similar red species, Reaumur was able to place them in the animal kingdom and give them the definite name of Polyp. New packages of polyps by Trembley from The Hague to Paris carried on until 1743.33 During that time, Trembley continued to improve some of his procedures and to invent new experiments, on the hydra with seven heads, the swallowing of a polyp by another polyp, the graft of two different half polyps, and the turning inside out the polyp,3 4 an experiment he started attempting in July 1 7 4 1 , eventually succeeding in autumn 1 7 4 2 . 3 5

29 CRT 1943, 50-53. 3 0 CRT 1943, 64. 31 Fontenelle 1744, 35. 3 2 On Nollet’s spectacular experiments, see Licoppe 1996, 163-166. 3 3 The 6th of April 1741, Trembley sent anew twenty polyps to Reaumur. A new batch of polyps failed one year later (June 1742), they arrived dead (CRT 1943, 132). On the next year, the sending of the 8th of August 1743 was successful {Ibid., 174). 3 4 Lenhoff 1986, 14, 20; on turning the polyp, see Dawson 1987, 122-127. 3 5 Trembley to Reaumur, the 1st of November 1742 (CRT 1943, 134-135). - 198 -

The episode of the French academic demonstration was to be repeated in England two years later. Although Martin Folkes, P.R.S.

had been privately informed about the existence of the polyp by

Buffon in July 1741, and although Bentinck and Gronovius, who

were sent polyps in 1742, had published on the subject two small papers in Philosophical Transactions, the issue was left largely

untouched in England until March 1743. All the same, standard

criticisms, jokes and pungent irony were already inspired by these

an im als

which, being cut into several pieces, become so many perfect animals,^ ^

especially from certain poets in Cambridge. Imagine a fish cut... Through the channel of Bentinck, Trembley sent Folkes, at his request, polyps which he received the 10th of March 1743, and the

following day he demonstrated “before the lens and the microscope” the polyps at his home in front of twenty Fellows of the Royal Society. During this time he began performing the experiments on regeneration indicated by Trembley’s instructions. At the meeting of the 17th of March, Folkes exhibited the regenerating polyps, and more than 150 people saw t h e m . ^7 Two

years after Reaumur’s demonstration in Paris, on the 24th of

March 1743, along with Baker, Parsons, and an “optician” — probably Cuff— who brought “a good microscope”, Folkes again demonstrated the regeneration of the polyps before an astonished public. In March 1743 Bonnet issued a 20 page account of his

experiments on the regeneration of water worms, rapidly published in Philosophical Transactions, which had the effect of increasing the sense of wonderment, if possible, and the same year

This passage is taken from the title of Gronovius 1742. 3 7 CRT 1943, 166. - 199 - other fellows vouched for the budding and regeneration of polyps, including Bentinck, Richmond, Baker and Thomas Lord.

Folkes’ report of the March meeting to Trembley mentioned that the “unbelievers” —in French les incrédules— were silenced, and no one ventured any more to joke about the “marvelous animal”.

Indeed, among the main reasons set forth by Reaumur, Trembley,

Folkes, Gronovius and Bentinck to experiment on live polyps — which legitimated the shipments— the issue of the unbelievers emerged several times. Reaumur wrote a few pages on the polyp in the preface to the sixth volume of his 1742 Histoire des insectes, in order to

have a ready answer to the questions from the unbelievers, which I am bombarded with.^^

In March 1743, Folkes was deeply astonished to see how the unbelievers’ protests were cancelled out by the demonstrations, and Trembley saw both Reaumur’s and Folkes’ notes on the polyp as the best “credentials” to be heard from the naturalists, and as the strongest evidence to which to refer for the unbelievers.In Leyden, in particular, many people did not give credence to the budding and reproduction of the polyp after it was cut. The summer of 1742 actually marked the beginning of the systematic

“strategy of generosity” adopted by Trembley, who started giving and dispatching polyps and correlative instructions to everyone who asked him for the animals in order to repeat his observations. Sending live polyps was by then understood as a good way to silence the unbelievers. In Leyden, the skeptics had been defeated

^ ^ Reaumur to Trembley, the 25 June 1742 (CRT 1943, 130). ^ ^ Trembley to Reaumur, the 11th of January 1743 (CRT 1943, 153). Trembley to Folkes, the 31st of May 1743 (Royal Society, Ms Folkes, Vol. IV, letters 17, 34). - 200 - by the experiments carried out in 1742 by Albinus, Musschenbroek and a Genevan friend of Trembley, Jean Nicolas Sébastien

Allamand, and reported by Johann Friedrich Gronovius in

Philosophical Transactions.^^ Still in 1744, Albinus, and Gaub, who had succeeded Haller’s professorship in Leyden, were solicited as witnesses for a repetition of some of Trembley’s experiments. It is worth noting that there are two kinds of unbelievers, which can be distinguished as skeptics and unbelievers. Historically speaking, the first were those whom the polyp awakened, and whose skepticism exclusively concerned the truth of certain scientific facts. They can be viewed as skeptics, even if called unbelievers — incrédules— by that time. Like many other scholars who experimented on regenerating creatures, Ginanni and Ellis also wanted to “convince the unbelievers” of the truthfulness of their f a c t s . 41 No particular antimaterialistic or metaphysical assumptions was involved in the method —experiments and observations— used by scholars to establish the phenomena. The first skeptics did not claim particularly materialistic sympathies, but they largely did not believe that an animal could regenerate when cut, or that coral could be an animal. These unbelievers were simply skeptics, but perhaps, by these days, this word too much recalled Pierre Bayle’s relativism, and the words “unbelievers” and incrédules were free for usage. The second type of unbelievers which appeared during the late 1740s stemmed mainly from the

French materialist or antireligious scholars and philosophers. Aram

Vartanian has shown that the debate over the material soul was carried out through clandestine literature in France and Holland in

4 0 Gronovius 1742, 218. On the Leyden scholars, see Dawson 1987, 124. 4 1 Ginanni 1747, 255; Ellis 1755, xiv. - 201 - the 1740s/^ Proposing materialistic explanations of life and soul, with plastic and vital forces, spontaneist issues, random combinations of atoms, and theories of heredity, certain scholars and philosophers —La Mettrie, Maupertuis, Diderot— resuscitated something of the old democritean tradition, and made particular use of the polyp and of Needham’s spontaneist claims to ground their theses.Among them, the materialist or antireligious unbelievers of the 1760s-1770s which Needham and Bonnet focused on had nothing to do with the first s k e p t i c s . still similar words were used to design them, as shown by the experiments

Spallanzani carried out on the regeneration of the head of the snail.Between 1768 and 1772, the whole of Europe was divided into two camps each of which had performed thousands of experiments on snails in order to decide whether regeneration of the head occurred or not. And the scholars whose experiments were not successful were described as skeptics or unbelievers by the other party.

Another consequence of Trembley’s strategy of generosity was that, within a few years, models based on the journey of the polyp were put into general use throughout Europe, and extended to other microscopic animalcules. Being reserved for specialists such as Reaumur and his circle of disciples up until 1742,^6 the shipping

4 2 Vartanian (1960, 68-74) has highlighted this debate in the materialistic works of Saint-Hyacinthe’s Recherches philosophiques (1744), Jacques Perretti’s Lettre philosophique sur les physionomies (1746), La M ettrie’s L’homme Machine (1747) and other anonymous writings. 4 3 Maupertuis 1745, 84-87, 102-105; La Mettrie 1748, Buffon 1749, Diderot 1753, Helvetius 1755, d’Holbach 1770. On the link of materialism with the polyp, see Dawson 1994, 84-85 and Vartanian 1950, 253. 4 4 On these unbelievers, see M&R 1986, 62-76. 4 5 On this debate, see Beretta 2000. 4 6 Bonnet also sent Reaumur many insects and worms, dead and alive, and notably his regenerating worms in February 1742 (BPU: Ms Bo 42 f° 35, Letter of Reaumur to Bonnet of the 28 February 1742). - 202 - of live creatures became the standard from 1743 onwards. The method was soon adopted by the naturalists in England. On the 2nd of March 1743 Folkes received polyps from a fellow who lived in the countryside, and on the 8th of June, he received cut worms.

Henry Baker, likewise, asked for microscopic creatures from his countrymen and received, on the 10th of March 1743, a new live animalcule in a bottle from one of his British correspondents the Reverend Henry Miles.Baker was to frequently acknowledge the receipt of other parcels from numerous correspondents in the same decade. Aside from Count Bentinck, —one of Trembley’s mentors— Gronovius and Lieberkhun in Berlin, many other unknown scholars received polyps from Trembley,"^8 who wrote to

Folkes in July 1743:

I am entirely taken up with dispatching polyps to a place or another."^ ^

On the 28th of September Needham sent mildew to Folkes, who had himself distributed the animals to a large number of people, notably to Baker and Parsons, and complained already in April 1743 about lacking polyps, having handed out almost all his specimens. To fill up his jars, Trembley once more forwarded him, in June, a species of polyps different from the first. The 14th of

November Folkes passed on polyps and the inevitable instructions to the mathematician Mac Laurin in Edinburgh for the demonstration of regeneration in Scotland. One year later, in

October 1744, polyps still travelled across England, addressed from Norwich to Folkes. Although these are only a few hints that

47 Miles 1742, 418. 4 8 Gronovius received the polyps during the Summer of 1742, and Lieberkhun received them in May or June 1743. 4 9 Trembley to Folkes, the 16th July 1743 (Royal Society, Ms Folkes, vol. IV, letter 66). - 203 -

manifest the existence of this practice, the parcels themselves

constituted a veritable relay race that continuously expanded and provided a standard method for the exchange of minute and

aquatic creatures to be observed through the microscope.

Particularly in the case of Britain, the data allowed important

corrections to be made to two distorted interpretations of the

polyp’s fate in England by Gerard Turner and Brian Ford. First the above data rectify Turner’s description of the reception of the polyp by the British “in 1742”. Apart from public rumor and joke on the polyp, virtually nothing took place in London in 1742,

because the polyps were not received in England before the successful shipment of March 1743 by Trembley. In addition. Turner neglected the crucial point, by mentioning neither that the polyps nor the instructions had been sent to Folkes, the event that

actually enabled the Royal Society to repeat the experiments.

Contrary to what was implied by Turner and stated by Brian Ford, Henry Baker did not by any stretch of the imagination invent the

experiments on the polyp by himself. How could historians of

microscopy sing the praise of a plagiarist?^! As acknowledged by

Folkes in his correspondence to Trembley, Baker received polyps.

^ Turner 1970, 411: “In 1742 there was considerable interest among fellows of the Royal Society in the freshwater polyp {Hydra viridissima) as a result of the recent discovery and description of this animal by Abraham Trembley, and, with Martin Folkes, Baker carried out experiments on this animalcule which he published in 1743 under the title An attempt towards a Natural History of the Polyp". ^ ! Ford’s presentation is as follows. He acknowledges that Trembley had first discovered the polyp by quoting Baker (Ford 1985, 107). But in writing “by the time Trembley and Baker were writing on the same subject”, one understands a coincidence where there is not only a relation of primacy, but even a causal relation between Trembley and Baker’s works. The misinterpretation appears in full light when, after finishing a list of “Baker’s experiments”. Ford can write, “There seemed no end to Baker’s invention!” {Ibid., 109). For a closer interpretation of Baker, see Lenhoff and Lenhoff 1986, 25. - 204 -

copied every instruction given by Trembley before practicing and repeating the experiment, and literally plagiarised the Trembley’s

experiments in order to publish his book before him. Folkes, who

anticipated the plagiarism, warned Trembley in June 1743 that

Baker wanted to read his experimental journals before the Society

in October. In September, Folkes informed him that Baker was about to issue his book, and evinced a bitter description of his

colleague’s attitude in several letters to Trembley^^. From this time he trusted only Graham.^ ^

To succeed in sending his specimens, Trembley had to concentrate on both the means of preservation of the animal- environment system during the journey, and the instructions for the people who were to receive the parcel. Looking at the animal- environment system and not only at the animal alone was, in itself, a kind of novelty. Joblot made a similar kind of travelling parcel in Paris, and included a design in his 1718 book for a small phial to this end (see Fig. D). However, although it should have enabled people to receive infusions around the 1710s, there are no reports that it was used after the 1720s, when the issue of animalcules fell out of favour. At around the same time, Marsigli was also thinking in terms of an animal-environment system when he placed coral in a jar, a step that necessitated further attention to the means of conservation and feeding of such “plants”, but he did not report on any interest in sending the jars elsewhere. Marsigli had created a marine system out of the sea, and Trembley had managed to distribute aquatic systems to the main intellectual centres of Europe. Trembley made it possible for the natural environment and

5 2 CRT 1943, 191. 5 3 Folkes to Trembley, the 19th of May 1744 (Ms Trembley, p. 99). - 205 -

the living microscopic creatures to travel, and these were among

the essential conditions for his revolutionary success. In every shipment of polyps there was not just one thing travelling, but always three: the polyps, their environment and specific food, and

the instructions both for the conservation of the system and for

the reproduction of the experiments. These elements seemed

important enough as to be mentioned in the letter Folkes sent to

Trembley on the 30th of November 1743 to award him the Copley M edal:

We are no less sensible of your great candour, and the Readiness you have shown not only to transmit to us faithful abstracts of your own experiments, but also to send us over the Insects themselves, whereby we have been enabled to examine by our selves, and see with our own Eyes the Truth of the astonishing Facts, you had before made us acquainted w ith .^ ^

Trembley’s “experimental journey” also bears testimony to the fact that he was at least as accurate and clever at managing to send live polyps as he was in inventing extraordinary experiments. Very

seldom was such combined attention paid to both experiments and to the strategy of communication. Leeuwenhoek’s technique was to

wait for people to come and look through his microscope to confirm his observations. In contrast, Trembley’s more aggressive scheme for communication was the result of a positive awareness,

as he pointed out in the preface to his 1744 prominent Mémoires

pour servir à l’histoire d’un genre de polype d ’eau douce à bras en forme de corne:

I made it my duty to communicate my discoveries, in proportion as I carried them out. I gave polyps, as much as I could, to those who desired to repeat my experiments; and I explained to them how I managed to perform the experiments. It came hence that the polyps were generally known in a short time, and that, in several places, people were put in a condition to

Folkes to Trembley, the 30th of November 1743 (Ms Trembley, pp. 91- 9 2 ). - 206 -

verify a part of my experiments. This is what was done last summer by Mr. Baker in England as regards a few of them.^^

The procedure of sending an animal-environment system was

quickly adopted for creatures other than aquatic ones, the slight

delay in discovering some species being credited to the absence of

such a practice. For instance if the Kermes had been considered a seed, and not an animal, this was also because its system had not travelled. Thanks to the spread of this practice, scholars could give

better reports of many lesser-known species and specimens. In

1757, in order to describe the male of the Carolinian cochineal, John Ellis simply asked a friend in Carolina for the animal- environment system: “I wrote to Dr. Alexander Garden, of Charles town, south Carolina, to send me some of the joints of the cactus opuntia, with the insect on it; which he did the latter end of the year 1757” .56

The transport of a living system could of course meet with certain obstacles. Indeed, shortly after this time, Linnaeus, with whom Ellis corresponded, read before the Swedish Academy the following text: “When Mr Rolander went to America, my first and only desire was that he could procure me living Cochineal. He did

so, but for my misfortune, the box with the cactus full of Cochineal

arrived precisely when I was in the Academy. The gardener put out the plant, saw it full of worms, and killed them”. He added that “even being the first to get the living Cochineal in Europe, for the rest I could not take any advantage from that”.^7 During the

second part of the eighteenth-century variations appeared in the

^ ^ Trembley 1744a, v-vi. See on Baker’s Natural History of the Polyp, Turner [1974], 62-63. 5 6 Ellis 1762, 662. 5 7 Linnaeus 1762, 29. - 207 -

practice of sending, that related to scientific as well as medical

purposes, for instance the dispatching of samples containing

vaccine.58 in 1 7 4 5 , Allamand —who wanted to remain anonymous-

received blighted wheat from Trem bley.59 John Ellis sent fixed

polyps, a procedure he described in the introduction to his 1 7 5 5

Natural history of corallines'. “Finding upon my arrival, that I could

distinguish the true natural appearance of many species of

corallines, with their animals, by being preserved in spirits, I thought it might be satisfactory to know the method I had fallen upon for this purpose; and, accordingly, recommend the following to those, who are desirous of obtaining varieties of these corallines, and other sea productions, from their friends in the

sea-coast, in great perfection”. The method was based on those of Marsigli and Trembley, adding new elements to fix the polyps. It consisted in taking the corallines out of the sea oysters in which they lived, instantly setting them in buckets of sea water, and removing the shells. Then Ellis put them onto a white earthen plate

full of sea water, and waited for the polyps to appear. Within one hour they came into sight and stretched. A magnifying glass helped to distinguish them. The polyps were quickly removed with a pincer and immersed immediately in a vessel full of some kind of

spirit. “This will fix the animals in such a manner, that, when they

are put into wide-mounted strong glass-bottles full of the same

spirits, and well corked, many varieties may be sent together to a great distance, without prejudice to the figure of the animals, as I

5 8 Razzell 1977, 34-38. 5 9 Allamand 1747, 102; An. 1747a, 45-46; Needham 1748, 648; Needham 1749, 34. 6 0 Ellis 1755, xii-xiii. - 208 -

have experienced”.61 Ellis also reported a similar method for fixing

both the coralline and the stretched polyp, by pouring boiling

water in the vessel before putting the animal into the spirit.

Ordinary precautions suited to the use of the microscope were

taken, such as putting the organisms into small glasses, in order to

allow for the use of different magnifiers. 62 These procedures were

considered important enough to be described in the French report

of Ellis’ book which appeared in the Journal étranger.^^ The

practice of fixing a minute organism like the polyp was intended

for means of conveyance and observation, as well as to convince people of the existence of the polyp living in the coral: “It will be the best method I know of keeping these extraordinary plant-like

animals in a condition capable of convincing the most incredulous of their nature and o r i g i n ” .64 By contrast, when Leeuwenhoek

donated some of his microscope-objects to the Royal Society, he selected particular objects, desiccated and dead. According to his listing, the only entire organisms were the animalcula in semine [!] and an embryo of cochineal, desiccated of course. Apart from

these, he sent only fragments of animals, from fly’s eyes to

elephant’s ivory. The society did not get any living systems or live

animalcule of the infusions, and by not sending such systems,

Leeuwenhoek also proved the limitations of his science.

The establishment of sending a living system elsewhere as a

practice was the equivalent of a small revolution in the circulation

of scientific objects and in the practices of scientific proof. Indeed during the four years between 1741 and 1744 the standard parade

61 Ellis 1755, xiii. 6 2 Ellis 1755, xiv. 6 3 An. 1755b, 75-78. 64 Ellis 1755, xiv. - 209 -

of witnesses, brought in, since the seventeenth-century, to settle

academic issues started to compete with the factor of geographical

proximity improved by the sending of the polyp. One of the outcomes was that the parade of witnesses, as a stage of scientific proof, gave way to or was balanced by the network. Indeed the

possibility that every isolated scholar or small society could obtain

whatever kind of live system they wanted allowed them to be taken

as participants equal in treating certain microscopical issues to even the scholars who experimented on the colour spectrum. In other words the standards for the practices of the microscope

were increasingly demanding. The examples of Ellis and Linnaeus

allow us to surmise that, while local groups of witnesses had provided evidence for a scientific fact up until the 1740s —for instance, for the cochineal— such collective inspection was replaced in the 1750s by sending living systems. This means that, with the work of Trembley, the circulation of scientific goods became a primary model whose impact can be measured on using the microscope as well as on the establishment of a new scientific discipline. Stimulated by Reaumur, whose role was absolutely

c r u c i a l , 65 Trembley invented an efficient way to circulate microscopic living systems, and thus brought about an epistemological rupture with the previous regime, both of the

collective system of proof and of the speed information could reach a targeted person. These were, among other things, two

essential conditions for the microscope to become, even for a short period, a democratic instrument. The regeneration of the polyp was probably the first of the microscopical discoveries that

6 5 On Reaumur's general importance to Trembley and the polyp, see Dawson 1987, 179-183 and Baker 1952, 186-187. - 210 -

was to last and to get a unanimous European backing in so short a

time. The advances in the method of shipment that enabled

scholars to exchange specimens added, to traditional written

means of communication a resource for these scholars to react as

if one individual, notably in the case of a new discovery many of took to repeating.

4.2 Trembley’s laboratory and its effect on the practices of the microscope

The method for sending live specimens had two particular effects on scientific communication. By reducing geographical distance, it participated in promoting a wider spread of scientific communication, diminishing costly trips to verify something with one’s own eyes. It helped to democratise the microscope, to standardise the vision, allowing many people to see relatively the same things. Historians recognised the influence of Trembley’s polyp which was well acknowledged during the rest of the century, but neglected the key means by which the polyp’s influence could be so powerful. There was practically no important paper or book dealing with microscopes in the second half of the century that did not refer to Trembley.^6 From 1741, there is evidence that the polyp was a European topic that left aside every other scientific

and even political issue —Europe was involved in the war for the

succession of Austria. In August 1741, Reaumur could write to Trembley that

Müller 1773-1774 I, praef. (s. p.). - 211 -

never did an insect cause so much an uproar than do the polyps and alike insects.^ ^

England was in shock during all of 1743, and, as the editor of

Bibliothèque Britannique wrote in Autumn 1743:

The marvelous properties of the new Polyp (...) have become the object of such a curiosity and research of some of the members of the Royal Society, that Mr. Cromwell Mortimer, Secretary of this illustrious assembly, has but given in the n° 467 of the Transactions pieces which only relate to it.^^

In November 1743 the tidal wave had already reached Rome and other Italian cities.^9 Other countries, such as Sweden,

acknowledged the polyp a few years later. At the Swedish academy the anonymous A. B. began his 1746 paper with these words.

Apart from electricity, I can not see that naturalists have been so occupied with anything else this year as with the polyp.^ ®

Three other papers on the polyp were published during the decade. In 1747 the major Swedish entomologist Carl de Geer wrote a paper on the water insect Monoculus in which he discussed certain issues related to the polyp. Five years later, in 1752, Peter Lofling brought forward to the academy the debate over coral, in which he obviously had to discuss the polyp issue, and later, in 1754, Martin Kahler described a new species of polyp.In Berlin Lieberkhun had demonstrated the polyp for the academy in 1743, but the main research on polyps in Germany was to develop during the 1750s.

Additionally, up to the French Revolution, people recalled

Trembley and the polyp as an extraordinary event that had overturned many aspects of European scientific, cultural and

6 7 CRT 1943, 106. 6 8 An. 1743b, 159. 6 9 Ginanni 1747, 255. 7 0 A.B. 1752, 203. 7 1 Geer 1753, Lofling 1755, Kahler 1756. - 212 - public life. In 1770, Guettard considered the polyp to have become almost a political issue: “the discovery of the polyps and of the reproduction by cut is so important in Physics [Physique] that nations fought over the honour of having made it”.72 In 1775, the court botanist of the Palatin Elector, Nathaniel-Joseph Necker, wrote that “there is no animal which had inspired more research among physicists [physiciens, i.e. experimentalists] than the polyp”.23 In Hannover as well, Blumenbach acknowledged the importance of Trembley for the creation of marine zoology.24 In

Florence, in 1781, Fontana recalled that “we needed a Trembley and a Bonnet to disillusion us from general axioms, and from the idea of a necessary law common to the generation of every animal”.25 At the same time Guettard acknowledged the impact of the polyp at every level of culture, speaking of “this discovery which caused such a major revolution in the habits of many naturalists, and even of metaphysicians, moralists and physicists.”26

The multiplication of methods of sending animalcules involved also much preparation that took place within the context of the laboratory. Indeed the care taken by Trembley in preparing polyps for transport, and the instructions given for the conservation of the polyps, demanded a long time and many experiments on feeding and conservation. His research formed a starting point for reflection on the conditions that enabled the preservation of small organisms so one could have at one’s disposal enough and

2 2 Guettard 1770 II, 515. 2 3 Necker 1775, 43. 2 4 Blumenbach 1780, 119-122. 2 5 Fontana 1781, 87. 2 6 Guettard 1783 IV, 125. - 213 -

continuously replenished material to perform multiple series of experiments on them. Such attention paid to the problems of conservation of living beings allows us to understand the impact of

this method on the emergence of the experimental naturalistic

laboratory during the 1740s. Trembley’s activity was actually

painstaking, for he stated having sometimes conserved more than

140 labeled jars containing polyps. They needed to be recorded with daily or weekly accuracy, and historians of the laboratory have characterised a similar organisation of these inscriptions as

“an organic, growing, slowly changing movement, a network of

intertwined problems which themselves develop”.T rem b ley ’s was not an isolated example. Bonnet carried out series of experiments on many species of the louse, and observed parthenogenesis up to the ninth generation. In September 1744, Count Francesco Ginanni in Siena, who had come to know the polyps through Reaumur’s 1742 Mémoires, tried regeneration experiments on water worms, also briefly outlined in Reaumur’s preface. He cut sixty worms in three parts, and put them in as many labeled jars and opened one each day in order to anatomise the internal structure of the pieces and measure the progress in regeneration.78 Notably he could identify with the microscope the formation of an organ he believed to be the heart after 22 days, and the entire regeneration of the worms after 40 days. 7 9

Therefore the vignette placed at the top of Trembley’s fourth Mémoire (Fig. P) (containing the most exciting experiments), which shows him experimenting in an almost empty room with his two pupils in front of the window, is but a very clean iconographie

7 7 Holmes 1985, xx. 7 8 Ginanni 1747, 295-304. 7 9 Ginanni 1747, 298. - 21 4 -

in i »*

'J773S^7=f.

Fig. P. Trembley’s vignette for the fourth Mémoire reveals a clean iconographie representation of his laboratory, probably filled with much more objects and Jars (Trembley 1744, 229). - 215 -

version of the reality of the laboratory. One counts about 20 jars, but where are the remaining 120?80

Usually with several microscopes at its centre, and many series

of instruments, tools and things such as glass jars, bottles, jars,

labels, scalpels, scissors, needles, watch-glasses, brushes, etc.; with hundreds of minute live organism-environment systems, with books and the journal of experiments, and sometimes instruments like a camera obscura, thermometers, a blowtorch or other, the natural experimentalist laboratory of the 1740s onwards now earned its distinct modern physionomy of a wild and living area enclosed in a cabinet. The many jars containing infusions, plants, insects, worms, batrachians, eggs, etc., assured the swarming of nature and the fight between life and time put under the control of the scientific instruments and of the naturalist’s sight. The laboratory was a half-private atmosphere —only placed under a filtered iconographie light— of which the microscopes, the instruments and the great amount of organisms called for memory of specific gestures and practices, and above all it drove the practitioner to carry out experiments in series to produce new scientific facts. If contingent social processes have an impact on the production of scientific facts in the laboratory, it was nevertheless, as Larry Holmes and Timothy Lenoir have shown, a

“highly structured contingency”.S tructuring this contingency demanded time, but also the construction of new experimental forms of practice, such as experimenting in series, which strengthened the relationship between the scholar and the

Buscaglia (1998, 327) took for grant that the fourth vignette showed the “organisation of Trembley’s private «laboratory»”. ^ 1 Lenoir 1988, 14; Holmes 1985, xvi. - 216 - laboratory, through the obligation to spend more and more time there. Practices of course interact with writings, and several historians of the laboratory have emphasised the importance of the relation of experimenting with writing, that engenders a positive feed-back.82 in Trembley’s inquiry, a new challenge was perceivable through the experimental series, and he was able to condense the circumstantiated details of phenomena, avoiding the prolixity of the classic experimental report. The compression of data and the economy of words were the new tacit rules for the experimental-microscopical report Trembley, and Bonnet had to reinvent in the face of so much data. Bonnet also used other strategies, such as tables —he asked his professor of mathematics to help him— to condense information for the several generations of one louse. To this strengthening of experimental systems in natural sciences a bifurcation in the literary technology corresponded, in-between the experimental report and the microscopical report. If decontextualisation was working in these writings, utility was however not represented.83 Actually, reporting experiments in series demanded more economical ways of writing, and a change in the balance between two fundamental constituents of scientific texts, narration of circumstances and argument.84 This literary technology was based on the statistical intuition that the repetition of experiments shaped a result that was not the mere sum, but the synthesis of all previous trials. Indeed, in contrast to the verbosity and detailed accounts of the experimental report of

8 2 Buscaglia 1998, 343; Lenoir 1988, 8; Holmes 1985, 89, 352. 8 3 See Licoppe 1996, 116-124, 158-160. 8 4 On narration and arguments in scientific papers, see Holmes 1991, 164. - 217 - the late seventeenth-century,85 the 1740s saw a much less wordy method of reporting experiments and observations, which would become widespread by the second part of the century. To cite an example, after quoting the series of experiments by Saussure,

Müller and Goeze, Gleichen informed that he would avoid a “boring prolixity” for the microscopical reports of his fifteen years of work on series of observations.86 Bonnet became aware of the transformation later, and recalled, in a 1776 letter to Duhamel du

Monceau, that he had been influenced by Reaumur*s verbosity. The works of the latter

were contagious. They influenced my first works. I devoted myself completely to d e t a i l s . 8 7

Gleichen and Bonnet’s criticism of verbosity corresponds not only to an increasing economy in reporting experiments, but also to a more synthetical approach of the detailed narrative. Trembley’s work passed the threshold which transformed “detailed circumstances” into an attempt at synthesising all observations in a long-term series of research experiments into a particular kind of outcome: a scientific law. The practice of experiments in series, of which Trembley’s and Bonnet’s experimental systems had revealed the importance, figured among the skills that supported comparison with the experimental procedures of Newton in Optics.

Such was the case of dozens of Europeans scholars, “microscopists” of that period, such as Duhamel, Ginanni, Haller, della Torre, Parsons, Ellis, Hill, Hunter, Targioni, Schaeffer, Hewson, Müller, Wolff, Spallanzani, Adanson, Wrisberg, Saussure,

8 5 On verbosity and the circumstantial detail of Boyle’s experimental report, see S&S 1985, 63-65. 8 6 Gleichen 1778, 67. 8 7 Letter of the 22th of January 1776 (BPU: Ms Bo 74, fol 239vo). - 218 -

Fontana, Gleichen, Corti, Cavolini, etc. Gradually shaped by their writings, embodied in the new form of the microscopical report, the natural experimentalist laboratory came into focus as a detached and much different environment from the museum, the cabinet of marvels, the chamber of physics, the workshop, the chemist’s laboratory, the Hortus or the zoo.

From Abraham Trembley’s strategy of transparent communication resulted a general influence that strengthened the 1740s take-off of microscopical studies and natural experimental research all over Europe, by supplying it with an appropriate and rationalised object. The technique of shipping to which were added highly efficient instructions to reproduce the experiments, had allowed a démocratisation of the polyp regarded as a microscopical object, and such need for observation intensified the demand for microscopes and microscopical research. Through the model of communication which Trembley had supplied to the naturalists, new objects for the microscope could emerge in

England, such as cryptogam in vegetable anatomy and physiology.88 As a major symbol of the relation between the polyp, the microscope and transport, Martin Folkes, in March 1743, offered Trembley a Cuff m icroscope.89 But in opposition to many other discoveries kept secret until their public apparition, the polyp was known by everyone and its discoverer was famous before his major work was issued; such an effect was soon felt on the microscope. The use of microscopes extended already into the public and private demonstrations of regeneration, the polyps

8 8 Pluche 1740, Pickering 1743, 1744, Needham 1743, 1745, Watson 1743, Parsons 1744, 1745, Badcock 1746a, 1746b, Miles 1750. 8 9 This microscope is now conserved at the Musée d’Histoire des Sciences in Geneva, n° 10. - 219 - being observed through the microscope by hundreds of people, of whom obviously only a very small part published reports of their observations. Trembley himself delayed publishing his definitive book which he wanted to bring to perfection, and for which he continued to invent new experiments and produce new facts.

Reaumur, Bonnet, Folkes and others badgered him to publish a full account of his experiments. This was recognised by Reaumur in a letter of the 14th of December 1742 about Trembley’s endless source of experiments and discoveries:

I’m beginning to wish you would stop making discoveries on polyps, until you have published all those you have already made,^ ®

A consequence directly related to the representation of the microscope was that people stopped laughing at the microscopical inquiries —everywhere the skeptics fell silent— and, since more people had had access to the microscope, its visibility could freely re-emerge between 1742 and 1744 particularly. In London, when Folkes received the first polyps in March 1743, he could only acknowledge the absence, in his country, of “natural history made in such way”9i (i.e. experimental), of which Reaumur and

Trembley were, in his eyes, the best representatives. He also expressed his wish that Trembley’s research would be a driving force to bring people around to his way of practicing natural history. Baker’s 1742 Microscope made easy had just been issued, but with little s u c c e s s . Two years later, in October 1744, Folkes could happily say that “recently, people took a lot of pleasure here from the microscope, and it led the craftsmen to improve this

CRT 1943, 151. Dawson (1987, 120) related Trembley’s delay to “his determination to understand the polyp’s structure”. 9 1 CRT 1943, 166. 9 2 The Bibliothèque raisonnée reported the announcement of the publication for the autumn 1742 (An. 1742b, 457). - 220 - instrument.”93 Indeed the microscope was present in practically every paper relating to the polyp, and received a new impulse from the organism. By then, the topical relation between the virtual absence of visibility and the limited production of microscopical texts, typical of the 1730s, was reorganised, providing full scope for the take-off in the use of microscope that had unassumingly began in 1741 (see chart 3).

Chart 3. Number of positive and negative titles for all of Europe in the period 1730-1759. per year.

20 -t-

1 0 +

0 m m -10

-20

-30

-40 - -

- 5 0

1730 32 34 36 38 1740 42 44 46 48 1750 52 54 56 58

The chart shows several phenomena with further precision: a. there is a clear increase in the production of microscopical texts since the early 1740s, as opposed to the 1730s, and especially from 1747 onwards. Between 1740 and 1743, the production is multiplied by 4. b. The increase in visibility (and production) is maximal for the year 1743, after which visibility reaches a mean of 5 positive titles per year during a decade, c. The years 1745 and 1746 indicate a fall in production, but not in visibility.

These results are highly consistent with the above mentioned facts and highlight Trembley as the major driving force for the 1740s take-off in the use of the microscope. To begin with the “anomaly” of the years 1745-1746, during this period a new discovery had turned the attention of the scholars away from the

9 3 MS Trembley, Folkes to Trembley, p. 138. - 221 - microscope, namely electricity and the Leyden jar. Trembley himself reported in a 1746 Philosophical Transactions the experiments performed in Leyden.The peak in the year 1743 is due to the polyp discussed in more than two thirds of the microscopical papers published in Europe, and particularly in

Philosophical Transactions. This peak, of texts concerned with microscopes and their use, to the exclusion of metaphysical discussion, provides clear-cut evidence for the fact that Trembley was renowned before his publication of 1744, and demonstrates the efficiency of his strategy of generosity. Since there is a clear quantitative difference between the pre-1740 and the post-1740 period, I suggest that Trembley’s polyp had a major effect on the representation of the microscope, which could now be publicly considered a routine research tool. As we saw previously the microscope did not cease to be used as a routine research tool during the first four decades of the century, especially in France and Italy. Of course it was mainly used within the academies, which tended to protect its use as a democratic tool intended for an elitist circle. Clearly the microscopical visualisation of the polyp by the “city and the court”, and by hundred of members and non members of many European societies, lead to an inversion in its representation, and, perhaps for the first time in the eighteenth- century, the object revealed by the democratic microscope ceased to belong only to the scholars and was offered for the gaze of the people. Many letters reported the satisfaction of having seen through a microscope the marvelous animal behaving as expected, and, in the same way that the skeptics were silenced, the social representation of the microscope could but evolve positively. Such

^ ^ Trembley 1746, 59-60. - 222 -

a way of opening up the visual pleasure to everyone could only have a major effect on the practices of the microscope in the guise of feed-back. There is no way to calculate the consequences of such a reversal in direction of what had been until then the low

visible representation of the microscope. But mention of

Trembley’s name in almost all the microscopic - zoological papers in the rest of the century leaves no doubts as to his influence on

the practices of the microscope. As a consequence, one is lead to suppose that the new positive representation of the instrument created a demand that strongly contributed to the increase in the production of microscopes. Brian Ford judiciously considered that the polyp allowed for the improvement of the microscope, although he credited Baker with the major impact it had, while the above data clearly speak in favour of Trembley to have brought about the reaching increase in the instrument’s use.^^ Besides having an impact on instrument making, the polyp, allied to the reemerging microscope, was also to influence the creation of new disciplines. In particular the field of marine zoology was soon to be modernised thanks to its heuristic links with the polyp.

95 Ford 1985, 111. 9 6 Eighteenth-century marine zoology and botany were neglected in Deacon’s 1971 Scientists and the sea. Following is a section on marine zoology available in manuscript C. C h a p t e r 5

T h e Q u a n t i f y i n g S p ir it in M ic r o s c o p y a n d K e e p i n g u p

WITH M icroscopical O b j e c t s

5.1 Iconographie techniques and the microscope: naturalising images and an initial approach to quantification

Ever since the pioneering work by Barbara Stafford, and though iconography is a fundamental issue for eighteenth-century microscopy, presupposing a particular relation between vision, representation and drawing, there are nevertheless few studies which tackled the subject.i Typical for instance was the study by Freeman on insect anatomy up until the time of Cuvier, in which only Swammerdam, Malpighi and Lyonnet’s works were investigated, while the iconography in the works of Reaumur, and of the French, Italian, and German naturalists was not taken into account.2 More recently, studies have begun to focus on the eighteenth-century contribution to the iconography of inferior b e in g s ,3 though there is a lack of studies describing the use of microscopes and optical machines for drawing, the iconographie techniques used by the drawers, and the impact of the microscope

^ See Stafford 1994. On Leeuwenhoek’s iconography see Ford 1991; on Swammerdam, see Giglioni 1998, 416 and on Redi, see Tongiorgi Tomasi, 1999, 308, 315, On the Dutch tradition of scientific iconography, see Giglioni 1998, Ruestow 1996, Huisman 1992, Fournier 1991, Alpers 1983. 2 Freeman 1962, 176-180. Ruestow 1996, 282-284. Of course, there was insect anatomy during the eighteenth-century, see Puget 1706, Maraldi 1712, Reaumur 1734-1742, Bazin 1747, 167-177, Rosel 1744-1763, de Geer 1752-1775, Roffredi 1770a, Maria-Teresa Monti’s forthcoming work on Spallanzani’s insect dissections (personal communication), and many others. ^ Tongiorgi Tomasi 1999, de Mey 1997, Baldini 1990. - 224 - on visual representation within the framework of scientific activity. Some historians showed how iconography was used by scholars to strengthen the reader’s conviction of their views.^ Buscaglia emphasised Trembley’s complementary use of iconographie and verbal rhetoric, and Harwood discussed Hooke’s focus on a visual more than on a verbal r h e to r ic . 5 Barbara Stafford has analysed eighteenth-century iconographie sources on ambiguous organisms such as zoophytes, but I see her inquiry as biased by the tacit hypothesis that any image could fit with her story, because it is an image, bringing more confusion than p r e c i s i o n . 6 On another paper, she launches some analogies between art and naturalistic engraving for eighteenth-century iconography, but what are the meaning and limits of such a method that forces historical objets to enter the explanation of contemporaneous issues, such as exhibitionnism.^

Among the various uses of the microscope, the drawing of minute organisms held an important place in late seventeenth and eighteenth-century naturalistic culture. Certain scholars had to solve particular technical problems when drawing animalcules, particularly for the representation of linear time sequences with

4 See Giglioni 1998, 416. 5 Harwood 1989, 134-138; Buscaglia 1985, 1998, 330-339. ^ I strongly disagree with the following statement, picked among others: “It was Cuff’s aquatic microscope that (...) convinced Ellis that corallines should be ranked among animals, not plants” (Stafford 1997, 241). Because, firstly, in Stafford’s paper, this sentence sounds like a general one, while it is but a particular one, taken from Ellis (1755, viii). Secondly, Stafford took it for grant, which only reflects her belief in the “technological thesis” (see chapter 7.2), while it is a sentence-to-be- interpreted. Thirdly Ellis used also the Wilson microscope (Ellis 1755, 95). Fourthly, such a statement conceals stronger influences on Ellis’ inquiry. See chapter 4 on Trembley’s polyp and Jussieu’s influence over the creation of marine zoology, of which Ellis’ research is but only a confirmation. 7 Stafford 1992, 95, 126-127. - 225 - which the engravers did not know how to deal.^ During the whole century, there are seldom texts on insects that lack engravings, including magnified images. If the engravings were largely the task of men, both drawing “after nature” and illumination of the engravings were usually entrusted to workshops, where women painters often worked under the supervision of a master painter. Women sometimes gained their reputations through the painting and drawing of insects, as was the case with Maria-Sybilla Merian.

A woman played a central role in Reaumur's research team in which the following responsibilities were precisely demarcated: conservation of objects (Brisson and Guettard), instrument making (Nollet), drawing of the objects (Mile du Moutier), and engraving of the plates by Simonneau, one of the official engravers of Paris Academy.9 Mile du Moutier was moreover the heiress to Reaumur's intellectual inheritance after his death. This situation which gave to certain women important, though unassuming places in the process of scientific publication, endured up until the first half of the nineteenth-century, when new instruments and techniques, such as the camera lucida, daguerreotypes and later photography, radically changed the standard methods for the production of images. 10 Many naturalists who used the microscope were themselves drawers and sometimes even engravers, such as Mark

Catesby, Georges Edwards, August Rosel von Roesenhoef, Pierre

Lyonnet, Carl de Geer, Ledermiiller, Wrisberg, Müller, and many o th e rs .1i

^ The iconographical constraints which the drawing of time sequences of microscopical animalcules raised for scholars such as Saussure, Ellis and Spallanzani are discussed in Ratcliff 1999. ^ Torlais 1987, 33. See Reaumur 1734 I, Preface. 10 See on women artist, Scalva 2000, 384; Sigrist 1999, 34-35. 11 Mortimer 1748, 159, 162; An. 1754, 34-35 for Rosel; Ledermiiller 1764, 101; Müller 1784, 24. - 226 -

Nevertheless, although the existence of microscopical drawing over the whole century is not in doubt, there is not a lot of data concerning the use of optical machines by painters and drawers for their work.i^ Portable camera obscura existed from the second part of the seventeenth-century, having been devised by the

Nuremberg mathematicians, Johann Christoph Sturm in his 1676

Collegium Expérimentale and Johannes Zahn in his 1685 Oculus artificialisA'^ The Nuremberg school had cultivated the drawing of natural objects of the Renaissance and this tradition relied on microscopy in the second part of the eighteenth-century with the works of Rosel, Ledermiiller, Gleichen and Esper. Meanwhile, leaflets and catalogues of instrument makers depicted throughout Europe camera obscura and solar microscopes used for drawing. Many makers sold various models of camera obscura, indicating that these machines were probably widely used. In England, for instance, the anatomist Cheselden, in his 1733 Osteographia attempted to correct Vesalius’ diagram of bones and the skeleton with the assistance of a camera obscura.Camera obscura were also employed in Astronomy, as vouched for by Haller when he visited the Paris observatory in 1728.1 ^

12 On camera obscura, see Crary 1995, 45; Kemp, 1990, Hammond 1981, 20- 58; Marin 1971, 242-245; C&C 1932, 208-212. On drawing and drawing instrument in the eighteenth-century, see Hambly 1988. 1^ See Sturm 1676, 161; Zahn 1702, 756. 1^ 'sGravesande 1711, Valentin 1714 II, 57-59; Nollet 1735, Nollet 1738, 168-169; Cuff [1743], Martin 1742, 1750, Adams 1746, 9-11; Thomin 1749, 170- 177; Della Torre 1749 II, 565-566; Mann & Ayscough 1750, Musschenbroek 1751, 6-7; Magny 1752, 56; Burlini 1758, 22; Selva 1761, Pézenas 1767, Brander 1767, 1792, Buriicker 1768, Dollond 1769, Reinthaler 1769, Martin 1774, Sigaud 1784 II, 274; Junker 1791. ^ ^ Belchier (1733, 196-197) gave an account of Osteographia in Philosophical Transactions. ^ ^ Hintzsche 1968, 43. - 227 -

In the second half of the seventeenth-century, when camera obscura and microscopes were applied to the observation and drawing of minute objects, these machines introduced artists, drawers and engravers to a new world to bring before the public, a new world on which many scholars commented. i ”7 The machines particularly enabled a new framing of live images, for which aspects were developed by telescopes, stereoscopes, polemoscopes or periscopes, binoculars, camera obscura, magic lanterns and microscopes. Semioticians and art historians have rightly insisted on the novelty of framing visions that optical machines, especially camera obscura, brought into public and private spheres in the seventeenth-century. As an element of the scholar’s current material, camera obscura for drawing belonged to the listing of material brought into scientific expeditions.!^ Nevertheless, there is a difference between a camera obscura which is not usually a microscope and a solar microscope which magnifies objects. Microscopists were confronted with a quite different problem from the one dealt with by an artist using a camera obscura, because the microscope opened up a world that escaped common sense, as showed by philosophers such as Locke or Berkeley.20 In this general process transforming the conditions of vision and the place of iconography in culture, the artists played in fact a very important role for they had to find iconographie techniques which would enable people to keep up with the new marvels opened up by vision through the microscope. Moreover the solar microscope broke the yolk of the traditional microscope as an asocial

12 Mazzolini 1997, 201-206; Ruestow 1996, 260-261. 18 See Crary 1991, 42; Marin 1971, 242-245. 1 ^ For instance for Donati’s travel to Orient, see Scalva 2000, 369, 383. 2 0 See Mazzolini 1997, 208-210; Wilson 1995, 247-248; Parigi 1993, 161-163. - 228 - instrument through which the vision of one excluded the look of the others. The solar microscope provided social and not individual images. Like a discourse, images had to gain credibility in order to be considered representative of a specific and minute reality. Historians have described speculations and images as forming obstacles to the development of microscopy ,21 and have insisted on the competition between words and images for naturalistic descriptions in the French and Latin tradition of natural history .22 Nevertheless, it appears that designers used iconographie methods that fitted both the function of “keeping up” and the optical knowledge of the time. These two dimensions were crucial for microscopical iconography to be thought of as rational and democratic by the scholarly world and the public. Insects and worms in particular were shown to be appropriate objects for these techniques, being of suitable size. Two techniques principally used for the magnification of figures, which I will call “natural comparison” and “series comparison”, will be outlined in the following paragraphs. These two methods instigated a regime of naturalistic iconography necessary for drawing minute but visible organisms as opposed to invisible ones.

Dating back to the seventeenth-century,23 the “natural comparison” was highly diffused during the Enlightenment and crossed every linguistic and national frontier, although there were particular scientific fields and periods in which it was used more

21 Bachelard 1972, 159-161. Ruestow (1996, 68-77) discussed the negative role of illusionism and microscopical iconography, while Giglioni (1998) investigated the role of microscopic image in scientific communication. 2 2 See Reynaud 1990, 350-362 on the French tradition of natural history, and Baroncini (1996) on Linnaeus’ restriction to picture images and to use the microscope. 2 3 Swammerdam 1681, pi. Ill, fig. I and II; Bonanni 1681, 59. - 229 - o fte n .24 In many plates depicting small insects and minute worms, illustrating eighteenth-century texts, there are one or more figures that consist only of a small black dot, a minute dash, or sometimes a slight and short line. The caption often notes that it represents a specific insect in its “natural size”, or less frequently, that it is the insect seen with the “naked” or “unarmed eyes”.25 According to the size of the animal, it can be recognised as an insect and not as a dot {Fig. R). These figures were usually placed close to their corresponding magnified images. I call the technique of depicting such a coupling of images a “natural comparison”, and propose to distinguish three functions in representing the natural size of these an im als.

First, the natural size helped to anchor the animal depicted in reality, and thus constituted the iconographie aspect of a general rhetoric of conviction substantiating a normalised representation of the minute world. Seeing the figure of a small black, or sometimes a colored tiny dot resembling an insect, provides a sensory ground for its existence and its reality. Nevertheless, drawing the natural size of a minute insect is too brief a process to understand its morphology, and it thus necessitates the other part of the couple. The illustration of the insect its actual size is not the true organism on which the reader focuses, but turns out to be a symbolic platform for what is expected: the magnified insect.

Indeed, the eye remains only for a brief moment on the natural sized figure, because it is a transient image, situated in-between

2 4 For instance it is not represented as much in Italy, while it is in the Swammerdam-Réaumur-Bonnet tradition. The Germans and Swedish make extensive use of it, 2 5 I take the example of insect, but the same could be said of mollusks, worms and seeds (Parsons 1745), - 2 3 0 -

Redi 1668, 175

Marsigli 1733117141

Reaumur 1734-1742 IV, Bjerkander 1783, pi. 10 left: pi XXXXVI, right: pi. V

Easter 1757, pi. 10

Müller 1771, pi. VII M üller 1776, pi. I.

Fig. R. The natural comparison iconographie technique, from the time of Redi to that of Müller. One image is drawn in “natural size”, the other is magnified. - 231 - other figures. Being insufficient on its own, it is a transitory element which impels the reader to move to the magnified figure.

And, as a goal of this visual progress, of which the means is the natural sized image, the magnified figure results in being naturalised and embodied as a real organism, though it is but a representation. As a consequence, the reality of the natural size is transferred from the natural sized figure to the magnified figure.

Such a shift in the reader’s attention allows us to capture a second function of natural sizing, namely the creation of a necessary framework for magnification. This technique touched off a representative transformation not only of the process of vision, but also of reality. Between the two figures, the natural sized and the magnified, and in terms of visual perception the more “real” figure is the image drawn in natural size. But the more real, in terms of intellectual perception, becomes the magnified image. Moreover, as it is a part of a visual process for which natural size illustrates only the beginning (and the means), the outcome results in the magnified figures being the final real thing, superseding the image of natural size. A proof that the natural size is usually thought of as being the beginning of a visual process can be demonstrated easily. In the enumeration of the figures of a plate the natural size most commonly precedes its magnified image.As a product of the coupling of images, the naturalisation of the magnified image is a cognitive construction created during this visual process. These two functions, anchoring the minute organism and naturalising the magnified figure, embodied the

2 6 Redi 1668, 175-186; Dudley 1705, pi. 2, fig. 3-9; Marsigli 1733, fig. a. A; b, B, etc.; Reaumur 1736, pi. XXXVIII, fig. 22-23; Miles 1742, pi. IV, fig. 3, A, B; Baster 1759-1765, pi. 3, fig. I. B, C. Bjerkander 1792, pi. IV, fig. 2, a, b; Schrank 1796, pi. V, fig. 6-8. - 232 - process of a step by step construction of a new microscopical reality that most probably helped people to keep up. By contrast, this regime of naturalistic iconography was lacking in the plates drawn for certain controversial authors of the seventeenth- century, such as Leeuwenhoek and Malpighi.

The third function of natural comparison addresses the question of measurement. The natural size is an essential component of a comparison between two figures of the same organism, the first as it appears to the naked eye, and the second magnified with a microscope. It would be naive to think that eighteenth-century scholars did not attempt to comprehend this dichotomy. The natural size and its magnification were indeed conceived of respectively as the real magnitude and the apparent magnitude of objects, a much common dichotomy outlined in many books of optics and “microscopy” of that time.27 Real magnitude is a physical phenomenon, defined as the true measure of the object, in points, lines, inches, palms, corresponding to the natural size. Apparent magnitude relates to a perceptual phenomenon, which was thought of in terms of magnification as well as in terms of angle of the field of vision, according to the following law: the larger the angle of the field of vision, the bigger the image of the object. Indeed, the same object seen at a distance of ten feet appears smaller than at ten inches, and if placed at twelve lines (one inch), it is larger still, but it becomes indistinct. To each of these three distances correspond major angles of vision. Lenses and microscopes were not only known to enlarge the angle, but

2 7 Jurin 1738, Smith [1738] 1767, 42; Martin 1740, 1750, Baker 1742, Della Torre 1749 II, 561; Kastner 1755, La Caille 1756, Spengler 1775, d’Alembert 1777, 54; Kluegel 1778, 252; Sigaud 1784 II, 262-263, Adams 1787, 30-32, Adams 1799, 545-546. - 233 - were especially suitable for eliminating the confusion of sight due to such an i n c r e a s e . ^8 On that point, eighteenth-century microscopical iconography was consistent with its optical knowledge, such that, strictly speaking, the natural size and its magnification embodied the two relative notions of the real and apparent magnitudes.

The final aspect concerns measurement. Indeed, when put next to one another, as is usual, the two figures induce a comparison of their magnitude, and, consequently, drawing such a “natural comparison” provides the reader with a certain knowledge of magnitudes. Nevertheless, when one thinks of quantification, such an iconographie system presents two limitations. First the technique of natural comparison provided no precise quantification of the magnified image, because it was created within a technological system in which the scholars did not need so precise a measurement. Natural comparison actually provided visual and qualitative information that fulfilled the demand of magnification, but since both the real and apparent sizes of the organism were depicted, the coupling of images also eliminated the necessity of using numbers and otherwise stricter quantification. Thus, comparing the two images replaced quantification. Second, minute things are not invisible, and the border between the minute

—insects— and the invisible —infusoria, blood cells, etc.— shaped a second limitation for using natural comparison. Indeed, illustrating invisible organisms required omitting any comparative figure of a real magnitude too small to be illustrated. And as the natural size (being the figurative representation of the real magnitude) also

^ ^ Adams 1799, 546-547. - 234 - symbolised the beginning of the visual process, any sort of illustration of invisible creatures represented in this way would have lead to the absence of its beginning. Consequently the function of “keeping up” could not be fulfilled by drawing figures of invisible organisms. Most probably, the credibility of such microscopical figures was much more difficult to pin down, not only because of their invisibility, but also for the relative lack of suitable methods to control their “degree of invisibility”. The quantification of microscopical size and magnification launched in the 1740s in Britain, and then in France and Germany began to fill this demand for new methods of controlling the invisible.

Historically speaking, natural comparison was employed in the entomological works of Redi, Goedart and Swammerdam in the second part of the seventeenth-century. Aside from illustrating insects, such a technique was poorly used up until the 1730s when entomological works proved to be the best solution for dealing with microscopic subjects while avoiding public criticism. Consistently, natural comparison was not used for organisms invisible, or which were too small. Joblot, for instance, never used the technique. If natural comparison worked so well such that it was used in a large number of eighteenth-century plates produced throughout Europe, it was also efficient because it allowed figures of minute organisms to be represented as a whole, and it was not often used to depict details. A technique rather similar to natural comparison was used in such cases, but still belonging to the regime of naturalistic iconography, I will call “series comparison”.

“Series comparison” usually consists of a natural comparison to which a more magnified detail of the magnified figure is added - 235 -

{Fig. S). This technique, also diffused,29 had the great advantage of combining the anchoring function with stronger powers of magnification, and thus provided an iconographical framework with which to insert details of magnified images. Though it presented figures as more magnified than natural comparison, such a method still replaced quantification, and avoided the necessity for numbers in the report of magnification. In the mid eighteenth-century the Swedish entomologist Carl de Geer explained one of its functions, on a series comparison of monoculus on which some polyps were laid {Fig. S, top):

One can illustrate himself, through comparison, how small these polyps must be.

This passage and the related image highlights the function of representing the magnification while still keeping up.

If we consider that the model of communication of microscopical data adopted by most scholars of the late seventeenth-century was obsolete, and that early eighteenth- century scholars were looking for a different kind of visibility for microscopy, it is much more probable that the question of keeping up through iconography played a role in this process. Before microscopical representations, many seventeenth-century observers could indeed have fallen behind both for the lack of naturalistic iconography, and for not being able to reproduce observations. Most probably, microscopical figures drawn directly from magnified images, without a natural or a series comparison, were perceived as being closer to the elitist rather than to the

2 9 Baster 1761, fig. I, II, III; Müller 1771, pi. V; Schrank 1796, pi. V, fig. 9- 13, etc. 3 0 Geer 1753, 234. - 2 3 6 -

Tiq.Z, _lC. J

A series comparison showing microscopic polyps (Fig, 3 and 4, A) that lay on a Monoculus (de Geer 1753, 234).

Two series comparisons of a regenerating annelid by Müller (Müller 1771, pi. V; fig. 1, 2, 3; fig. 4, 5,6).

TAB.r.

J-. B

Fig. S. For the series comparison, the draughtman added a more magnified detail to a natural comparison. - 237 - democratic microscope. Such that the regime of naturalistic iconography that anchored the magnified organisms of the plates, could appear to be a very good solution to the problem of keeping up. Naturalistic iconography also allowed for the replacement of the regime of elitist microscopic iconography in use during the seventeenth-century, many scholars using thus images which made the readers losing the ground. Though it was used during the entire eighteenth-century to illustrate insects and worms, the naturalistic regime was, up until the 1740s a usual method employed to magnify objects, giving the reader a clear idea of magnification. Although, before the 1740s, there were isolated authors who quantified the magnification of their observations, notably the physician Hamberger in Erlangen, it is from this period onwards that magnification and quantification begun to be linked, such that to the new trend in building microscopes launched in England in the early 1740s was added a trend that coupled measures and numbers. The research on organisms invisible to the naked eye, of the 1740s, created demand for a better determination of invisible things, such as Needham’s atoms, Buffon’s organic molecules or John Hill’s animalcula. Quantifying the magnification of invisible organisms gradually revealed itself to be a good solution that helped in the repetition of observations and enabled scholars to improve on the rationalisation of microscopy. This was a new trend in reporting microscopical data that entered into competition with the naturalistic iconographie regime, especially because both regimes shared something of the same object. Both in fact supplied information on magnification, but with very different methods; the one was concrete and visual and the other - 238 - was abstract and numerical. We will examine now the development of such competition.

5.2 From minute mensuration to standards of measure

The measures of size of microscopical organisms and magnifying powers are part of the arsenal of modern instrumentation, and belong to the series of problems instrument makers and scholars were involved in while dealing with microscopes. Such a class of problems had already been tackled by seventeenth-century scholars, such as Malpighi, La Hire, Hooke, Griendel, Swammerdam and Leeuwenhoek, who supplied the basis on which scholars of the next century continued to build, that lead to amendments of many previous techniques. Eighteenth-century scholars prolonged set research begun a century before, but clearly did not reach the homologation and standardisation that had been, for example, just attained for weights and measures in the years following the French Revolution. Many reasons account for the obstacles met with by scholars in following this path. The wide range of varying units of measure used in many regions throughout Europe stood as a major obstacle to filling the conditions for standardisation.

Although attempts had been made from the 1740s to standardise local measures, for instance for liquids in Paris, a foot still did not represent the same length in Paris, Rhenany, Rome and L o n d o n .

In the course of the eighteenth-century, there was no international standard for measure such as the metre which was defined in 1795, and later imposed to France then Europe during the

31 Donsembray 1739, La Condamine 1747, 489. - 239 -

Napoleonic wars. Furthermore, until the end of the century, challenged by the standards demanded by academies and instrument makers, the units of measure still referred to rough quantification of the parts of the human body. Linnaeus, in his

1751 Philosophia botanica, used the body and

the hand to serve as unit of measure,^ ^ because every measure could be taken from them. This package of embodied measures, Linnaeus regarded as operating the measurement of the proportions of plants, and avoided the botanists to take a ruler in the field. Not only the inch, but the line, considered as a twelfth of the inch, had a physical embodiment in the larger part of the white quarter of a ring of the finger’s nail, the thumb being excluded. Linnaeus also took the horseair as a model for a measure called “hair” (capillus), a twelfth of a line.^^

The line, a unit of the goldsmith’s art, (± 2.5 mm), was the smallest shared measure commonly found in eighteenth-century. Some authors, though few before the second part of the century, used the point, which at its minimum was a twelfth of a line (0.2 mm). Smaller measures, close to the modern pica, already existed in the end of the seventeenth-century, and were attempted to be defined by the typographer Sébastien Truchet (1657-?) in order to fix the precise dimension of engraved letters. But this research was abandoned after being adopted for different fonts, around 1700.

On the other hand, there existed discrepancies between different versions of the exact value of the point, relatively to the line. Some authors reported it to be a tenth, and others a twelfth of a line. Others, like the FRS Sir Byles Stiles, writing in 1765, considered the

Linnaeus 1763[1751], 266. ^ ^ Linnaeus 1763[1751], 266. - 240 - point to be a sixth of a line: “these glasses are so small, that the diameter of the highest magnifier among them is but half a Paris point, which is, if I mistake not, no more than 1/144 of an inch, the point being 1/6 of a line, and the line 1/12 of an inch”.^^ Styles probably made an error, because 6 x 12 = 144. Still the problem was sufficiently important for the German mathematician Kastner to consider the question in a 1758 paper in Hamburgishes Magazin.'^^ Nevertheless, in practice the line served as the more reliable standard. Notably in the case of the absence of naturalised iconography, the standards for measurement reverted to this shared norm of measure. Some communities of scholars who used microscopes which were known by everyone, using objects which could be seen by everyone, like insects and seeds, adopted the line as standard convention which gave to the microscope its democratic aspect. Indeed, providing these conditions were fulfilled, scholars could simply mention the size of organisms, as the French sometimes did before 1740.^^ The use of measure proliferated after this period. For instance Henry Miles reported the magnitude of the organisms he examined in the 1740s. Trembley in his 1747 memoir on a new kind of polyp, gave the average size of the bell shaped polyps: 1/240 of an inch, i.e. 1/20 of a line (= 0.125 mm).^8 Probably because the relation between the point and the line was unstable, many scholars used fractions of a line for their measures of objects and this kind of measure

3 4 Styles 1765, 248 3 5 Kastner 1758. 3 6 For objects measured in lines, see Tournefort 1706, 339 (gall of the oak, 2 lines); Fontenelle 1707, 8 (crystalline lens of the snake, 1 line); Fontenelle 1714a, 18 (leg of a midge, 1/15 of a line); Reaumur 1714b, 293 (seed of the Fucus, 1/2 line); Jussieu 1745, 299 (1/2 line). 3 7 Miles 1741, 725; Miles 1750, 334. 3 8 Trembley 1744b, 172. - 241 - was used progressively more for smaller objects in the second half of the century.3 9

Contrary to what has been written by historians of microscopy, the major problem raised by the microscope in the eighteenth- century did not concern the optical quality of the lenses, but was related to the awareness of a lack of standardisation. In this respect, the research on minute mensuration did not cease during the Enlightenment, and followed the rhythm of the emerging wave of quantification. Since no shared unit of measure existed for very minute things, a solution was to use objects relatively stable in size to serve as conventional standards. Leeuwenhoek had used several objects of varying sizes, notably a grain of sand, a hair of a beard hair, and “bacteria”, to which he compared microscopic organism s.40 From the beginning of the eighteenth-century, other scholars applied this method for the measure of several objects, and sometimes of the power of their magnifiers as well. For instance, in August 1702, the anonymous C.H. used a hair to gauge the different magnifiers of his recently acquired Wilson m i c r o s c o p e . 41 Examined with the strongest power, a hair appeared about one inch in diameter, which enabled C.H. to determine the magnifying power to be of 640x, 640 hair breadth being one inch.

Microscopical objects were of course measured using these ancestors of the test-objects. C.H. judged the dust of fungi, taken for seeds to be 1/50 of the diameter of a hair. Other research by

James Jurin in the late 1710s attempted to measure blood cells.

^9 See Roffredi 1770a, 9 (1/9 of line); Adanson 1770, 571 (1/400 of line); Rozier 1772, 500 (one or two dots); Corti 1774, 13 (5/12 of line); Fontana 1781 (1/13’000 of inch); Colombo 1787, 46 (1/48 of line); Saussure 1790 (1/80, 1/200, 1/400 1/800 of line); An. 1790-1791, 53 (1/600 of inch). 4 0 Ford 1991, 44-45. 4 1 C.H. 1703, 1358. - 242 - but no further significant research was carried out in Britain before that of Henry Baker in 1740.

Increasingly, many authors interested in the microscope began to raise the problem of standardisation both through criticisms of the inadequacy of some “test-objects” and by proposing new objects. In the middle of the century, in the respected Society of Natural Research in Danzig, Michael Christoph Hanow presented the issue of microscopical measures using many examples, among which was that of Leeuwenhoek.^2 Using a hair posed a simple problem, the same encountered when using bodily measures. Indeed, the unit of measure could vary according to where or whom it was taken from:

One will find here something more than a problem when one supposes, with Leeuwenhoek, the hair breadth to be as small as 42 1/2 or 43 parts of a Parisian line. For one will find only half of it in a line, of big hair’s breadth from adults.'^ ^

The same year, the physician from Hamburg Johann Lorenz W ithof raised a similar problem, and could even show that the diameter of the hairs depended on their colour. Using a microscope for measuring, he showed that black hairs were 1/147 of the Rhenan inch, 1/162 for brown and 1/182 for blond hairs.The hair’s breadth also depended on the part of the body where it was taken from, and could vary from 1/130 to 1/193 of a Rhenan inch.^5

During the same time, similar research was carried out in Holland.

Pierre Lyonnet, who possessed one of Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes, provided an interesting solution to measuring microscopical

4 2 Along with Jacob Theodor Klein, Hanow was among the founding members of the Society in 1743, 4 3 Hanow 1754, 317. 4 4 Withof 1754, 189. 4 5 Withof 1754, 188. Withof’s dissertation {De pilo humano, Duisburg, 1750) was recommended by Ledermiiller (1764, 12). - 243 - objects which he published in 1762. He looked for more reliable natural objects than those used by Leeuwenhoek, whose sizes were far too variable. Famous for his skillfulness, Lyonnet detached the cornea of a dragonfly’s eye and stuck it to a glass slide. 38 hexagons represented the equivalent of one line, and the small unit of measure of one hexagon allowed him to measure both the powers of his lenses and many details of the organs of the willow’s caterpillar. '^6 The natural objects became the stable basis of the measure itself.

However, the Germans were not to abandon the issue. In a later

1778 paper published in the new proceedings of the Danzig academy, Hanow adopted a new method to tackle the hair and measurement problem, which was to inquire on the optical and perceptual conditions of the vision of minute objects. He started examining different measurements of optical sensation, wanting to know what the relative breadths of a hair seen at different distances were,"^"^ and inserted them into a table of their microscopic relativity. Among the many issues raised in his long paper on the psychology of visual sensation was that he was looking for the method for the improvement of the skills of artists and miniature painters who commonly used the solar microscope.4^ The solar microscope was much praised in Germany during the second part of the century, and enabled measurement by projecting images against a wall to which measure could be applied. Indeed, measurement of images viewed through the microscope raised other kinds of problem partly solved with

Van Seters 1962, 82. Van Seters (1962, 81-83) has given a detailed analysis of Lyonnet’s methods of measure. 4 7 Hanow 1778a, 24-27. 4 8 Hanow 1778a, 30-32 and 57-58. - 244 - micrometers.After this inquiry which supplied intriguing results on the perceptual aspect of the vision of minute bodies, Hanow reverted to his favourite subject —the microscopical measurement standards— in another paper published the same year. There he reproduced Withof’s results in part and showed how the breadth of an hair could vary from simple to double, measuring between 1/20 and 1/40 of a line.^o Such measurements provided evidence that hair was not a suitable object to be taken as standard. But the problem of the microscopical unit of measure, if pointed to, was not solved for lack of diffusion of the standard. Although the scholars had clearly demonstrated the limits of seventeenth- century unit of measure for microscopical observations, Hanow’s and Withof’s research were only known in Germany, and Lyonnet’s test-object was not put into general use.

5.3 Quantification of power, magnification and natural size

Given the half-artisanal way of producing microscopes during the eighteenth-century, many serious problems were bound to crop up in order to reach reliable and standardised measurement of powers of magnification. From the beginning of the practices of the microscope, many strategies were developed to combat this problem. In France, mathematicians put forward research to measure the geometrical properties of light. In 1704, the mathematician Guinée had suggested a method allowing for measurement of the focus of a lens only by knowing the angle of

An 1781, 478-479. See also Ledermiiller 1758, Hanow 1778a, 30-32, etc. 5 0 Hanow 1778b, 85. - 245 - its two curves. Several authors were also in the habit of reporting, not one, but three theoretical measures: diameter, surface and volume magnified. The surface and volume magnifications being respectively the square and the cube of diameter, numbers of huge magnitude were soon attained. Once the diameter had been found, the square and the cube were computed. Nevertheless, indicating the type of measure for an image or an observation was not so common a practice, though it was perhaps obvious to scholars. Malezieu, in his 1718 paper on animalcules, referred to animals 27 million times smaller than a louse, a measurement still referred to half a century later.The diameter-surface-volume comparison was more likely an aspect of a mere rhetoric of computation which was able to make an impression on people, by using very large numbers. The function of such “rhetorical computation” was perhaps to provide an illusion of a successful quantification of microscopical data. It was to be used up until the end of the century, for example in tables including many zeroes, but was abandoned after the French Revolution. Aside from Baker’s Microscope made easy, probably the most widely diffused book on “microscopy” of the entire century, Diderot and d’Alembert’s

Encyclopédie provided tables of current magnifications. The wide diffusion of books in which they figured probably helped people to gain something of an idea of the complexity of magnifying objects.

Such a systematic and theoretical way of proceeding was able to particularly reinforce the belief that standardisation had been attained for the microscope {Fig. T), and it was to be especially used by Buffon with this aim {Fig. U, bottom).^2

^ 1 Bonnet 1783, 177-178. The original was reported by Fontenelle (1719). ^ 2 Lupieri 1784, 74; see also in Encyclopédie, the table by Jaucourt 1778 XXI, 831. - 2 46 -

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» •» 7 0 4 * — » 4 9 9 ,6 1 6 . -- 3 4 8 ,9 1 3 ,6 6 4 . TT I - - 8 0 0 . m — 6 4 0 ,0 0 0 . - - 5 1 2 ,0 0 0 ,0 0 0 . 400 1 • • 89&" “ ^0 2 , 8 1 6 . -. 5 5 9 , 1 6 1 , 9 3 6 . 112 I — I jOOO* - 1,0 0 0 ,0 0 0 . - 1,000,000,003. 129 1 - 1, 9 0 4 . - 2, 2 6 2 ,0 1 6 , - 3 ,4 0 2 ,0 7 2 ,0 6 4 . 1*88 * I - 2 ,0 0 0 , - 4 ,0 0 0 ,0 0 0 . - 8 ,0 0 0 ,0 0 0 ,0 0 0 . 2 90 I - 3 ,0 0 0 . - 9 ,0 0 0 ,0 0 0 . 2 7 ,0 0 0 ,0 0 0 ,0 0 0 . 379* T - 4 ,0 0 0 . 1 6 ,0 0 0 ,0 0 0 . 6 4 ,0 0 0 ,0 0 0 ,0 0 0 . 5 0 0 I - 6 ,0 0 0 . 3 6 ,0 0 0 ,0 0 0 . 2 1 6 ,0 0 0 ,0 0 0 ,0 0 0 . 7 ~ I - 8 )0 0 0 , 6 4 ,0 0 0 ,0 0 0 . 5 1 2,0 0 0 ,0 0 0 ,0 0 0 . 1 0 0 0

Fig. T. Table of magnification of San Martino's simple microscope, according to Lupieri (1784, 74). - 247 -

Aside from rhetorical effects, there remained many problems. The first real problem was measuring the power of the lenses in a simple microscope, and also of the combination of objective and ocular for the double microscope. In the same way as the line provided a kind of standard for measuring microscopic specimen, optics had fixed a standard for optical measures, that notably provided a framework with which to measure the difference between the real size and apparent size of an object. Opticians and mathematicians agreed on “the rule of the eight inches”, a criterion valid throughout Europe over the entire eighteenth- century. Eight inches defined the minimal distance at which normal people of the time were able to distinctly see an object (nowadays this is considered to be ten inches). A smaller distance evoked confusion, and a greater distance started to decrease the apparent magnitude of the object. This rule, although with some variations, was included in every treatise on physics, optics and “microscopy”, regardless of country.^3 However, generally speaking, except for a few authors between 1700 and 1740,^"^ there was almost no quantification in reports of observations. This absence probably stemmed from naturalised iconography. Indeed, the coincidence between the virtual absence of quantitative measurements, and the development, in the period 1700-1740, of studies of insects and cryptogam, both considered privileged objects for naturalised iconography and for microscopy, provides evidence for the claim

^ ^ Smith [1738] 1767; Baker [1742] 1753, 34; Adams 1746, 22; Della Torre 1748, 561; Passemant 1750, 21; Magny 1753, 50-51; Trabaud 1753, 205-206; Nollet 1755 V, 519, 562; Ferguson 1764, 135; Della Torre 1763, 45; Della Torre 1776, 38; Fuss 1778 [1774], 52; Jaucourt 1778 XXI, 831; Brisson 1781 II, 136; Adams 1799, 551. ^ ^ See Malezieu (Fontenelle 1719, 10). In 1727, Georg Erhard Hamberger in Erlangen also specified the magnification he had used (80x, 320x), see Hamberger 1735, 139, 159. - 248 - that scholars did not demanded quantification of microscopical objects before the 1740s. Although during this period scholars sometimes reported measurements for microscopical objects, they seldom needed to measure powers. In the French context, except for Joblot, who belonged to another scholarly tradition, there were seldom quantitative measurements of powers and organisms by scholars. Such an attitude can also be understood thanks to the tendency to adapt the microscope to the conditions of shared knowledge in early eighteenth-century France, for which the

Académie des Sciences presented itself as the leading example. The same method was to be found in other countries up until the 1740s. After Bonanni’s 1692 Observationes, Italian scholars —

Marsigli, Cestoni, Vallisneri, Monti, Micheli, etc.— almost never mentioned the magnification used in their printed texts. Regarding this aspect, the Germanic countries did not really perhaps present an exception. In Halle, following on Hertel’s heritage, three professors, KF Kaltschmied, HF Teichmeyer and Hamberger paid careful attention to microscopy, but only the latter indicated, in

1728, the magnifications of his microscopical observations.

In the 1740s, a quantifying trend was launched in England, that began to influence European scholars. Robert Smith’s 1738 Complete System of Optics inaugurated the trend with a comprehensive table of measurement of magnitude, resolution, diffraction, of m icroscopes.^5 However, Baker was principally responsible for its diffusion both with his 1740 paper on the comparative magnifying powers of Leeuwenhoek and Wilson microscopes, and with the simplified techniques of measuring

5 5 Smith 1767 [1738], 130. - 249 - powers, which, after Smith, he publicised in his 1742 Microscope made easy. Baker’s paper had a positive impact on the question of supplying technical information about the microscopes. After

Baker, some observers began to be more precise in quantifying the powers used in their research. The European scholars were ready to accept this novelty, to which however they reacted very differently. Indeed, the Italian religious scholars from Naples took the opportunity to resuscitate their tradition of building microscopes and lenses, and in 1741 launched the building of spherical lenses with stronger powers than the 400 diameters announced by B a k e r . 5 6 in 1741 the Leyden anatomist Wyer

Guglielm Muys (1682-1744), who crowned his career with a book on the microanatomy of muscles, presented the magnifications he used with a system that omitted the cubic rhetoric of computation and embodied quantification in a more concrete pattern. For each magnification Muys provided and indeed wrote, “quam 1 ad x”, x being a variable between 10 and 4 0 0 . This method was the precise quantified transposition of the procedure of magnification used for drawing, where the natural size (equivalent to 1) was coupled with the magnified figure (of which x represents the magnification). At the same time, the British fellows of the Royal

Society —Miles, Needham, Parsons, Arderon, Badcock— had followed Baker’s impulse and began to report, not the magnifying power in term of diameter, but the number of the powers used, — or their qualitative power— so as to enable others to repeat the

5 6 Della Torre 1776, 33-34. 5 7 Muys 1741, 24, 46-47. The magnifications given by Muys are 10, 18, 100, 200, 400. - 250 - observations.58 Some of them also reported the magnitude of the organisms they observed.59 Although most of them used the Cuff compound microscope, no standardisation of the different powers was obtained by Cuff such that the system could only work in the local culture. In Germany, the impact of Baker’s research fitted into the Nuremberg tradition of applied mathematics, which was still active. In 1737, the mathematician Albert Daniel Mercklein, had attempted to improve the quality of optical glass, and, in

1742, he and Boniface Henri Ehrenberg independently published new methods of measuring the focus of lenses, for reflection and refracting microscopes.In France, Baker’s commitment to quantifying microscopical research had not a strong effect, in particular because the way of dealing with the microscope was established including habits of avoiding making reference to the microscope maker and to the powers used. Scholars used to notify their colleagues of qualitative information such as “a good microscope”, a “powerful microscope” or a “lens of a weak focus”, and they seldom reported the diameter or the focus of the powers used. British microscopes were rarely used in France before the early 1750s, when Passemant and Magny publicised the model of the Cuff microscope, and definitively adopted the system of m ultiple powers.The link between the numbers of magnifiers — usually from one to six, and ten in France— and the microscopes made by the British instrument makers is confirmed by the Danzig naturalist Jacob Theodor Klein already in 1726, who worked on the

5 8 Miles 1741, 725-726; Needham 1743, 640; Parsons 1745, 101, 161; Badcock 1746a, 155-157; Arderon 1748, 322. 5 9 Miles 1741, 725; Miles 1750, 334. 6 0 Mercklein 1742, 120; Ehrenberg 1742, 129-130. 6i Passemant 1750, 18-21; Magny (1753, 74) said that Reaumur had a Cuff microscope. Later the reference to the powers became common (Lecat 1765, 81. Adanson (1770, 566-567) used a microscope by George with ten powers. - 251 - worm parasite of the kidney, “viewed through those microscopes which in the English Apparatus bear the second and third n u m b e r” .62

Especially due to the fact that this technique of quantifying was not used before the 1740s in France, Buffon attempted to instigate the use of quantification for microscopical measures in a 1748 paper in which he announced his discovery of the “testicles of the female”! This was another expression of his authoritarian and plagiarist style of communication. Indeed he copied there the measures of Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes as computed by Baker in 1740, and said to have used a microscope with a stronger power than that of Leeuwenhoek. To supply evidence for this, he reported, without citing Baker, the latter’s 1740 measures made using a Wilson simple microscope, but Buffon did not mention in the paper what kind of microscope he had used himself.63 Jn the 1749 Histoire naturelle, where he reprinted much of the same observations, Buffon said that he had made use of Needham’s compound microscope and launched into a panegyric speech on the advantages of the compound over the simple microscope, based on the former’s stability.64 On the basis of the comparison of these texts, and other “evidence”, Philip Sloan has argued that the microscope Needham lent to Buffon was a simple Wilson made by Cuff.65 But Sloan’s rationale can not explain two facts. First, Buffon explicitly claimed that he used a compound microscope.66

Second, Needham himself provided information about his

6 2 Klein 1730, 271. 6 3 Baker 1740, 512; Buffon 1748, 228. 6 4 See Buffon 1749 II, 170-174. 6 5 Sloan 1992, 424. 6 6 Buffon 1749 II, 173-174. - 252 - microscopes, which were simple and double reflecting microscopes, not Wilson simple microscopes.The question is thus actually one of Buffon’s reliability. Either Buffon first used a simple microscope and changed his mind later, or else he used

Needham’s double reflecting microscope and, in 1748, wanted to impress people by applying Baker’s computational rhetoric for the simple microscope to the compound one. The fact that he eliminated the data concerning the measure of powers which showed a contradiction between his declared argument in favour of the compound microscope from his 1749 text, and from the

1748 display of tables of a Wilson simple microscope, may show that he had in mind a clear strategy. Indeed, in order to find any gap in the market of microscopical research and natural history renewed by Trembley’s polyp, Buffon sang the praises of the compound microscope. He then said exactly the opposite of what was said in the emerging discourse on the compound microscope’s deception, demonstrated for instance by Hollman in 1745. It is a pity that, instead of deconstructing such mythology, historians have credited Buffon’s tale with the mark of good faith. Sloan considered that “the Buffon-Needham experiments are to be faulted by being too advanced for their historical era”, and that other scholars were “unable to repeat Buffon’s and Needham’s results”,68 because scholars lacked Needham’s good microscope.

Nothing else needs be said to understand how Buffon reintroduced the elitist microscope. Indeed, while other scholars expanded the narration of their instrument and observations in order to enable the reproduction of their observations, often even lending their

6 7 Needham (1745, 65-66, 69, 89) said he used a common double reflecting microscope for the observations of plate V, fig. 2, 3, 6, 7. 6 8 Sloan 1992, 434. - 253 - microscopes to each other, Buffon attacked these forms of scholarly communication. He simply calculated what could produce public acknowledgment through his brilliant language, and did not bother enabling other scholars to reproduce his observations. With the so-called discovery of the “testicles of the females”, Buffon, though not educated as a MD, dared profess other anatomists to have been all deceived. In addition to that, the plagiarism of Baker’s table (Fig. U) combined with Buffon’s authoritarian method, was a perfect illustration of the style of theoretical, pretentious and irreproducible microscopical research which had carefully been avoided up until that time by the French academy. The threat of discrediting both the social representation of the microscope and the academic reputation was indeed very high. The violent debate against Buffon that followed, and the number of criticisms Buffon received show that his way to establish this quantification methodology was rejected. Buffon himself, not being able to win with the microscope decided in the 1770s to abandon it and scorned its heuristic prospects;

The discoveries we can carry out with the microscope are reduced to a few things; indeed it is thanks to the mind’s eye, and without a microscope, that we see the true existence of all these small beings, to which it is useless to pay a particular attention.^ ^

Following the impulse given by Smith and Baker to present measurement data within tables, the beginnings of a European trend that demanded systematic measurement of the powers used, as well as of microscopical objects, can also be ascribed to the 1750s. Before Buffon, whose paper was issued in the 1752 Mémoires de VAcadémie, the instrument maker Passemant published, in Needham’s 1750 Nouvelles observations

6 9 Buffon 1866[1777] V, 162. - 2 5 4 -

[ 5'î ] A Table of the Six Magnifiers belonging to Mr, FolkciV Microfcopey calculated by an Inch Scale divided into an hundred TartSy with a Compu^ tation of their Towers, to an Eye that fees Objebls at Eight Inches, Glaf- Didancc o f Magnifies the Magnifies the fcs, the Focus. Diameter. Supcificies. I ft. . . 7Î5 of an Inch. . . 400. . .160,000. 2 d. . . ïo ...... 1 6 0 . . . 2 5 ,6 0 0 . sd. . . j-f-5 ...... 1 0 0 , . . 1 0 ,0 0 0 . 4"^h. • . gQg . . . . 44" • • 1*93 6. 5 th. . . ^ ...... 2 6 , . . , 6 7 6 . ^th...... 1 6 . ... 2 5 6 .

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Fig. U. Baker’s 1740 table of magnification of the Wilson microscope (top). Buffon’s 1748 copy of Baker’s table, with an error (the focus of the 5th magnifier is 8/10 instead of 3/10). - 255 - microscopiques, comprehensive tables of measurement of the powers of the Cuff model he marketed7^ Passemant notably provided a table in which he distinguished the magnification of the compound microscope, with an ocular magnifying 8 diameters, from that of objectives7 1 Magny discussed measurement and gave a comparative table of several microscopes in 1753, which he published in Journal Economique Through the channel of

Buffon, Germany followed with Ledermiiller’s 1758 book which rejected, in accordance with repeated observations, Buffon’s account of spermatic animalcules. Ledermiiller also included a table of the powers of his m icroscope.'73 Although a second augmented edition of a 1756 book, it was however diffused only in

Germany. Following the trend, in 1763, Gleichen especially provided a table of the magnification of the diameter of each power, and indicated that he would simply refer, for the figures in the plates, to the Roman number of the powers, enabling everyone to grasp the precise magnification used for an observation.'74 This was a type of emerging standard for measurement in competition with the natural comparison. During the same years indeed, the Zurich naturalist Conrad Gesner used, in a plate with classic natural comparison a cross added to the letter and number referring to a figure to indicate that it was magnified through the microscope {Fig. V).'75

Passemant 1750, 22-24. ^ 1 Passemant 1750, 22. Magnifications were: 400, 248, 160, 96, 64, 40, 24, respectively 50, 31, 20, 12, 8, 5, 3. Magny 1753, 61-66, 71-74. ^ ^ Ledermiiller 1758, 28. The magnifications were: 17, 28, 49, 84, 164, 189, 320. "74 Gleichen 1763, 9. Powers: 16, 26, 33, 61, 114, 200, 400. Gleichen (1778, 106-107) reported the same method and a table of magnifications on p. 108. ^ ^ Gesner 1761, 318, pi. 1. CUJi.CULIO QvCLtlCiriLLS. 2)er Neuter un^ctrc^dc

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Pierre Lyonnet, the former engraver of Trembley’s plates in the

1744 Memoir on polyps, still provided another kind of standard by opening the new edition of his 1762 French Traité anatomique sur la chenille du saule with a letter to the physician and

“microscopist” Claude-Nicolas Lecat, in which he explained the function and measurements of his own dissecting microscope. The letter had actually already been published in Dutch in the 1757 journal Haarlem verhhandelingen Hollandse maatschappy der weetenschappen, a good way to be ignored by 9/10 of European scholars. In 1762, in addition to describing and giving the measurements of the six powers of his simple microscope, Lyonnet also wrote a masterful essay in which he united mathematical and practical methods of measurement.^6 He compared the expected measurement provided by the mathematical method of measuring the curve and the focus of the lenses, with the empirical measurement his “test-object” supplied. The results which Lyonet put into a comprehensive table (Fig. W) were astonishingly similar.

Close to Gleichen’s method, synthesising every measure allowed him to stop referring to magnification in the body of his text, and to mention only the powers used for the observations. Lyonnet’s book, which was reported in many journals contributed to giving a suitable example of democratising the microscope by using a standard for measuring powers, and hence microscopical objects.

It was the first time that systematic measures linked powers, “test- objects”, mathematical methods, and the object measured together. In this way his 1762 anatomy of the willow’s caterpillar served as a basis on which to test and develop a comprehensive

^ ^ Lyonnet 1762, 10-20. - 258 -

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Suivant la Théorie: Mefurée direélement: Difference : Le Verre M“. I,allonge po ^ fois. 86^ fois. ^ 36x9 t 3359 N*.2, ----- yo-î ------3 9 9 1 j16991 ■— ------iN°. 3 , ------+ 3 - 7 ------3x637" N ° , ----- m 7038 4 3 s ;-h — ------15895 q -ÎH 349 1" Loupe, >l3ûl 84 ----- 2^' Loupe, ym i OilZl. * 9359 935»

Fig. W. Lyonnet’s table of comparison of the practical and theoretical methods of measure of his own microscope (Lyonnet 1762, 20). - 259 - I system of measurements perhaps more than it served as an object of naturalistic research.??

Indeed from the 1760s onwards European scholars started to report microscopical magnification in a much more systematic way. In 1763 Torbern Bergman in Stockholm related the magnification he had employed for the identification of the “false caterpillar”, as it was named by Reaumur. Reporting magnification was a new phenomena in the journal of the Swedish Academy. Bergman had already published microscopical observations in the same journal eight years before, without giving any precise magnification.78 Moreover, the magnifications indicated were very small: 10, 20 and 25x diameter, and using natural comparison would have been enough —another example showing the competition that tended to substitute quantification for iconographie natural comparison.79 His colleague Wilke, also began to include more transparency on measurements, although this did not inspire a habit in the Swedish academy, much devoted to Linnaeism, chemistry and agronomy. Nevertheless, when giving accounts of scholars’ papers, even reporters did not neglect to make reference to the magnifications used.80 In the same year as

Bergman, Father della Torre in Naples also started to quantify his observations, always reporting the magnification employed for microscopical observations.8i In 1763, for the sake of reproducibility, Torre claimed that the magnification of a figure should always be mentioned, and the physician from Vicenza

77 See Bonnet 1781[1764] I, 156. 7 8 Bergman 1757. 7 9 Bergman 1766, 184. 80 Wilke 1764, 288; An. 1764, 75; Wilke 1767, 275; An. 1767, 211. 8 t Della Torre 1776, § 46. - 260 -

Giuseppe Maria Lupieri attempted to transform this advice into a methodological standard for microscopical research in 1784.8 2

The same year his book was reviewed in a Venetian medical journal, and three years later the priest Michele Colombo published in the same journal his own work on the physiology of polyps. Having probably read Lupieri’s book, he mentioned the powers he used for his observations.83 The new method of systematically reporting measures was used probably following the

British, the French, then Ledermiiller’s in Germany and Lyonnet’s impulse in Holland, and della Torre’s in Naples. Neapolitan scholars such as the MD Antonio Barba and Filippo Cavolini systematically indicated the magnifications they used in their observations, as well as other Italian scholars.84 Jn Germany and

Sweden, many observers reported with quantification on the magnification of objects.85

One could argue that the British FRS of the 1740s had already invented this method, because almost all of them used the Cuff compound microscope. Indeed this was in part the case at a local level, even if their reporting numbers of the power was based on a kind of tacit belief that each power was standardised, which we know was far from being the case. Delocalising the Royal Society “democratic method” for reporting microscopic measurements

8 2 Lupieri 1784, 67-68. 8 3 An. 1784, Colombo 1787, 88, 127, 174-176. 84 Cavolini (1778, 382) reported magnifications of 600 and 1200x. Then (1785, 30-31) he reported magnifications of 64 and 100 in the captions, and later (1787, 201-202) of 164 and 180. Barba (1819, 33-71) reported magnifications of 120, 200, 600, 1000, and 1280x (!) for observations made in the late decades of the eighteenth-century. See also Dana 1770, 10; Roffredi 1770a, 12 (270x); Roffredi 1775a, 6 (120x); Roffredi 1775b, 214 (380x); Fontana 1781 (700-800X); Colombo 1787, 46 (96x), 88 (150 and 700x), 172-174 (110, 150, 250, 300, 700x). 8 3 Goeze 1776, 286; Hacquet 1777, 61; BergrstraBer 1779, 33; Swark 1789, 44; Esper 1791, 203. - 261 - was launched thanks to the European spreading of tables and reporting on powers used. The exemplary system of measurements by Lyonnet, developed only slightly over the following decades, was probably too precise for most of the needs of the period. However, the measurement trend extended progressively, though with two limitations. First, there was competition with other methods of measurement, such as naturalised iconography, rhetorical computation, and the use of micrometers.86 Some areas of research such as botany of the phanerogam were indeed resistant to quantification of magnification up until the early nineteenth- century, especially because botanists were satisfied with naturalised iconography. Second, the need for a standardisation of measure proved necessary for animalcules and invisible organisms, but it was also put aside for controversial issues —such as in the quarrel over the morphology of blood cells and subtle anatomy-- in which the use of fine mensuration brought additional convincing evidence of good faith and reproducibility of observations. But the more precise and higher the measurements were the more doubt could be raised about the results. Indeed della Torre and Lupieri pretended to use very high magnifications for simple microscope, about 2600x for della Torre and 8000x for Lupieri! Although it was known that these magnifications were too high to present distinct images —Torre’s microscopes were criticised by Baker in 1766— the belief in such unreachable powers came along with the report of the magnifications.87 After Lyonnet and Gleichen, the Leipzig botanist Johannes Hedwig, who worked on the reproduction of

8 6 Millier (1771, pi. 5) used naturalised iconography for worms, Bloch (1788, 34) used both the micrometer and reported the numbers of the power of his Hoffman microscope. Many papers on botany, helminthology and entomology still appealed to naturalised iconography. 8 7 Baker 1767, 68. - 262 - cryptogam, made use of the “economic” method in the 1780s. He first reported the kind of microscope used —a compound made by

Reinthaler— and then described the magnification of its seven objectives, numbered, as usual in Germany, with roman numbers from 0 to VI. In the figures he always specified the magnification by mentioning the number of the objective.^8 Still in 1782, in

Quedlinburg, Johann August Ephraim Goeze used precisely the same method for the anatomy of worms.89 At the beginning of the nineteenth-century, though no standard existed because of the variety of microscopic fields and the advance of scientific research over the forms of communication that could have managed the increasing amount of research, reporting of magnification, in a democratic and reproducible way, was perhaps the standard adopted for microscopic measures. Girod-Chantrans who in 1802 published ten years of work on cryptogam and animalcules, provided technical information about his microscope and magnification, and, in 1803, Vaucher did the same.9 0

5.4 The quest for instrumental precision: Micrometers and instruments of division

Another way to standardise microscopic measures was provided by the micrometer. Introduced in astronomy between 1659 and

1666, there are controversies over the inventor of the first lattice.

8 8 Hedwig 1782, 10. 8 9 Goeze 1782, X. 9 0 Girod (1802, 12) used the Dellebarre microscope, with one of the strongest objectives. Vaucher (1803, V) did not report the name of the maker, but said he used everywhere the same magnification, of about 50 diameters; Villars (1804a, apperçw, 1804b, 95) said he used the microscopes by Dollond, Lyonnet and Rochette. - 263 -

either in the 1660s by the Italian instrument maker Divini or by

the marquis of Malvasia.^i Around 1667, the French astronomer

Picard used microscopes to read the information given by micrometers, in order, for instance, to measure the diameter of

the planets. The reading of astronomical limbss through

microscopes revealed the instrument to be indispensable tools

enabling the acquirement of more precision in determining

micrometric data, which means that microscopes were very early on used in Paris and probably in many other observatories. They allowed for more exact readings of astronomical micrometers,

leading to a precision of l/30’000 of a foot (0.01 mm), necessary

to measure, for example, the diameter of the moon. Nevertheless, the method did not become more precise before the mid eighteenth-century, and became standardised around the 1770s.^2

This shows that the micrometer was dependent on its astronomical use up until the early eighteenth-century. After Picard, the first direct application of the micrometer to the microscope was carried out in 1678 by the French instrument maker Jean de Hautefeuille (1647-1724) and not, as usually stated by historians, in 1710 by the German mathematician and professor at Erlangen, Theodor von Balthazar.^3 Another mathematician who worked in

Liegnitz and in Halle, Christian Gottlieb Hertel (1683-1743), fitted a microscope with a micrometer in 1716.94 Witness to the dynamism and independence of research on the microscope in

91 Huygens and the French astronomer Auzout took part in the rediscovery which was made by Gascoigne in 1639 but not used at the time. See Todesco 1997, 95-96; Brooks 1991, and Daumas 1953, 69-70. 9 2 Daumas 1953, 75, 201, 234. 9 3 Fournier 1991, 39. In Erlangen, the interest for microscope was notably cultivated and transmitted by professors such as Hamberger, Casimir Christoph Schmidel (1718-1792) and Heinrich Friedrich Delius (1720-1791). 9 4 c&C 1932, 155-156. - 264 -

Germany, the micrometer nevertheless appeared in a period of

weak visibility of the microscope in Europe, that could not help it

be included in standard practice and market. The micrometer

offered too much geometric and quantitative precision at a time

when serious research on insects and cryptogam did not actually

need such a precision, mainly because the naturalistic techniques

of drawing already fulfilled the function of measurement.

Balthazar’s micrometer was mentioned in some journals like

Trévoux^^ but did not significantly figure before its integration

into the British market in the late 1730s that put it into general use. Smith’s 1738 Complete system of optics emphasised the instrument’s usefulness for acquiring knowledge of parts of animals and vegetables.The micrometer was able to receive a more widespread diffusion when the context turned out to be favourable for the microscopical research in the late 1730s. In 1738 Benjamin Martin fitted his pocket microscope with a micrometer and research on micrometer developed from that time on in England, Germany and France. According to Clay and Court,

“Cuff, in 1747, added a micrometer of fifty to the inch to his

microscope, which was inserted by unscrewing the body in the

middle at a distance of one and a quarter from the eye-lens. This

micrometer was made of a lattice of silver w i r e s ” .^7 Folkes

discussed the suitability of fitting a micrometer onto a double

microscope in a paper he published in Baker’s 1753 Employment for the microscope.

9 5 An. 1712, 466. 9 6 Smith 1767[1738] , 337. 9 7 C&C 1932, 139-140. 9 8 Folkes 1753, 426. - 265 -

At around the same time, and following the impulse by Balthazar and Hertel, the German were still active in building micrometers. The physician Samuel Christian Hollmann, who was a professor in Gottingen, presented, in the 1745 Philosophical Transactions a micrometer made with a small tissue of black silk which was placed on the focus of an ocular of a double microscope. In 1752 another micrometer by Segner was presented to the Gottingen Academy. This was also a case for which the double microscope could be useful, for a micrometer was fitted to it, which was not the case for the simple microscope. From the middle of the century, micrometers also played a part in selling and advertising microscopes. Passemant for instance made a copy of a Cuff microscope, which he advertised in the French edition of Needham’s 1750 Nouvelles observations microscopiques. The microscope also received two micrometers made by Magny and the

Due de Chaulnes.99 Nevertheless, using a micrometer was not equal to having a stable unit of measure, because of the lack of calibration. Indeed, even with his micrometer, Hollmann could not precisely measure his object, which was the spermatic animalcules. He did not find its size, proceeding with a technique already used by many seventeenth-century authors, that of the “nesting”, and concluded that more than 15 million spermatic animalcules could fit into the space occupied by a green fly.ioo A review of

Hollmann’s micrometer in Bibliothèque raisonnée said the latter had computed the size of the spermatic anim alcules. xhe micrometer, both for astronomy and microscopy, continued to be

9 9 Daumas 1953, 218; Passemant 1750, 15-19. Hollmann 1745, 248. Similar computation was used by Leeuwenhoek, and Andry 1741, 155-157. 101 An. 1747b, 7. - 266 - produced and improved mainly in England (Georges Adams,

Dollond), France (Rochon, Boscovich, Richer, Dellebarre, Haupois) and Germany, and was, especially from the 1770s onwards, the object of many works.Scholars used them for several kinds of m easures. 103 During the 1780s, the French optical engineer Jean

Haupois (ca 1761-?) provided better precision for a lattice micrometer designed especially for the microscope. And Piazzi and

Ramsden in 1789 used micrometer microscopes which helped them to discover the asteroid C e r e s . 1 0 4

Another type of micrometer had also been invented in the late seventeenth-century. The microscope was useful not only for reading, but it could also serve to increase precision in engraving micrometric divisions. At the end of the seventeenth-century. La Hire gave a geometrical method for the division of limbs, and probably used lenses or microscopes to verify the precision of the division. The optician of the King Philippe Claude Lebas (died 1677) also worked with this method. Soon after his colleague Hautefeuille proposed the first method to divide astronomical instrument using a micrometer microscope, and published the definitive method only in 1703.^05 He remarked that

since more than thirty years, the scholars thought to put together these two instruments.

102 Yhe abbé Rochon presented to the Royal Academy of Paris in 1771 a double astronomical micrometer (Abrahams 1999), by which two images of the same object were available. See also Boscovich 1777. 103 Bloch 1788, 25-34. 104 Hoskin 1993, 31-32. 105 research has revealed a hitherto unknown treatise (Hautefeuille 1703) that shows the microscopical micrometer in use ninety years before the well-known device of Chaulnes 1768. - 267 -

the microscope and the micrometer. ^0 6 j t was, roughly, a similar device as was to be used sixty years later by Chaulnes, with two microscopes fitted with micrometers, enabling to control each others the equal space between each division. ^07 Dividing a mathematical instrument raised specific questions, and required particularly stable and heavy machines. Daumas considered that

“the division of graduate ruler and of the instrument’s limbs was at all times one of the most sensitive problems crossed by instrument m ak ers” . 108 Tied to it was of course the question of finding methods for standard accuracy. Between 1730 and 1760 the engineer Graham at the Royal Society improved the method of division, partially solving the problem of standardising precision in building and dividing mathematical instrum ents. 109 jn Danzig in

1754 and 1778 Hanow considered that the microscope was useful for draw as well as for engraving precise measurements, therefore becoming an indispensable tool for the best skilled artists. Indeed, mathematical instrument makers employed specialists, and were themselves particularly skilled in dividing units of measure such as the inch, or the degree. They did the job with a skilled naked eye, but when the problem turned to the division of a line (1/12 of an inch) into 12 points or less, or the seconds of a degree, then the microscope was helpful in order to attain a greater precision.

Hanow defended this idea in 1754,^10 but did not actually propose a machine for the mathematical division, as Ramsden, Chaulnes, Fattier and Johannes Christoph Voigtlandler (1732-1797) were to do during the late 1760s, followed by Richer, Fortin, Lenoir and

106 Hautefeuille 1703, 3. 107 Hautefeuille 1703, 5. 108 Daumas 1953, 249. 109 See Chapman 1990, 3-8. 110 Hanow 1754, 306. - 268 -

Jecker in Paris, and by Reichenbach and Fraunhofer in Munich.m

At the same time as the British instrument maker Jesse Ramsden made the first dividing machine in 1767, the Parisian Due de

Chaulnes applied, after Hautefeuille, the microscope to the problem of the division. With the help of two mobile micrometric microscopes fixed to a slide, he managed to divide the ruler and the circle with increasing precision, and his machine inspired other artisans. in Florence, Fontana also improved Chaulnes’ machine, which Saussure described when he visited him in November

1772.113 Using particular tools of his device, Chaulnes was able to divide “a royal foot into inches, lines, tenth of lines, twentieth of lines”, approximately equal to .125 mm.n^i While the British used verniers and mechanical machines, the French were more attracted by micrometers and microscopes for the divisions.11^

As for micrometer, another method was to engrave micrometric lines on a slide. The French instrument maker Lefebvre was among the first to have attempted to engrave micrometric lines on glass with a diamond, and succeeded in creating some rough micrometric slides in 1 7 0 5 . They were combined with lattice micrometer in order to work for astronomical readings. Hautefeuille also used threads of sealing wax which he applied to a glass s l i d e . 112 Later in 1 7 3 8 , Robert Smith spoke of this kind of method but did not provide evidence showing that the micrometric

111 Duchesne 1800 III, 130-132. 112 See Daumas 1953, 261-264 for a full description of the method. 113 BPU: Ms Saussure 28, the 19th of November 1772. 11 "1 Chaulnes 1768, 15, 18, 38; Chaulnes 1770, 427; see Daumas 1953, 201. 11^ Lalande (1778, 873) reported divisions of 1/100 of line. About Ramsden’s machines, Duchesne (1800 111, 131) spoke of the “508th part of a lin e ” . 11^ Daumas 1953, 106. 112 Hautefeuille 1703, 4. - 269 - glass had been concretely achieved in England.!^^ It could potentially be a much more reliable and solid tool than the lattice micrometer, providing makers obtained greater precision in mechanical division, which was only attained in the second half of the eighteenth-century. The increased precision was of course to be applied to micrometers, and an important step in micrometry was made during the late 1760s with the creation of the Augsburg instrument maker Georg Friedrich Brander (1713-1783) of a fine glass micrometer. He succeeded in engraving on glass micrometric lines with a diamond, where streaks, large of 1/200 of a line (± .0125 mm), had a distance of 1/10 of line (.25 mm).^^9 Brander's invention could be the first glass micrometer to have been marketed, and, for instance, along with several microscopes, he sold a glass micrometer to Jean Senebier in 1776 for the price of 3

F I . 1 2 0 The invention was welcomed by the philosopher and mathematician Johann Heinrich Lambert in two texts, a 1768 paper published in the Bavarian Academy and another one published the following year in A ugsburg. 121 Another “perspective micrometer” by Brander was analysed by Wilke in 1772. Contrary to the classic micrometers, inspired for a century by astronomical micrometers made with a lattice of several materials (metal, silk, hairs),

Brander’s device was intended especially for microscopes. His glass micrometer was followed in the next decade by another kind made by J. T. Mayer, reported in 1779 by the mathematician Abraham

G otthelf Kastner.122 As with the mathematicians Fuler, d’Alembert,

118 Smith 1767[1738], 337. 11^ Daumas 1953, 335. See also Kisch 1951. 120 Letter from Brander to Senebier, s.d. 1776-1777 (BPU: Ms Senebier 1039, f° 103). 121 Lambert 1768, Lambert 1769. 122 Wilke 1776, Kastner 1779. - 270 -

Alexis Clairaut and Boskowich, these examples show that in

Germany also the works of instrument makers were followed closely by important scholars. In France, the dividing machines also allowed to engrave fine micrometers. Indeed in 1767, Rochon succeeded in making a rock crystal micrometer, and, in 1784,

Baron de Marivetz vouched for the existence of micrometers engraved on tortoiseshell, with division of 1/60 of a line = .04 nun). But it was Richer in Paris, in 1782, who had made use of a machine to engrave glass micrometers said to divide a line in 50, 100, or 150 segments. They were said to have been verified thanks to Dellebarre’s m icroscope.^23 Dellebarre even used specially prepared skin of a flower’s bulb as a micrometer, arriving at a division of 200 parts of a line, but he did not reveal his m e t h o d . ^ 2 4

In Italy, Lupieri reported on a micrometer of Sanmartino, which Colombo used to measure certain parts of the “bell-polyp”, such as the m outh. 125 By crossing the method of division with the slide —a tool particularly reserved for the microscope— the glass micrometer was a revolution in the method of measuring, because it supplied microscopists with a quantitative and monitored as opposed to qualitative method of measuring microscopical objects, and followed thus the standards attained in astronomical division. Contrary to lattice micrometers made after astronomical micrometers, the glass micrometer also provided a new solution that brought an autonomous method of measuring space arithmetically rather than geometrically. The glass micrometer, a tool usually believed to have been invented around 1840, provided the microscope with a new kind of autonomy from the 1770s

123 Duchesne 1800 IV, 270. 124 Duchesne 1800 IV, 270. 125 Marivetz 1780-1785 III, 326; Lupieri 1784, 80-83; Colombo 1787, 46. - 271 - onwards, and probably also shaped and embodied in post 1770 Germany and France the conceptual and technical basis for the micrometric plates that were engraved seventy years later by N obert.126

Over the entire eighteenth-century, the microscope had also filled many practical applications, being used by Reaumur in his technological experiments on alloys that aimed at discovering the secret of making s t e e l . ^27 Reaumur and other scholars also applied it to research on dyes, to find a method for making artificial pearls, to a more precise identification of the sand of the rivers of France that contained gold, to methods of saving buildings from mildew, e t c . ^28 xhe attempts at fabrication of new kinds of paper between 1720 and the 1780s by Reaumur, Schaeffer, Jean-Etienne Guettard, Gleditsch, Léorier de F Isle and John Strange, also took advantage of the m icroscope.^29 archaeology, it was employed to identify without destroying them the substance of Roman dices. Without mentioning its continuous use in agronomy, microscopes were also used in libraries to identify insects that destroyed manuscripts and old b o o k s . But the profession where the microscope contributed to social change in the working realm was

^ 26 On Nobert, see Domes 1994, 25-29; Turner [1967], 164-171. Fraunhofer failed his attempts to measure micrometric lines (Dorries 1994, 24). ^27 Reaumur 1722, Reaumur 1726, 313. The morphological conclusions at which Reaumur arrived in 1722 in examining iron, are the same as the modern conclusions (Laissus 1961, 565-567). See also Eluerd 1993. The research on the quality of iron was the object of economical and technological rivalry between France, Germany and England in the second part of the eighteenth-century (Benoit & Pichon 1992, 59-65; Harris 1988). ^28 Reaumur 1714a, 193; Geoffroy 1717, 134; Nissole 1717, plate; Reaumur 1718, 232-240; Reaumur 1719a, 180; Reaumur 1719b, 84; Jussieu 1721, 90-92; Reaumur 1725, plate; Fontenelle 1731, 33; Reaumur 1731, 188. On utility see chapter 2, n27. 129 On the impact of Reaumur's microscopical works on the paper industry, and metallurgy, see Eluerd 1993, Nobécourt & Chiaverina 1961, 573; Laissus 1961, Orcel 1961, François 1961. 130 Hermann 1778, 32. - 272 - in instrument making. The microscope belonged to the workshop where it fulfilled several functions. Daumas cites the use of spherular microscopes by the casters, opticians, haberdashers and enamellers.131 It provided more precision to engraving micrometric divisions, and was probably used by watch-makers, mounters, etc., to verify the polish of glass, the curve of a metallic piece, to make burins, stamps, dies and stamps, to check substances and finishing, and more generally for a number of small tasks that required better precision of sight. It is probably with this in mind that Joblot promoted the microscope as a useful instrument for many professions in 1718, among which he included instrument makers and e n g r a v e r s . ^^2

An important change in instrument making occurred during the 1760s when new methods of mechanical and optical measurement, as well as increasing precision in making tools led to a change in the profession, involving new scientific, technological, educational and social practices. 1^3 By the 1760s, the demand for more precision in astronomical and nautical instruments was not being fulfilled by the traditional methods of craftsmen. The research done in France, England and Germany —probably also in other countries— led to a change in the social landscape of instrument making because it turned what had always been an artist’s domain into mechanical competence, especially for the division of mathematical instruments (quadrant, ruler). Machines dividing astronomical circles and every kind of tools were built everywhere and improved in Europe each year from the 1770s onwards.

131 Daumas 1953, 128-130. 132 Joblot 1718 I, avertissement. 133 See Heilbron 1990, 3. - 273 - following on the work of founders, in London (John Bird, Jesse

Ramsden, Edward Throughton), in Paris (Chaulnes, Fortin, Richer, Jecker, Lenoir) and in Vienna (Voigtlandler). These mechanical devices replaced the previous artisanal instruments and came into general use by the end of the century. 1^4 And if “the dividing circle contributed to the leading position of English instrument makers, especially during the late eighteenth century”, 1^5 this was not due to a technological advance over France. This would reduce the story to a mere technological argument, closely related however to the economic and juridical context. Rather I would say that the corporatist French law prevented the construction of the dividing circle on a larger scale. More generally, measure, exactitude, precision, and, from 1780, technology, became the keywords for establishing quantification as a shared trend: the quantifying s p i r i t . 1 3 6 Of course not being the head of the research on instruments, like telescopes or dividing machines, still the microscope played a role in this transformation, because increased precision was attained through the improvement of mechanical means and of finishing, but also thanks to better visual resolution supplied by the microscope. Up to the 1760s the degree of precision allowed by artisanal methods was almost completely dependent on the ability of artists to engrave divisions using their hand, a lens or a microscope, and some geometrical methods. Preceded by Hautefeuille, Chaulnes was clearly conscious of the change he helped bring about in the profession of instrument makers, and regarded even the excellent geometrical method

134 Daumas 1953, 257-270. 135 Dorries 1994, 11. 136 Heilbron 1990. See also Licoppe 1996, 255-257. - 274 -

promoted by John B i r d , 137 a pupil of Graham, as not eliminating

the human factor responsible for several imprecision. Indeed an

error of .1 mm in the division of an instrument could be equivalent to errors of thousands of miles in astronomical measures. As

stated by Chaulnes,

The perfection of the division of mathematical instrument until now has been based on the fineness and dexterity of artists who were responsible for making it. But independently of the fact that these qualities are seldom to be found gathered to the point where they form a distinguished artist, nature only allows him to enjoy its use over a limited number of years. Besides, whatever the dexterity of man, and whatever the sensitivity of his sight, they can never attain the precision of a mechanical motion, and the prodigious improvement that optical instruments provide to the faculties man takes from nature.^ 3 8

Such a major transformation in the role of the worker to a

controller of a machine was captured by the abbé Rozier, who made a similar comment in the 1773 issue of Observations sur la physique, on Jesse Ramsden's dividing machine:

With this machine, a women, a child, and even a blind person, can divide mathematical instruments, circles or quadrants, with as much precision as

the best a r t i s t . ^ 3 9

The fundamental transformation of the human being’s lot as a

worker into a more precise machine operator is a classic feature of

the industrial revolution. The hundreds of new machines invented for the production and transformation of goods from 1750

onwards needed among other things, similar sorts of operators,

and could absorb the increasing number of unqualified people —

men, women and children— coming from the country to the cities.

Like the price of goods, the price of manpower decreased and the

137 Daumas 1953 138 Chaulnes 1768, 38. 139 Rozier 1773. Duchesne (An 9 III, 131) copied this commentary. - 275 - production of goods increased dramatically.Historians have demonstrated that the industrial revolution started with the textile industry in England before 1750 and was followed by a second technological revolution in England, France, the north of Europe and Germany in the late eighteenth-century. Historians of scientific instruments have also proven the existence of a general trend of quantification and measurement that were to develop from the

1760s throughout northern Europe. This section does not deal with the relationship between the industrial revolution and the quantifying spirit, although it is clear that the transformation of the craftsmen into a machine operator could provide one of the links between the two trends. The much cheaper, less educated work of the unqualified operator contained the seeds of major social crisis and protectionist strikes against new technologies that were actually to occur from the late eighteenth-century o n w a r d s . 141 Daumas remarked that “contemporaries were struck by the quality of mechanisation in eliminating the personal factor of the w orker”, 142 and a similar reaction was shared by Thomin,

Ledermiiller, Brander and other “microscopists” when they spoke of the camera obscura to make drawing easier for people. In this way, dividing machines, with the help of microscopes, and optical machines for drawing, brought the level of instrument making and drawing up to a level equivalent to the social change of the

140 See for instance the case of Frederic Japy on industrial making watches in the late 1790 (Jacomy 1990, 300-301), 141 In 1780, there were for instance major strikes in Lyon when new weaving looms were introduced that multiplied production by ten, but did not any more need qualified manpower to be operated. The history of the industrial revolution is rife with similar examples, 142 Daumas 1953, 268, - 276 - industrial revolution that turned artisanal work into mechanical and technical work from the 1760s onwards.^43

This chapter has highlighted particular problems that the eighteenth-century scholar had to face. Up to the mid seventeenth- century, the question of measuring creatures did not take on a meaning other than that of noting that some species were larger or smaller than others. To answer the question of why the measure of natural creatures became important for natural history needs to take into account the role played by the microscope and by microscopical imagery. Of course particular fields, such as the study of parasites by Redi in the 1680s, could relate two series of animals which were in a relationship of inclusion, the smaller living at the expense of the larger. The emergence of the microscope renewed in a entirely new way the function of keeping up in the observation and the reporting of observations of natural creatures.

Naturalised iconography fulfilled this function and shaped a good compromise that informed the reader both of the morphology and the comparative measure of small-scale beings. It allowed, notably in France and Germany, the establishment of a regime of democratic microscopy, working with privileged objects. One is then able to understand how changing the object —the polyp and aquatic animalcules— which spread like a tidal wave over Europe in the 1740s, led to a change in the demand for keeping up and in the definition of the democratic microscope itself. In front of new microscopic objects, and particularly faced with the astonishing

See also Benoit & Pichon 1992, 63. Jaucourt discussed the similar topic of the impact of new machines to sawing woods, moved by eolian forces; “Mr Melon rightly said that, thanks of the industrial machines, doing with one man what would be done without them by two or three men, is doubling or triplicating the number of citizens” (Jaucourt 1778a, 649). - 277 - polyp, the skeptics were cut off by Trembley’s strategy of generosity which virtually hinged on his choice of the democratic microscope. On the point of iconography, Trembley actually did not choose naturalised iconography, but looked for one of the best that is to say most realistic artists of the entire century, Pierre Lyonnet. With the change of the microscopical object in the 1740s, the function of keeping up demanded a new framework for the democratic microscope. Under different appearances --rhetorical computation, micrometers, test-objects, mentioning powers, measures of focus, powers, and objects— quantification presented itself among the best solutions for the microscopical observer to grasp new objects that were more and more invisible. The attempts at measuring microscopic objects were conceived as a new solution promoting the democratic microscope, complementary to the accurate reporting of facts and circumstances the scholars had been cultivating from the 1660s. The 1760s saw the beginning of a more systematic exploitation of the quantifying spirit in the practices of the microscope throughout Europe, providing definitive evidence that the microscopical research was not isolated from the general scientific and socio-political trend of measuring that expanded during the same period. Nor were the alleged “toys” microscopes, and microscope making separated from the technological advances of the industrial revolution. C h a p t e r 6

T h e E m e r g e n c e o f t h e S y s t e m a t ic s o f I n f u s o r i a

The second half of the eighteenth-century was characterised by a new attitude towards animalcules, in two words, naming and classifying them. This new attitude was fundamental in respect to further development of scientific works on infusoria during the following century, and is absolutely irreducible both to the method and practices of seventeenth-century microscopists and to the literary technology of the experimental report.

6.1 The competition in Britain between Hill and Baker for control of microscopy

Before 1752, there was no attempt to classify microscopical species, which is to say that no one applied the microscope to animalcules of infusions with the intent of grouping them according to their particular morphology, with or without the help of Latin nomenclature. We already saw that the concept of species was stabilised for insects by Reaumur. The classifying method adopted in John Hill’s 1752 History of Animals was new in several respects.

Indeed, previous authors, such as Joblot, were said to have distinguished species and genera, but without any character particular to genera, so that they could not be considered as species. Moreover, there was no unity in the language used by previous authors to distinguish animalcules, and the private terminology employed did not traverse national boundaries. Thus - 279 - the absence of shared terminology was a crucial difficulty for someone hoping to reproduce an observation on the same organism.

In this respect, Hill’s approach to classification was a first attempt at abstracting and delocalising the knowledge of animalcules from their local origins. Ideally, the animalcules would not be just the

French “fishes”, “small animals”, “animals of the liquors”, the British

“animalcules” and “insects”, or the German Insekten any more. They were now to be “animalcules” and nothing else. Taking the word from the British, an attempt was made to attach “animalcule” to a kingdom in the middle of the century. Hill wanted explicitly to introduce the Linnaean order —names and classification— into the

“animalcule kingdom”:

I have arranged them into a regular method, and given them denominations. 1

This work was the residual part, put in a natural history style, of the series of observations Hill had carried out along with Lord Petre and on which he had published, in the 1752 Essay, a long narrative. Since he was launching a system of classification for the animal kingdom. Hill took the opportunity to include within it microscopic animalcules. He defined them as creatures escaping the senses, waiting for the microscope in order to be noticed. The animalcules, of which he provided illustrations {Fig. X), were divided into three classes, eight genera and 35 species, names being given only to classes and genera (Table E). Their morphology, by combining the presence or absence of tail and limbs, was the key for their classification into genera.

1 Hill 1752b, preface n.p. “Method” here means classification. - 2 8 0 - JV^Ae/.Ah. /a A N'lM AI. C l/Z E S GYMNIA. Enclielides Cydidia

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X. Hill’s illustration for the “ Animalcule Kingdom” . Note the absence of binomial nomenclature, which was being established at the time by Linnaeus (Hill 1752, 12, pi. 1) - 281 -

Table. F. Hill’s 1752 classification Class Genus N. species C h a r a c te r G y m n ia no tail, no limbs Enchelides 4 cylindric figure Cyclidia 4 roundish figure Faramecia 4 irregular oblong figure Craspedaria 3 apparent mouth C e rc a ria tail, no limbs B rachiuri 5 tail shorter than body Macrocerci 8 tail longer than body Arthronia visible limbs Scelasii 2 visible legs Brachioni 5 apparatus of arms

However, this first endeavour to lay a new foundation was later to be abandoned, in England as well as in the 1766 and 1767 Latin classifications by Pallas and Linnaeus.^ From the eighteenth-century up until the early nineteenth-century the classification of infusoria was taken by naturalists, who derived the character of the class — animalcules and infusoria— either from the instrument or from the environment. Although he had applied morphological keys to distinguish between several species, genera and classes, the “kingdom” of animalcules was separated from other kingdoms thanks to the microscope. Hill’s most general definition of animalcules derived from the instrument, their being defined as

“only seen by the assistance of the microscope”.^ The microscope was the main method by which one could enter what Hill called the “animalcule kingdom”.^

Such a choice partially explains the fate of Hill’s work, because, for an ancien régime naturalist, creating a new kingdom from almost nothing was a subject to be treated seriously. First, in order

2 For an overview of the reception of Linnaeus and Pallas’ systematical works in Germany see Larson (1994, 28-98). For the case of France, see Roche 1996 and Duris 1993. 3 Hill 1752b, 1. 4 Hill 1752b, 2. - 282 - to create this kingdom, Hill had discretely to drop a level —the order— from the standard natural history hierarchy. Hill called

“classes” the Gymnia, Cercaria and Arthronia, but the official group hierarchy defended by Linnaeus and by tradition, was the following: class, order, genus and sp e c ie s.^ In order to strictly follow the Latin natural history rules. Hill should have considered animalcules to be a class, or better, an order —never a kingdom— and Gymnia, Cercaria and Arthronia to be three subdivisions, not classes. Declaring he had found a new kingdom was thus putting the cart before the horse. A second dimension unacceptable to naturalists, especially from the Latin natural history tradition, related to the choice of the microscope as a characters to establish the class. Indeed, above all, naturalists looked for the “classic character”, and only then new species, genera, and orders could be accepted.6 Linnaeus considered the worms (a class to which belonged the order of zoophytes, and the genus of Chaos infusorium) for instance, to be lacking heads, and this negative character was challenged by naturalists such as Müller in 1113J By choosing the microscope, tool that only a few systematists had made use of, as the major “character” for differentiating the animalcules from other animals. Hill defied the morphological essence of the character.

Nevertheless, accounting for the later weak reception of Hill’s work in England demands an analysis of his strategy, which reveals all the connotations that actually made his position closer to that of the elitist rather than the democratic microscope. It was

^ See Linnaeus 1737, 18-19. ^ For instance on the character of vertebrata and invertebrata, see Lamarck 1934 [1799], 24-25. ^ Müller 1773-1774 I, preface; An. 1775, 18. - 283 - probably difficult to match the demand for democratising the microscope with the openly promoted rivalry in the London scholarly milieu. Notably, not quoting someone when criticising him, was among the obstacles to the democratic conception of the microscope. Concerning an animalcule called by Baker “Rotifer, or wheel animal”. Hill had actually made observations which contradicted Baker’s, saying that the so-called wheel was an

apparatus of arms for the taking its prey. The apparatus, which nature has furnished these creatures, has been greatly misunderstood by the microscopical writers; they have supposed it a kind of wheel, and have thence named the creatures that are possessed of it wheel animals.^

When a mistake in a description is subject to a code of honour, one can understand that there are but few opportunities to quietly discuss the issue. Baker was to reply in a similar way, quoting “some gentlemen”,9 and standing firm on his likewise position, asking for further observation, and saying that the other party had confused the type of animalcule.

This was similar to the style adopted by John Hill for the study of animalcules. Presenting his research on animalcules, he immediately criticised authors, in several respects, while treating them anonymously. Far too many species were poorly described, he considered, and were actually varieties of the same species; this was due to “imperfect observations”, “and not a few [animalcules had their origin] from the absolute want of candour and ingenuity in the writers, who have described and figured things they never saw”.I n the Preface, few authors were quoted and criticised by name. Hill targeted Linnaeus and particularly Baker, about whose

8 Hill 1752b, 10. 9 Baker 1753, 284-286. 10 Hill 1752b, 1. - 284 - microscopical works he publicly expressed doubts.ii Nevertheless, this atmosphere of rivalry permeating the Royal Society is probably among the causes of the emergence of a new attitude of classification of animalcules.^^ To gain a stake in this debate, several scholars competed for the leadership of microscopy at the time, especially Baker, Needham, Parsons and Hill. With his 1742

Microscope made easy. Baker had achieved an important place as microscopical observer in the Royal Society. Needham had also gained a kind of European reputation through his works. James Parsons, from the very beginning a collaborator of Baker and Folkes, had, in 1745, promised a series of works on the classification of seeds, of which he only completed the first volume. John Hill’s work probably aimed at unseating Baker from his position as the leader of “microscopy”.

Hill however bestowed upon himself the right to tabula rasa in regards to any previous research, applying a kind of Baconian revolutionary method, particularly to the names of animalcules: “I have not changed their names, the greatest part of them had none before”. Such a demise for many previous microscopical observations and names actually demonstrated Hill’s misunderstanding of the purpose of the natural history tradition as cumulative and referencing. Indeed, many animalcules already had names, and Leeuwenhoek, Joblot, Baker and others had several times explained the difficulties encountered in naming them.

Animalcules received what the natural history tradition called vernacular names, which are non Latin names given to an object by

1 1 Hill 1752b, preface. On Hill and Baker rivalry see Turner [1974], 61. ^ ^ On John Hill’s permanent opposition to the Royal Society and particularly to Baker, see Rousseau and Haycock 1999, 387-391. 13 Hill 1752b, preface. - 285 - untrained naturalists. Of course, animalcules had no Latin names, but, since the Renaissance, the natural history tradition had cultivated a method to establish precise linkage between vernacular and Latin names. This method, the synonymy, enabled the tradition to cull together every previous observation, and was used by Linnaeus and by major naturalists, especially for the purpose of creating a field. 14 in refusing synonymy. Hill avoided quoting previous authors, and assumed for himself the prestige of a so-called discovery, without paying his dues to all previous observers. Such was also the interpretation of Matthew Maty in his report of Hill’s EssaysA^ Hill was later to be criticised for this by Müller, who noticed that he neither quoted authors nor provided synonym y:

this process [division of the paramecia] confused many micrographs with whom Hill disputed, although he did not quote their figures, their synonyms, and did not cite the names of these authors.

Besides not directly quoting the authors he criticised. Hill dared to suggest an amendment to the status of observation and scientific testimony which was precisely the contrary to what the microscopical research needed at that time. In order to prevent microscopical deception, he considered that

there is no way to avoid it, but by making our own observation the basis of our accounts, and paying a very limited credit to those which we receive on the testimony of others.^ ^

In addition to not quoting people, in terms of democratising the microscope, this was an entirely disastrous method, which

^ ^ Caspar Bauhin’s 1623 founding work Pinax theatri botanici contained a comprehensive synonymy of the names used in all previous botanical studies, as was the case for infusoria, in Müller’s 1773 and 1786 works. 15 Maty 1752, 203. 16 Müller 1786, 91. 17 Hill 1752b, 1. - 286 - reverted to the Leeuwenhoek days, where only one man allowed himself the authority to say something was true. One would not be surprised to find that no programme could be derived from such a method.

In 1753 Henry Baker published his second book on microscopy, concerned, as shown in the Employment for the microscope subtitle, with “various animalcules never before described.” The first part contained microscopical analyses of crystals, which influenced Linnaeus. Baker had actually done a lot of empirical research since the publication of his 1742 Microscope made easy and his 1743 Natural History of the Polyp, and the new book synthesised several years of microscopical observations, most of his material having been collected between 1743 and 1747. Contrary to his previous compilation. Employment for the microscope brought forward new observations on animalcules, and Baker stopped reprinting illustrations taken from earlier

Philosophical Transactions, as he had done in 1742. Probably upset by Hill’s attack. Baker was to reestablish his primacy on microscopy with this new work that showed for the first time —but perhaps a bit too late— his abilities as an observer. He thus described many animalcules, and named hair-like insects, oat, eels, protei, globe animals, satyrs, pipe animals, wheel-animals, plum polyps, etc., hoping “to be indulged the liberty of giving such names to these hitherto unnoticed animalcules, as correspond in some manner to their appearances”.^ ^

A large contrast was manifest in the two works. While acknowledging that the smallest creatures lived in water. Baker

18 Baker 1753, 232. - 287 - nevertheless did not use a systematic method, nor was he interested in Latin or in classification, although he read Latin and used the prevailing Latin names for insects, taken from Moffet and

Swam m erdam .19 But he did not import this method of naming species in Latin from insects to animalcules, and emphasised, aside from their description, their size, motion, behaviour, place of origin, and related the circumstances of their discoveries in a narrative that frequently relied on anecdotal rather than analytical topics. Every animalcule was the subject of a story, and likely provided the dominant structure of Baker’s text, in contrast to Hill’s work. Actually Baker’s Employment resembled more Hill’s 1752 Essays ... containing a series of discoveries by the assistance of Microscopes, than Hill’s History of animals. Similar in length to

Employment, H ill’s Essays also reported descriptions and behaviour, in a narrative on animalcules, while the part of History of animals which concerned animalcules was a 15 page study devoted to description and classification. Unlike the History of animals, the Essays and Employment were reported in certain journals, such as the Journal Britannique directed by the recently elected P.R.S. Matthew Maty.20 But no particular trend had been launched by Hill’s classification. After Baker’s 1753 work, it seems that the topic did not interest British scholars, such as Ellis, who began to cultivate marine zoology, or later Hunter, Hewson and the two Monros, in the case of microscopical anatomy. Baker himself almost stopped being concerned with microscopical research; Needham also was nearly silent on the topic after 1750; Parsons had published his last work in 1752 and Hill seemed to

19 Baker 1753, 231. 2 0 Maty 1752, Maty 1753, - 288 -

have lost interest in animalcules and reverted to less sensitive

topics, such as the microanatomy of plants. Hill also translated Swammerdam’s Biblia natura during the 1750s, published books

on insects observed with the microscope, and invented a primitive

microtome used especially for the anatomy of vegetables. Except

for marine zoology, Trembley’s tidal wave was now far behind.

Indeed, the 1740s enthusiasts of the microscope such as Henry Miles, William Arderon, Thomas Lord, James Sherwood, Roger Pickering and Richard Badcock, had stopped reporting

microscopical observations by the early 1750s. In France, other

fields such as chemistry and electricity were developing. Once more the microscope had been of little use to the British who had been unable to capitalise on the knowledge they promoted in order to launch a heuristic field of research.

How can this second British decline in the study of animalcules in the post 1752 period be explained? In terms of communication.

Hill and Baker adopted opposing methods. Hill adopted a tabula rasa approach in regards to prior research, but Baker chose to subscribe to the democratic microscope, quoting his friends for sending him their letters and specimens, asking the ''Curious to endeavour to solve” particular microscopic difficulties,21 and recording the dates and places of the many parcels sent by

Needham, Miles, Arderon, Sherwood, Joseph Greenlease, Joseph

Sparshall, Thomas Harmer and others. He also reported on the magnifiers he used, described the Cuff microscope, and gave blow- by-blow narratives of his observations. Why, might one ask, did

such use of the democratic microscope not encourage further

2 1 Baker 1753, 250. - 289 - research on animalcules in England? Probably because the democratic microscope was not relevant by that time since standards had changed and been raised by Trembley’s experimental and Hill’s systematic works. Furthermore Baker virtually ignored experimentation and classification.

Indeed, ignoring classification of animalcules in the seventeenth- century was normal, because no one attempted it, while in the second part of the eighteenth-century, the same ignorance became a gap, both because Linnaeus and Reaumur had provided a better definition of the concept of species, the example for classifications of insects, and because Hill had provided one for animalcules. John Ellis and Job Raster were also working on the classification of coral and zoophytes^. Although located at the centre of a British network for the practices of the microscope —many amateurs sent him animalcules, observations, descriptions, etc.— in terms of the heuristic potential of his research. Baker was actually left on his own. One can be isolated from future perspectives and even be at the centre of an active scholarly network, when following old- fashioned methods. On classification. Baker spoke indifferently of worms, animals, animalcules and insects, as for the “wheel insect”,22 while, for the naturalists, worms and insects were two classes of beings mutually exclusive of one another. Such disinterest in classification, which was likely in part a reply to Hill, was balanced by the discussion of interesting topics, such as the limits of life, the variety of shapes of the proteus, the description of the apparatus of the “wheel insect”, and several other topics .2 3

Baker tackled stimulating questions which were later discussed by

22 Baker 1753, 269-270. 2 3 Baker 1753, 254-255, 263-265. - 290 -

scholars, both systematists and physiologists. Notably, a sequence of figures showing the transformation of the wheel-animal (the

rotifer) into its egg was a property to which Spallanzani were later to consecrate numerous pages.^4 The question of life was raised

through the observation of certain animalcules —Needham’s eels of blighted wheat— which seemed to lose all signs of life but could soon recover when put into water.^5 However Baker was not —like

Reaumur, Bonnet, Trembley and, later, Spallanzani— a creative experimenter belonging to a strong tradition, identifying a problem, and solving it in order to “add his contribution”.

Especially the scholar has to “credit his colleagues with what is due them”.26 Plagiarising does not match creativity. Having actually copied Trembley’s procedures, he was totally inept at devising new experiments, enabling him, for instance to test which organs in eels were the locus of life: “this question future experiments alone can a n s w e r ” .27 Contrary to Hill and Wright, Baker did not tackle the experimental problem of the day, namely spontaneous generation of animalcules. Employment for the microscope was not a programme for microscopy, since it did not give a model either for experimenting or for classifying, considered as new standards on the continent. Truth was there a social, but not a heuristical phenomenon.

That is why, even with his aggressive and elitist style. Hill adhered to, and, in his two 1752 books, gave examples of both directions that were to rejuvenate the study of animalcules in the second part of the eighteenth-century: experimentalism and

2 4 Spallanzani 1776 II 182-200; see Ratcliff 2000, 108-110. 2 5 Baker 1753, 263-265. 2 6 These two quotations. Holmes 1985, 73. 2 7 Baker 1753, 255. - 291 - systematics. Baker adopted neither of these, and was perhaps too much the heir of Leeuwenhoek for his circumstantiated narratives and his lack of interest in classification. But the opposition between Baker and Hill was perceivable in other ways. Being aware of the want of new styles for microscopy, Hill discarded the polite aspect of the democratic microscope. His reporter. Maty, noted the contradiction between his claim of priority and his “silence” on previous authors he should have quoted.^8 Baker, who even enlarged the field of the democratic microscope with his calculations, supported an old-fashioned style of making and reporting observations. Roughly speaking. Hill proposed a heuristic method through an elitist microscope, while Baker used a democratic microscope too bogged down in details, reporting thus all the contingencies of the social process on animalcules, and offering no heuristic programme.

There are two major factors accounting for the absence of a subsequent microscopical programme on animalcules in England, a tension between the Latin and non-Latin naturalists, and the too important status imparted to the microscope. Behind the British rivalry in the microscopical research, a schema progressively shaped and distinguished social groups. Indeed, all the fellows from whom Baker received parcels were, like himself, not trained in the Latin tradition of natural history. In contrast, the skilled

Latin naturalists, including John Ellis, William Watson, James

Parsons and Hill were not perhaps unified in an actual group, but they nevertheless all looked towards Linnaeus, and corresponded

2 8 Maty 1752, 203. Maty highlighted Hill’s repeated claims for priority {ibid., 188), while not citing previous observers of the lice {ibid., 203), nor Trembley from whom he clearly copied a discovery {ibid., 213). - 292 - with him or with the network of Latin naturalists.^9 These scholars, apothecaries or MDs, introduced Linnaeism into England. Each of them published works carried out according to the standards of the Latin naturalist tradition, although written in English, such as

Parsons’ 1745 Microscopical Theater of Seeds, and Ellis’ works. Speaking of the Latin natural history tradition does not necessarily imply the use of Latin, but supposes the use of synonymy, morphology, the distribution of several species into one genus and of several genera into one order, this all according to established characters. Baker was not a naturalist in the Latin tradition, which means that he did not attempt to group animalcules according to their morphological differences and similarities. A key to the story probably lies in the fact that with Linnaeus a democratic an heuristic way of practicing science was to be established successfully. Linnaeus’ impulse enabled people to be trained with the same background of describing and classifying beings, and progressively gathered these people into societies, promoting a particular style of scientific communication. Behind the Hill-Baker rivalry, the question was also that of the local versus the international circle of naturalists, along with their particular styles of communication. Baker mainly quoted British observers and

FRS’s, while in their works. Parsons, Ellis and Watson quoted the authors of the tradition, regardless of their origin. Hill, as is known, was an exception.

This social division of labour between amateur and Latin naturalists was already manifest in the early 1740s and the “second decline” of the microscopical research on animalcules was in tune

^9 Hill corresponded with Haller, Ellis with Linnaeus. - 293 - with this division. Indeed, when the FRS Roger Pickering claimed to have discovered the seeds of mushrooms in 1743, the apothecary William Watson had to recall that the discovery had already been made fifteen years earlier by Micheli.^o In 1762, another

“discovery” of a marine animal made by John Andrew Dupont, replicated, though he did not cite, the discovery of Breyn in 1705, already published in Philosophical Transactions.^^ Among the differences between the amateurs and the Latin naturalists was the systematic culture of the memory of previous works. Indeed their isolationism allowed the British amateurs and naturalists to believe they were launching a microscopical discipline, while they almost did not recall previous and continental authors, and especially did not give researchers of the past their due. Neglecting others’ discoveries lead Hill himself to be neglected, and such logic worked within the Royal Society, but also outside of it. Certainly when the epistemological reference was, as for eighteenth-century naturalistic activity, a cumulative model waiting to be organised, if every discovery had to be made anew, no disciplinary field could emerge from this realm. In such a situation, the main trend that could endure was the works of the naturalists educated in the Latin tradition —because this was the main cumulative and organised framework for naturalia.

Another factor helping to account for the second decline was the advertising machinery, that was already selling decontextualised microscopes as stabilised goods as if consequent knowledge had been established, which roughly demonstrates a lack of balance between the consumption of symbolic representations and the

3 0 Pickering 1743, 595-596; Watson 1743, 599; Watson 1744, 51-53. 3 1 Dupont 1765, 57; Breyn 1705, 2053. - 294 - capacity for creation. On this point, Baker’s plagiarising tendencies concurred with those of Adams, who, in 1746, used Joblot’s and Trembley’s work, and, in 1787, Müller’s, as a selling point.^2 in a paradoxical way the advanced market for the microscope in

England participated in setting up obstacles to microscopical research, because it offered, as a by-product, the symbolic representation of an efficient or even heuristic tool without being able to prove its concrete usefulness. The goal of the above mentioned scholars was not research per se, but the erection of the microscope as a symbol of their power, including microscopic objects within a marketing culture, regardless of the objects probability of survival. Such a short term conception could not fit with a programme of research, and left open the door to social contingencies for most of them not oriented towards a major course other than operating a microscope. This process is quite similar to the decontextualisation of instruments carried out by British physicists of the 1720s.With few exceptions, the microscope was not used by the amateur naturalists as a means, a tool of research, but as a kind of fetishised goal per se, while this relation was generally inverted on the continent. Even to a skilled

Latin naturalist such as Hill, the choice of the microscope as a character to establish the “Kingdom of animalcules” --or shall we say Hill’s own kingdom?— as well as Baker’s constant advertisement for Cuff microscopes argue for such a symbolic and mercantile nature of the microscope in Britain. British practices of the microscope were the slave to their own optical empire, and had to wait for the microscope to be optically standardised with

^2 Adams (1787, 469-651) translated Muller's Infusoria and copied its plates to show the objects of which the microscope allowed observation, Licoppe 1996, 147-160. - 295 - the achromatic microscope before microscopy could be launched there as a heuristic field of investigation during the 1840s.

With these two obstacles, typical in England, of the unrelieved tension between Latin and non-Latin naturalists, and of a dominant mercantile exploitation of microscopical knowledge, it is thus not by chance that microscopical research on animalcules developed only in countries —and within transnational networks— where these two problems were on the way to being overcome, or were absent. The two main networks of people in which the microscope was democratised had two personalities at their centres, Otto- Friedrich Müller in northern Europe and Lazzaro Spallanzani in

Italy. 34 Although these two central figures, representative of two scientific cultures, did not share the same practice of the democratic microscope, they commonly considered the microscope as a tool and subordinated it to their research agendas. They worked within scientific cultures which prevented the fetishism of merchandise, as described by Marx, which could be established in places such as England.

6.2 The rise of microscopical research in Germany

With more than ten years of delay in generally acknowledging the polyp, German scholars reproduced the “steps” from insects to polyps before launching into research on infusoria. Naturalists who had beforehand been interested in insects began publishing on polyps in the 1750s. Indeed, the monthly issue of Rosel’s

3 4 Lack of space prevents me from discussing the network of Italian microscopical work. - 296 - monatlich heraus-gegebenen Insecten-Belustigung, which described and depicted insects from 1742 was dedicated in 1755 to the polyp and other water animalcules. Similarly, the

Nuremberg minister and naturalist Jacob Christian Schaeffer

(1718-1790) was to follow a close pattern. After having worked with the microscope on the generation of mushrooms, on aquatic insects, caterpillars and parasitic worms between 1750 and 1753, he first published in 1754 a book dedicated to the same kind of polyps as Trembley described. The following year saw the publication of his two monographs on a green species of polyp and on the flower polyp. In the latter, Schaeffer provided the first classification of polyps in Germany, encompassing both fresh and marine water animals.Other scholars followed his classificatory example, such as the professor in Wittemberg Johann Daniel Titius (1729-1796) in 1 7 6 0 . These attempts did not emphasise the microscope, but rather the classification and microscopical creatures. In the late 1750s, the Brandenburg law councillor Martin Frobenius Ledermiiller (1719-1769) took over microscopical research from previous works, and endeavoured to establish it as a new scientific field. Through his investigations and policies, a reversal in interest had progressively emerged, which, from the minute organisms, placed the microscope at the first stage. Such strategy matched the belief, often expressed in Germany, that the microscope was a heuristical instrument by which a new world could be discovered, and the Germans,

Catholics and Lutherans, all shared the conviction that the microscope was perhaps the best tool with which God’s nature

Schaeffer 1755a, 6. 3 6 Titius 1760, 43. - 297 - would divulge its secrets. It seems that the polyp, as a suitably

minute organism, supplied conditions similar in which Britain’s

attempts a decade before to establish microscope as a major tool for a new field of research had been made. Ledermiiller first took

the bull by the horns in repeating, in the mid 1750s,

Leeuwenhoek’s and Buffon’s observations and experiments on

spermatic animalcules. In 1 7 4 9 , Buffon had indeed challenged

Leeuwenhoek’s observations, saying that spermatic animalcules

had no tails and represented a new kind of animality, made out of

a simple concentration of organic m olecules.^7 in his 1 7 5 6

Physicalische Beobachtungen derer Saamenthiergens the replication of these observations allowed Ledermiiller to reject both Buffon’s theory of organic molecules and his morphological account of the spermatic animalcules. Ledermiiller was to come back to the subject two years later, when he demonstrated the scientific usage of the solar microscope.

In 1760 Ledermiiller inaugurated the only eighteenth-century journal devoted to microscopy. The project for Microscopisches

Augen-ergotzung had already been advertised in a widely read journal in 1 7 5 8 .Of course, Ledermiiller was supported by the propitious circumstances of the Nuremberg milieu, which was very favourable to natural history, drawing and practical optics. Still,

transforming the microscope into a tool central to a scientific

trend was not a trivial task. What was Ledermüller’s more precise

goal in launching his journal? He considered offering information, microscopical observations and experiments to the Natur Liebhaber, to the “amateur of nature”. These amateurs were of

3 7 Buffon 1749 II, 176-180. 3 8 An. 1758, 368. - 298 - course a wealthy audience, because all of Ledermüller’s books had a huge number of illuminated engravings in quarto, and the price of this type of book was thrice that of a similar book without illuminated engravings. Yet Ledermüller’s journal was given a good r e c e p t i o n , and was not isolated because many of these illuminated books were produced in Bavaria. A Nuremberg journal, the Frankische Sammlungen, with which Ledermüller and other scholars collaborated, also encouraged microscopical studies. For the work itself, Ledermüller repeated hundreds of previous experiments before several scholars and witnesses, and worked as a conduit of information between previous microscopical works and his German audience. For instance, he repeated, before witnesses, Sherwood and Needham’s experiments on eels of paste, studied the structure of hair, nerves and skin, observed Acarus, the morphology of crab louse, discussed the origin of salt coming from desiccated water, produced animalcules from infusions of hay, showed several colonies of polyps which were used by Linnaeus, etc.^o

Clearly, Ledermüller’s attempt was the step by step elaboration of a kind of handbook for “microscopy”, made nevertheless without a particular method. Here he described the way to perform a dissection, and even provided a recapitulation of certain topics not only with references and lines of forces, but also with images, as for the Kermes {Fig. F, Ms. A). An important democratic microscope strategy was to cite as many authors as possible. In fact, besides experimental repetition and good iconography.

3 9 An. 1766, 29. Ledermiiller 1761, pi. 88, 174-175. Ledermiiller 1763, 33-36, 67-68, 88. On Ledermiiller’s work, see Martin & Martin 1983, 71-72. - 299 -

Ledermüller actively promoted citing scholars and craftsmen, which turned his books into rich sources of information for everyone interested in the subject. This was perhaps typical of an aspect of the Germans naturalist tradition, which, contrary to the isolationism of Hill and even Baker, promoted an international culture of citation. For instance, in the mid-century, Jacob

Theodor Klein in Danzig wrote some of his texts with quotations in five languages: Latin, German, French, Italian and English.^i This method of working, rooted in the pre-Linnaean Latin natural history tradition posed obvious problems because one had to spend much time learning these languages, “time that could be spent in learning sciences”, as it was stated by d’Alembert in a work published around the same time.^^ But such a multilingual method at least provided the opportunity for systematically checking previous international literature before writing so m eth in g .

Moreover, the Germans translated or reported almost every article and piece of writing that concerned natural sciences in many journals, such as the Hamburgishes Magazine, the Commentant de rebus in scientia naturali et medicina gestis published in Leipzig from 1752 onwards, the Gottingischen

Anzeigen and many others. From the late 1740s onwards, certain journals were a platform for scientific papers, on which the microscopical work took its part, sometimes more important than electricity. The Hamburgisches Magazin included microscopical texts from Reaumur, Needham, Hill, Deslandes, Bonnet, Trembley, Baker, Collinson, Haller, Buffon, many Germans and other

4 1 Klein 1754, 2-17. 4 2 d’Alembert 1805, 25-26 (original: 1753). - 300 -

European authors. The Germans had created audiences for these works, both of scholars and amateurs, whom Ledermiiller attempted to cull together. This tendency to absorb international works, present in Ledermiiller, is highlighted by the table F.

Table F. Number of authors per country quoted by Ledermiiller (1764) and Baker (1753)

Ledermüller 1764 Baker 1753

N%N% G e rm a n y 16 33 1 3 I ta ly 8 17 4 12 H o llan d 7 15 3 9 F r a n c e 7 15 3 9 E n g la n d 6 13 21 67 Geneva 1 2 1 3 CH 1 2 Swed. 1 2 ? 1 2 TOT 48 33

Ledermiiller’s system of references was international, sought to be exhaustive, but did not neglect German scholars. By contrast.

Baker’s system of references was British and rather ignored scholars from other countries. Other differences are in the relationship with the market of microscopy. Ledermiiller gave information concerning the market, quoting contemporaneous inventors (Delius, Lieberkhun, Gleichen), as well as craftsmen who built microscopes in various cities (Mittsdorffer, Milchmeyer,

Meyen, Burucker), while Baker quoted only Cuff and Lieberkuhn.

Ledermüller took his material from both seventeenth-century classical authors as well as from contemporaneous authors. He reported, for instance, a recent MD thesis which presented material of microscopical interest. Baker ignored the medical m ilieu. - 301 -

Himself an amateur naturalist, Ledermiiller demonstrated an aristocratic and enlightened amateur vision of the microscope, while nevertheless defending many aspects of the democratic microscope. This can be compared to another aristocratic version of microscopical knowledge, that of Buffon. Where Buffon said

“my observations are sufficient to establish my theory”,

Ledermiiller replied “let us repeat other scholars’ microscopical observations and experiments”. When Rosel discovered Trembley’s 1744 Mémoires, he and Ledermiiller were immediately to repeat the experiments before accepting his skillfulness, having

written clearly, and faithfully communicated to the amateurs of natural knowledge all the means with which he performed his observations.^ ^

Ledermüller could however be respected by the academic milieu because he also actively participated in the life of the Bavarian societies, especially in Nuremberg, where he published several papers in various scientific journals. If his project failed, abandoned around 1766, when the journal Frankische Sammlungen also ceased publication, and no heir took the work up again after

Ledermüller’s death in 1769, it was probably for a lack of internal coherency in the project, and for the absence of a strong framework relying on original experiments. Even if, contrary to Buffon, he gave spermatic animalcules their tails and animality again, no new experiments allowed him to prove or disprove their role in generation; all the same, when observing animalcules in an infusion of hay, he contented himself with thesis of the preexistent germs flying in the air or deposited on plants.^4 His narrative framework, analogous to that of Baker, also cultivated

^ ^ Ledermiiller 1764, 46. Ledermiiller 1761, 88, pi. 48. - 302 - experimental repetition and other features of the democratic microscope. Although it had the advantage of being more international, the microscope considered as a goal rather than a means, the culture of social repetition of other’s experiments, hinged by the absence of a framework unifying the observations probably led his attempt to being symbolic of the difficulties of the now insufficient status of the democratic microscope in creating a new field.

6.3 Roots for the systematics of microscopic animals

As we saw in chapter 2, the first wave of study of animalcules took place mainly in Holland and France, from the 1670s to the late 1710s. After a second wave in England during the late 1740s and early 1750s with Baker and Hill, the topic shifted location and gave rise to a third wave emerging in other places of Europe: Germany, Italy, Denmark and Geneva. During the 1750s and especially the 1760s, German and northern scholars began to explore the microscopic aquatic world. A critical mass of research was reached in the mid 1760s because important scholars focused

their research on water-animalcules, including of course spermatic

animalcules. Animalcules of the infusions provided a new direction

for research when two books by Lazzaro Spallanzani and the MD August Heinrich Wrisberg were published in 1765, although these

works did not address classification. Arguments for observing invisible things, which emerged in the 1740s, were now

strengthened and appeared in many texts: “this animal is invisible to the naked eye”, “without a microscope it is invisible”, or “animalcules (...) are only seen with the assistance of - 303 - microscopes”. This commonplace observation appeared even in the title of Hill’s book and was to be generalised and used by every naturalist who worked on these creatures in the second part of the eighteenth-century.46 In this way, this rationale typifies the post

1740 period in contrast to the first part of the century, where the

same argument was much less frequently used. A sign of the

emergence of this new general trend was the coining of the Latin

term animalcula infusoria to designate what had up to that time been referred to as animalcules. Contrary to what was being written at least since 1826 by Bory de Saint Vincent and until recently,47 Wrisberg did not coin the term infusoria, which he did not use separately from animalcula, and used instead animalcula infusoria, a translation of the German Infusionsthierchen in use by Ledermiiller. More important, Wrisberg’s book granted legitimacy to infusoria by treating the subject within a Latin context, by considering more seriously and, of course, by being theoretically accessible to many more European educated people than texts in

German, Italian or English. While the Italians knew more of Baker’s work, the impulse Hill had given to the systematics of animalcules was to be followed by northern scholars who applied, contrary to Hill’s practice, the natural history deontology: quoting every known previous author who had supplied repeatable descriptions

and/or figures, correcting their names and descriptions, gathering

descriptions and figures thanks to synonymy, and, of course,

naming species, establishing common characters and classifying

45 Lesser 1742, 9; Hill 1752b, 1; Müller 1777-1780 I, 29; Müller 1779, 43, 45; Vaucher 1803, V; Cuvier 1817 IV, 6, 89. 4 6 Linnaeus, Bonnet, Müller, Pallas, Spallanzani, etc. 47 Rothschild 1989, 278; Rostand 1951, 23; Bory 1826, 11. Dobell (1932, 379) complained about this. - 304 - them. Two authors, Linnaeus and Pallas, were first to classify animalcules after Hill.

Peter-Simon Pallas (1741-1811), a Berlin MD known for his travels in northern Russia to observe the passage of Venus in front of the sun, started his career in Leyden where, as noted by his contemporaries, he could freely use the sea to observe and describe marine zoological species.^8 After a Leyden thesis on intestinal worms, he published his Elenchus zoophytorum in 1766, a Linnaean catalogue of marine animals in which he argued his view of zoophytes as being true plant-animals.49 In this work he notably eliminated the boundaries between visible and microscopical marine animals because he applied, to the distribution of species, standard morphological criteria irrespective of the size of the organism. In addition to initiating discussion on the natural method in zoology, Pallas’ was an important step towards the foundation of further microscopical systematic works, because, in the context of Latin natural history, it gave the microscope a status similar to that of normal sight. Indeed, finding a similar shape in a microscopical and in a non- microscopical organism erected a bridge between the two worlds of the visible and not-so-visible. Pallas’ works illustrate the close interaction between marine zoology, polyps and the study of animalcules, while the works of John Ellis never mixed coralline marine productions and microscopic animalcules, apart from polyps. The seventeen genera of Elenchus zoophytorum included microscopic animals that were to be classified later as infusoria by

4 8 An. 1768, 153. 4 9 Pallas 1766, 1-14. Bonnet and Dicquemard did not accept an intermediary order between the two kingdoms. - 305 -

Müller. For instance Pallas put, in his first genus of zoophytes, the

hydra (i.e. the Linnaean name for Trembley’s polyp), in the fifth

genus (Brachionites), Baker’s Animalcula rotatoria (equal to Leeuwenhoek’s rotifer), and in a genus qualified as ambiguous, the volvoxë.50 Many, if not all, of these animalcules were to be

considered later by Müller as infusoria, living in water, and

gathered together, such that by 1773, helminthology, marine

zoology and infusoria began to be treated as distinct fields.

As shown by historians, Latin natural history, especially from the seventeenth-century onwards, actively promoted the abstraction, decontextualisation and universalisation of k n o w l e d g e . 51 This implies that entering into the world of Latin natural history corresponded to a change in status for a specimen towards a more abstract conception. This abstraction took place in several ways. A specimen was freed from the local circumstances in which it was collected, and the codified morphological description withdrew the

scholar from perceptual intuition. The cultural factor responsible for naming a specimen with a vernacular name was eliminated, but the name was recorded and linked to other vernacular names for the same creature through comprehensive synonymy, before being baptised with a Latin name. The too pagan nature had to be

sacralised using the name, in the heart of the naturalising process.

Classification eventually increased, if possible, the abstract status of

Pallas (1766) identified Trembley's polyp with the Chaos proteus from Linnaeus, and with Rosel’s polyp, but he excluded from this genus Hill’s Brachionus. In the fourth genus (Tubularia) he put Linnaeus’ Hydra campanulata, Trembley’s Polype à panache, and Rosel’s Polypus pennaco- cristatus. The fifth genus {Brachionites) received Rosel’s Pseudo-polyps (placed by Linnaeus in the Hydra), Schaeffer’s Polypus floralis, the Sabella ringens, Sertularia polypina, Isis anastatica (L.) and Baker’s Animalcula rotatoria. Taenia, Volvox and Corraline were each put in three genera and qualified as ambiguous. ^ ^ Slaughter 1982, 43-48. - 306 - the species. Indeed, in order to be remembered, a species had to find its place within a system, a set of hierarchical relations, in which formal entities such as classes, orders and genera had no concrete existence. Such a formal model was of course at stake in many debates over the ontology of classification, from John Ray to

C u v i e r . 52 When, through synonymy, an animalcule was identified as the same in authors coming from four or five different countries, the reader did not probably have the impression of dealing with the concrete creature as found by one particular scholar. Thanks to the

“box” method of presenting genera and species, an abstract conception of the species was constructed, independent of space and time, which resulted from gathering and comparing several specimens. The main transformation for which the Latin natural history tradition was responsible was the granting to a collection of specimens the status of a species, valid for a determined and trained community of scholars. Such that when experiments on animalcules were reported in Latin, as by a Gottingen MD such as Wrisberg, the creatures were already included in the scholar world. But incorporating animalcules into the Latin natural history tradition was certainly a much stronger indication of integration, which actually supplied the organisms with both recognition and existence as true species. A species was not the specimen found by Leeuwenhoek, Joblot or Baker any more, but a particular expression of a genus, and it now gained its existence from the top of the “natural” hierarchy, and not any more from the bottom of observations.

5 2 On these debate, see Slaughter 1982, 208-212; Foucault 1966, 137-141; Daudin 1926 II, 91-94. Buffon’s (1749 I, 13-18) opening speech on the method of study to be adopted in natural history criticised the use of these formal m eth o d s. - 307 -

Bruno Latour considered that microbes had not existed before

P asteur’s d is c o v e r y .^3 in a way similar to Latour’s conception, I dare say that before the 1770s, animalcules did not exist as species, but only as specimens, because they were not included in the normative framework of natural history controlling the methods which effected such a transformation, including the social approval of an international community. Not that this insertion of animalcules into the body of natural history was easy to carry out. Quite the contrary, Linnaeus’ Systema Naturae emphasised the obstacles for the infusoria to court the old respected lady that was the natural history tradition. Small-scale animalcules had been taken into account by Linnaeus since the 1740s. Indeed, in his 1746 Fauna suecica, certain animalcules were mentioned, Furia infernalis and Volvox globator.^^ In the 1758 tenth edition of the Systema Naturae, Linnaeus also described eleven species of Hydra, of which nine came from Rosel’s observations, and he included the chaos as a species of the genus Volvox.^^ Such that Linnaeus actually considered small- scale animalcules to be part of zoological research, probably because they were visible to the naked eye, and their morphological parts could be distinguished with a lens, or with a weak microscope. A short-sighted person could perhaps distinguish parts without a lens. The microscope was even considered by him a helpful instrument to botanise, to be taken with to the herbatio.^^

Still, invisible, or almost invisible animalcules were another matter, because, for their morphological determination, the naturalist was entirely dependent on the microscope. However,

^ 3 Latour 1984. Linnaeus 1761 [1746], 503-504, 544. 5 5 Linnaeus 1758-1759 I, 820-821. 5 6 Linnaeus 1763[1751], 297. - 308 - being dependent on the microscope was not using it as an equivalent of a character for a class. As we saw before, in the eyes of naturalists, Hill’s choice of the microscope as a character for the general group of creatures he described as a kingdom could only look like an attack on the traditional morphological concepts used as characters in the Latin natural history tradition. By no means would the naturalist’s work of reading and interpreting a

sacred nature be dependent on an artificial instrument built by craftsmen. Scholars were pursuing the true order of nature through the variety of shapes of organisms, and were never to accept the Diktat of an instrument, however used it was, as in the case of the microscope. Like Pallas, Linnaeus did not use the microscope as a key to gathering or distinguishing organisms, because that was the task of morphology, which also allowed for the comparison of minute and larger animals. The strong discontinuity between microscopic animalcules and visible animals, which Hill attempted to establish for his animalcule kingdom, could not work. For instance in the Systema Naturae the genus Vorticella gathered minute organisms with others on the magnitude of a prune (Vorticella ovifera).^'^ Indeed, not responding to Hill’s desire to create a new kingdom, Pallas,

Linnaeus, and of course, Müller, placed the minute and invisible animalcules in the well-established class of worms.

The critical mass of works of the 1760s by, among others. Hill,

Baker, Ledermüller, Rosel, Baster, Schaeffer, Wrisberg, Spallanzani and Pallas, lead Linnaeus to assign infusoria a limited place within the Systema Naturae. In the 1767 twelfth edition of Systema

^ ^ Linnaeus 1767, 1319. - 309 -

Naturae, the last edition to be overseen by Linnaeus, the species

Chaos infusorium was placed at the right end of the worms, the lower level of the animal kingdom. But if the Chaos infusorium eventually was accepted by Linnaeus, at least as a word referring to a microscopical something, the genus Chaos was to be the recipient of various species which escaped the morphological and vital standards of animality. Linnaeus distinguished five “species” in the genus: Chaos redivivum, protheus, fungorum, ustilago, and infusorium. All the basic rules of classification and nomenclature were altered in order to do so, and it is not by chance that the genus had been named, as early as 1758, Chaos. The disorder referred to , related to characters as much as to communication with other scholars. Were the species of Chaos reproducible socially speaking? Indeed, while all other genera received positive characters, this genus was exceptionally defined by negative characters: no limbs, no sense organs. Secondly, the binomial name did not designate only one species, as was the case everywhere else in Linnaeus’ works, but could refer to more than one species. Chaos redivivum designated Needham’s reviving eels of the paste, but also the eels of vinegar (which actually do not undergo revivification), two species separated by several authors.Thirdly, small animals undergoing morphological transformations were placed in the same genus, such as the Chaos protheus, whose “proper form can not be determined”.59 Fourthly, this genus gathered species considered to transmute from animal to vegetable and in reverse, notably the C. fungorum, defined as the seeds of fungi, and C. ustilago, defined as the powdery fructification from vegetables. Fifthly, the Chaos

5 8 Linnaeus 1767, 1326. 5 9 Linnaeus 1767, 1326. - 310 -

infusorium was presented as if it were one species, although Linnaeus cited the main microscopists from the seventeenth-century

onwards, drawing implicitly hundreds of observations. And sixthly,

the definition of the Chaos infusorium was made according to their

environment, and not taken, as everywhere else, from morphology.

As a consequence, on each fundamental and non-ambiguous rule of the Latin tradition he had institutionalised himself in order to enroll people in his “army of naturalists”, Linnaeus came to make

extensive compromises when dealing with these animalcules. Because of their deviant morphology, methods of generation and spéciation, infusoria obliged Linnaeus to change his standard use of communicating scientific knowledge. Nomenclature, definition, determination and synonymy of authors were all turned upside down, becoming respectively equivocal, negative, ambiguous and presented without abbreviation or references. Indeed, for the C. infusorium, instead of the usual quoting of authors with abbreviations and references for the sake of synonymy, Linnaeus contented himself with giving a chronological list of “micrographie a u t h o r s ’’^® ( g g g fig y). All these transformations show the close interdependence between the forms of communication and the

Linnaean conception of natural creatures, as well as the limitations of his general approach. Indeed the resistance of the microscopic creatures under duress of the natural history traditional categories obliged Linnaeus to adopt a chaotic way of presentation. Once more, infusoria forced scholars to reflect and act on the level of the forms of communication in order to be included within a scientific framework. Linnaeus’ system of classification, which had been

Harris, Hooke, Griendel, Bonanni, Leeuwenhoek, Cuno, Baker, Needham, Adams, Hill, Joblot, Walker, Rosel, Ledermiiller. VERMES. ZOOPHYTA. ChioL. VERMES. ZOOPHYTA. Chtor. 354. CHAOS. liberum, uniforme, redivi- aliisqne infufit., .quod mavetttr rumquum vtvuruy vum : Arcubus (cnfusquc orga- eujusmodi referti junt Libri Microgrùpborum Har~ Hooka, Grundel..Bonann, Leuweuboek, C w a , nis externis nullis. Baker y Nee dbant y Adams, Hill, yobiot, talker, Ree/el. Leedermûile'r. An inÿicienter dijlînâum « redivi- 1. C. filiforme utrinque attenuanim. C. Fungorum: MtUorisr ’ vum. Baker, micr. 2. r. q. $. I. obfcuru etiamnum latent plurimc moleoifx vive, qux fianc ad Ncedb. micr, 99. t. f. / . 7. hanc familum ipeûw t, poRem rclinquends.' Ledrrm. micr. 35. t. 17. ot. Febrium ËAaïuhrâiaticarum eontagtmm^ H abitat ia Accto (ÿ Gluo’nc Bibliopegornm. (i. Febrium Exaccrbamiuin caujfa? Revivil'cit ex aepcn f t r annas ex^ccatum , ûviparum 7 . Siphilitidis virus bumidnmi (y vivipara. Spermatic: vermiculf ? f. Æthcrcus nimbus nkenfe fiorefcentite fn fpenfu /r ProthcQS 2. C. gclatinofum polymorphe-mutabile. Ferment! PyiltçdmliqueJ'epticum Munch. ? Raef. taf. 3. /. l O l . / . yf-T'. Lederm. micr. 88. f . 48. Sed Habitat in Aqois dulcibus. Figura propria dtierminatajuc nulla acumens cita- Animadvcrci îmmcnfûm Opus DEÎ tijfimt pguras miltenas anamalai. non poifQ Homiaem afîêqui, Fungo- 3. C. Fungorum fcminum. Munth. haupv. i. p. 149. quamvis laboriofe quærat. nun. Habitat^ uti Semen Lycopcrdi, Agaric!, Bolcti, Mu* Feci X yill: 1-^ I Corit relicjuorum^ue Fungorum,#»fua m attey usque UJ dum difpergatur in aqua exclufum vivit ^ mo^ ritur, demum figitur (ÿ in Fnngot excrefcit, obfir- vante illujlr. Oth. Mmichhaufen Lib. Bar. Zoo^Byterum mefamorpbojit e (^egetabili in Animale; tungerum itaque cantrario ex Animali in Vegetabile.

Uftilago. 4* C. fruûificatîonis vcgetabilis, pulvcraccum. Muncb- hanfv. I. p. 149 . Habitat in deJlruÛis granit Hordct, Tritici, Graini- numquc rtiiotum yinqfue »/##Tr2j;opogom$, Scor- lonerxf, forma ni^ri pulveris. Hic puivit aliquut diet in aqua tepente maceratnt tranfit #» Animalcula oblongay byaliua^ pifcium injlar ludemtiay armato Qculo videndm. M unch, confer. Dijfert. nojl. de Mundo invi/ibili.

infufori* q. C- rcnim variarum liquoribus infufaruin. om. Habitat in variis Liquoribuj aquofis, inixtis Pipere a liii- Pauca hare vidimus operum DEI, TRITICI Gruna êbhrtviëtt itU itf rêtutiAêtë, txficcata ctiam pn/f atititi, iit â- Multa abfcondita flint minora his mÿora. fta ttptdiufcula intrii htfwUm (jtrnuiunt in AfcaTÎdiJttmtm ^ a fi vtrmicm- Syrac. XLIII: 36* (■N* ; vix iùrr».

Fig. Y . Linnaeus’ description of Chaos infusorium, which shows the change in the writing rules he usually adopted (Linnaeus 1 7 6 7 , 1 3 2 6 ). - 312 - conceived as an open system in which every new discovered species could find its place, was still reluctant to incorporate infusoria, and thus appealed for a major change.

Nevertheless, regarding the other small-scale though non-invisible species, Linnaeus grouped them into four genera: Vorticella, Volvox, Hydra and Furia, which belonged to the order of zoophytes, class of worms {Vermes). There he adopted standard methods of work, with positive definitions, synonymy, and references. Using standard forms of communication by highlighting authors whose observations everyone could contrive to repeat was also adopted in a MD thesis discussed by Johann Carolus Roos before Linnaeus in 1767. For invisible organisms, Linnaeus and Roos cited a list of names of authors who had worked on invisible animalcules, as in the Systema N a t u r a e . The standard system of references provided by Linnaeus for all these genera —including the Chaos— confirm s that, already in 1767, the interest in small-scale animals had moved from England to Germany, notably thanks to the works of Pallas, Rosel and Ledermiiller (table G).62

Table G. Number and proportion of observations, and number of authors cited by Linnaeus in his 1767 Systema Naturae for the five genera Vorticella. Volvox. Hydra. Furia. Chaos

. u hr Nos % n.n authorsN.obs. G erm . 50 53 7 UK 18 19 6 S w ed en 14 15 8 G e n e v a 8 9 1 H o llan d 3 3 2 R u ssia 1 1 1

^ ^ Linnaeus and Roos 1767, 395. ^2 Following are the numbers of observations cited per author: Pallas (18), Rosel (15), Ledermiiller (9), Trembley (8), Baker (8), Linnaeus (6), Schaeffer (4), Ellis (4), Job Easter (2), Thomas Brady (2), C. de Geer (2), Needham (2), Munchhausen (2), Brown, Georges Edwards, Gronovius, Leeuwenhoek, Christlob Mylius, Johan C. Roos, Daniel C. Solander, Johan C. Wilke, are each cited once. - 313 -

6.4 Establishing the systematics of infusoria 6.4.1 Miiller’s 1773 Vermium terrestrium et fluviatilium

In 1773 Otto-Friedrich Miiller’s Vermium terrestrium et fluviatilium, ... non marinorum, succincta historia was published in

Copenhagen eventually establishing infusoria as a group of worms distinct from other groups. Born in Copenhagen, Müller (1730-

1784) whose father was a musician in the Danish court, studied theology and law and became, in 1753, the tutor to a noble Danish young man. He traveled with his young charge on the continent in the late 1750s and the 1760s during which he became member of several academies, before marrying a rich widow in 1773.

Financially independent from this time on he devoted himself to his scientific occupation, maintaining a generous correspondence with the network of naturalists he met during his travels in Europe.He worked first on cryptogam during the early 1760s and published his first papers in Danish journals and in the journal of the Stockholm Academy, the latter of which had a much wider diffusion.64 Before the publication of Vermium Müller had published in prestigious journals, such as Paris Observations sur la physique and Philosophical Transactions. He continued his later investigations, publishing numerous papers in several other journals, notably in Berlin’s recently begun Beschdftigungen der

Berlinischen Gesellschaft Naturforschender Freunde, and the Halle

Naturforscher. A strong proponent of the Linnaean method in Denmark, his interest in zoology and especially in microscopical

6 3 For a short biography of Miiller see Snorrason 1974. A larger biography in Danish is provided by Anker 1943, but it concerns only the pre-1770 period. 6 4 Miiller 1765, Miiller 1767. The journal of the royal Swedish academy, was translated into German by Abraham-Gotthelf Kastner. - 314 - worms was developed in a comprehensive study of three strange genera of annelidss, the Naiads, Nereis and Amphitrites. In 1771, he published a book on these worms in German, WUrmern des siissen und salzigen Wassers, which is particularly interesting on account of the worms’ peculiar methods of reproduction. Fascinating scenes, similar to those of the polyp, unfolded before eyes looking through the microscope, including a mother naiad containing several offspring, up to seven, each of which possessed all their organs Müller discovered they reproduced without eggs or mating but thanks to spontaneous division.^6 To synthesise the data on division Müller put together a table of the multiplication of naiads, indicating the time required for division. The division itself was but a recent discovery, made in 1765 by Horace- Bénédict de Saussure in Geneva, who had performed experiments showing division to be a common method of reproduction for animalcules other than p o l y p s . 67 Müller, who corresponded with

Saussure, thus extended the preexistentialist paradigm of generation to other animalcules, as did several scholars by this time: Ellis in 1769, Corti in 1774, and Spallanzani in 1776.68

The Vermium took a new look at infusoria and established them as an order of worms. Although the polyp and marine zoology had obviously given a new legitimacy to the observation of aquatic organisms, it was nevertheless by ignoring marine zoology that the systematics of infusoria was first created. Without of course rejecting marine zoology, Müller explicitly restricted his 1773-

1774 work which founded the systematics of infusoria, to the

65 Müller 1771a, 34-38. 6 6 Müller 1771a, 39-42. 6 7 On Saussure's role, see Harris 1999, 56-59 and Ratcliff 1999, 271-273. 6 8 Ellis 1769, Corti 1774, 72-77; Spallanzani 1776, 154-161. - 315 - zoology of terrestrial and fresh water inferior beings. As vouched for by the title Vermium! terrestrium et fluviatilium, ... non marinorum, succincta historia, he spoke of non marine worms. Müller examined three orders of non marine “invertebrates”: helminth, mollusks and infusoria. The latter were divided into a total of 13 genera and 147 species (see table H.)

Table H. Number of eenera and soecies of infusoria in 1773. Genus N. species C h a ra c te r 1. no external organs thick bag Monas 3 form of a point Volvox 6 spherical Enchelis 11 cylindric Vibrio 15 elongated with membrane Cyclidium 7 oval form Paramaecium 2 elongated Kolpoda 5 sinuated Gonium 4 angulated Bursaria 2 hollow

2. with external organs with tail Cercaria 8 nude Trichodae 8 hairy Vorticella 1 0 ciliated Brachionus ciliated hairy Trichodae 9 ciliated Vorticella 30 nude [no tail] Brachionus hidden head

By comparison to previous classifications, Müller actually transformed one of Hill’s “classes” into a genus (the Cercaria), and adopted four of his eight genera: Enchelis, Cyclidium, Paramaecium and Brachionus. The genera Volvox and Vorticella were taken from

Pallas and Linnaeus; Müller therefore invented six genera: Monas,

Vibrio, Kolpoda, Gonium, Bursaria, Trichodae. Hill’s genera - 316 -

Craspedaria, Brachuri, Macrocerci and Scelasius, as well as

Linnaeus’ genus Furia were rejected and the species they contained were included in other genera. Other decisions had to be made concerning the order of the zoophytes in which Linnaeus placed the Chaos infusorium, and Miiller eliminated the zoophytes, considering the previous Linnaean species of Chaos infusorium to be rich enough to constitute an order. Infusoria was thus an order of true species, true animals, and no longer of ambiguous and negatively defined things.

To the new list of typical characteristics held up by Muller to substantiate animality, advances in the theory of infusoria reproduction were now major enough to allow for the discarding of spontaneous generation. As to methods of generation, infusoria propagated through eggs, fetus and gemmations, as was already known. Müller also accepted transmutationism for some species. But spontaneous division, later called fissions was the new method definitively established by the Geneva scholars. As recalled by Müller, Trembley had first discovered longitudinal division (in

1747); Bonnet then considered division to be perhaps the main method of reproduction of animalcules (in 1762), and eventually transversal division was discovered by Saussure in 1 7 6 5 . Division credited to Müller and later Spallanzani a major critical potential to combat previous observations. Constituted with division, not only did they discard spontaneous generation and explain the quick swarming of life in infusions; division also allowed for methodological criticisms that affected microscopical observations.

Müller 1773-1774 I, 8. Trembley published the discovery, with figures of the division, in the 1747 Philosophical Transactions. See Bonnet 1779[1762] I, p. 220. On Saussure’s discovery, which he reported in a journal of microscopical experiments, see Ratcliff 1999, Ratcliff (in press). - 317 -

These criticisms did not touch on the optical characteristics of microscopes, but actually concerned the delusions of observers, independently of the instrument itself. Prior to Spallanzani Miiller reinterpreted certain research of previous microscopists as

deceptive, and considered spontaneous division to have misguided

several authors, including, particularly, Leeuwenhoek and Wrisberg.

They were misled and confused it with copulation, a phenomenon

whose existence for infusoria Miiller denied. Bestowed with such a method of generation, spontaneous generation could therefore be easily refuted.

Among the problems encountered in stabilising the species concept, or in transforming specimens into species, the morphological mutability of some animalcules probably raised the major difficulty for previous authors. Miiller solved the problem by changing the categories. Many authors had noticed such mutability; Baker was astonished by the changes in the proteus. Ledermiiller,

who described the morphological changes of the animalcules in a plate, wrote they had a

very elastic body which could change shape several times in a moment, quickly becoming a circle, an egg, being extended, narrow, very short, as well as excessively long, contracted or expanded {Fig. Z ).^ ^

Morphological mutability of some small-scale species was to be an

obstacle to further integration into the exhaustive list of species

called the Systema Naturae. It is difficult to rely on rigid morphological criteria to classify organisms which mutate shape.

Nevertheless, the character of the proteus was defined as “gelatinous, polymorphous-mutable".^^ The observation of the

70 Müller 1773-1774 I, 11-13. 71 Ledermüller 1763, 88. 7 2 Linnaeus 1767, 1326. - 318 -

T A B X L V m

csi% f

<@5" C "'...... /

\ ...... r --. % . I W ^ tiT U tk

% b,%

( 2 5 ^ . 3..

Fig. Z. Morphological changes of animalcules as drawn by Ledermiiller (Ledermiiller 1763, 88, pi. 48). - 319 - mutating shape of Vorticella might have been something of an unsettling experiment for a Linnaean systematist. Indeed one of the principles to which both name and place in classification are related was the morphological constancy of a species. That was probably one of the main limitations of Linnaean thought, and helps to explain Linnaeus’ avoidance of infusoria. Miiller also wrote several papers after the publication of Vermium, one of which, in 1776, analysed the problem of the polymorphism of some Vorticella. Proteus and Vorticella contained the seeds of a new principle with which to classify animalcules, and describing a polymorphous animal allowed Miiller to strengthen such category in the Linnaean fram ew ork.73 He had generalised the character of the variation of shape to the definition of infusoria.74 They were defined as animals demonstrating spontaneous motion, multiplicity, the ability to run away in front of danger, to have the organ shocked, with heart and intestinal motion, with excretion and a mutable shape. So that the mophological fixity, which had been up until that time constitutive of the species definition, was seriously challenged, since an entire order was defined, by, among other things, the mutability of form.

As well, some psychological characteristics were added to judge of the animality of these water animalcules, such as their capacity to feel death coming with the desiccation of the drop:

These tendencies, typical of the animated animalcules, show their true and incontrovertible life, which Buffon and, in another way Needham, disputed in vain; and they erase the neutral and chaotic kingdom which a too rash observation of infusoria had established.7 5

Besides spontaneous motion, which served several previous scholars in grounding the animality of infusoria and psychological

7 3 Müller 1776, 21-24. 7 4 M üller 1773-1774 I, 7. 7 5 Müller 1773-1774 I, 7-8. - 320 - characteristics that were then made use of, Müller, in particular, could oppose Buffon and Needham to the whole series of observations and the gathering of authors represented in his

Vermium. An interesting attempt used a non morphological and internal character, the intestine and heart motion. The heart was a general character of worms, such that it should be present in infusoria. However, heart motion was a controversial point which concerned mainly rotifers, accepted by Baker and Felice Fontana, but later rejected by Spallanzani.A similar uncertainty regarding physiological criteria allowed spermatic animalcules to be included in H ill’s Animalcules and Muller’s I n f u s o r i a They would be separated from the infusoria in the early nineteenth-century by Lamarck, and with Prévost and Dumas’ 1824 discovery of the fecundating role of the spermatozoid.'^ 8

In a similar way to Linnaeus, Müller was to reject Hill’s use of the microscope as a character. Using the microscope as the major criteria to classification would have lead to the rejection of some of the small-scale, though visible, creatures. Against such a view, in a methodological footnote, Müller distributed the large genus

Vorticella (40 species) according to their degree of visibility: 16 species visible without the microscope, and 24 invisible without it.79 But this footnote was intended to help observers to detect the species, and did not affect the general key to classification. The same technique was applied to Vorticella in 1786.^0 And Müller

7 6 See Baker 1753, 281; Fontana 1781, 89 and Spallanzani 1776, 204-205. 7 7 Hill (1752b, 8-9) placed them in the Macrocerci, while Müller (1773- 1774 I, 64; 1786, 119) placed them in the Cercaria. 7 8 Lamarck (1815 I, 444) did not refer to spermatic animalcules when discussing the genus Cercaria. 7 9 M üller 1773-1774 I, 97. 8 0 Müller 1786, 254. - 321 - adopted a strategy of defense against what he identified as a popular way of using the microscope:

After the invention of the lenses, at a little price, and with a minimum of effort, new kinds of animals appeared. They were called microscopica, for they could be seen only thanks to a magnifying lens; infusoria b e c a u s e they were found into water impregnated with particles of animal and vegetable substance; however they are not synonymous, for many infusoria can be well seen with naked eye, while only a few microscopica live out of infusions.^ ^

Müller thus captured the difference between Hill’s use of the microscope as a criteria and Linnaeus’ environmental character. Of course, Müller chose the environmental character and accredited the microscope with its use as an external tool.

6.4.2 The second spreading of infusoria and microscopical research in Germany

The reception of Müller’s first book on infusoria was not only impressive, but was of long duration. In 1780, Müller was to be nicknamed the Danish Pliny by the Bavarian microscopist and naturalist Franz von Paula Schrank, just as Buffon had been called the French Pliny, and Linnaeus the Swedish Pliny.^2 An anonymous reviewer of Müller’s book in 1775 underlined that “if ever we observed that natural sciences were increased by illustrious men of our times”, this work would be among the best examples, and he recalled that scholars were “avidly waiting” for Müller’s figures.^ 3

In 1778 Gleichen too complained about the lack of figures in M üller’s book.Indeed, the 1773-1774 Vermium was a book

8 1 M üller 1773-1774 I, 4. 8 2 Schrank 1780, 476. 8 3 An. 1775, 18-19. 84 Gleichen 1778, 124. - 322 - presented in the purest Linnaean tradition, thus without figures.

There are many indications that the Vermium, especially the part on infusoria, was well received, at least in Germany, Italy, Sweden and Geneva. Müller sent several examples of the book to Bonnet, one to keep and the others to distribute to Saussure and others, and through this channel, Spallanzani was probably inspired to make public his 1776 Opusculi di fisica animale, e vegetabile, a second experimental book on microscopic animalcules which had been awaiting publication since 1771.^5 Bonnet, always critical of nomenclature and systematics, this time added a chapter on animalcules of the infusions to his Contemplation of nature, underlining that, even with the difficulties of perceiving their specific characters,

a skillful observer, Mr Müller, nevertheless succeeded in characterising hundreds of their species,^ ^

Along with Muller’s plan to publish an augmented edition of the infusoria part of his book —which would be published posthumously in 1786— German studies on infusoria were launched seriously in two places. The journal Naturforscher in Halle was the first one, and the Berlin society of the friends for natural research, who also published a journal, was the second forum for, among other fields, microscopical research. In Naturforscher several authors were to present their observations on infusoria and small or microscopic water animalcules after Muller’s Vermium: M üller himself, Johann Beckmann, the minister Johann August Ephraim Goeze, Kohler and later Hermann and Schrank.

^^ Repeatedly, Bonnet demanded the publication of Spallanzani’s Opusculi, see Castellani 1971. 8 6 Bonnet 1781[1764] II, 222-223. - 323 -

One of the quarrels raised in several papers concerned the question of the genus Chaos, invented by Linnaeus to group “nonconformist” and too-small animalcules. In the face of Müller’s research, was it possible to still maintain such a confused genera?

Indeed, the method of Latin natural history had found a new object with infusoria, and could generalise there its way of abstracting and institutionalising species. Notably, because it was conceived as the synthetic presentation of an order gathering many genera and species, the Latin text of Vermium, which adopted the box method of writing, was not the place to dwell on a particular problem, including generation or types of motion. From 1760 onwards, the

“proliferation of specialised journals” issued in Germany offered a framework enabling to discuss the new topics.^7 Papers, published in journals and written in vernacular languages, determined the rights of the discussion and controversy, by comparison to the established and sacred Latin text. Many of the scholars who took the opportunity to publish on infusoria and similar topics, debated in these journal controversial aspects of the subject. In 1777 and 1779 Goeze gave two papers on the Vibrio anguillula, whose vibrating motion was contested by some naturalists. In 1777 Kohler reexamined the satyr animalcule with which Baker had challenged

Joblot’s discovery. Along with other animalcules, he compared them with Muller’s synonymy, which he adopted. This same year, Goeze published, in the journal of the Berlin society, a similar research on comparative synonymy for most of Joblot and Ledermüller’s species.^8

8 7 R. s. Turner 1974, 510. 8 8 Kohler 1777, Goeze 1777, 376-378. - 324 -

More than the Naturforscher in Halle, which was probably influenced by the Hallischen Naturforschenden Gesellschaft, among the first German Linnaean societies, the Berlinischen Gesellschaft

Naturforschender Freunde, created in 1775, was the main new forum for microscopical research. While journals of the eighteenth- century contain, on the average, between five and ten percent of their papers on microscopy, the Beschaftigungen der Berlinischen

Gesellschaft, Journal of the society, was published annually with an average of more than 25 percent microscopical papers. Consequently, in the society many scholars were quite acquainted with the microscope. In 1775, when the first volume of the Beschaftigungen was published, three quarters of the members of the society had already or were about to publish research which used the microscope. Many of the Berlin members had an interest in the microscope (Bloch, Martini, Gleditsch, Pelisson, Herbst), as did the foreign members.89 The call for members being put out according to a particular policy, it is likely that this society had explicitly attempted to gather the best and better-known naturalist microscopists of Europe in the mid 1770s. Medical microscopists, such as Mascagni, Caldani, Moscati, Fontana, Scarpa, Wolff, Delius,

Meckel, Hunter, Monro or Hewson, did not belong to the society. It is then not by chance that this journal soon became a forum for microscopical naturalistic research, thus producing in Berlin an emergent professional version of the previous project attempted by

Ledermiiller in Nuremberg. The critical mass of people had now been reached, not only for microscopical research, but also for

^ ^ The foreign members were Beckmann, Bolten, Bonnet, Chemnitz, Erxleben, JC Fabricius, Fichtel, Goeze, Kolreuter, Kiihn, Leske, Lommer, Medicus, Meidinger, Meinecke, O F. Müller, Pallas, Schreber, Schroter, Spallanzani, Spengler, Targioni, Titius, Walch, and Wilke. - 325 - studying infusoria. So much that in 1778, Gleichen attempted to establish in Nuremberg a rival society for microscopical observation of i n f u s o r i a . Already before 1780, the study of infusoria, promoted especially by the two friends Müller and Goeze, was only part of the microscopical activity of the Berlin society, which included many people working on parasitological helminthology, plants and cryptogams, insects, conchology, and mineralogy and fossils.T heir works were only part of the larger networks of studies in which scholars carried out their research independently, and many of them later published books synthesising their previous microscopical works.

As a consequence, already before the 1786 new posthumous edition of Müller’s book, the Vermium had not only helped crystallise the entire study of infusoria, but, on the representative level, the microscope once more was considered as a authentic and convincing research tool. The works on infusoria, embedded into the positive context of a larger emerging flood of microscopical research, were of course not at all limited to the Berlin milieu. Of the European countries, Germany was, however, the most active in the study of infusoria, especially systematics, with Paula-Schranck in München, Goeze in Quedlimburg, Wrisberg in Gottingen,

Hermann in Leipzig, Gleichen in Nuremberg and Eichhorn in Danzig.

In Vienna, Meidinger and Prochaska were also active; in Holland

Martinus Slabber and Bomme investigated water-animalcules, while in Italy, partially overseen by Charles Bonnet, Spallanzani, Roffredi,

9 0 Gleichen 1778, 124. 9 1 On parasitological helminthology: Bloch, Braun, Ebels, Gleichen, Goeze; on plants and cryptogam: BergstraBër, Gleditsch, Hacquet, Müller, Pehme; on insects: Konig, Kuhn, Meidinger, Meinecke; on conchology: Chemnitz, Müller, Spengler; on mineralogy and fossils: Bloch, Hacquet, S c h ro te rs . - 326 -

Moscati, Fontana, Corti and others established the experimental method for studying infusoria, ignoring for the moment the sharp increase of microscopical helminthology and cryptogamie studies by the 1780s.

Nevertheless, the Latin tradition was not at all victorious throughout Europe, and in Italy, Geneva and other places, scholars notably resisted Linnaeism and its claim to be the leading programme for the natural sciences. While many amateurs were turning to Linnaeism in the 1780s, notably botanists, and later zoologists, infusoria were still the type of subject an amateur could attempt to work at on his own. From the viewpoint of the Latin tradition which considered itself to be the universal language of

God placed in the hands of men, these amateur works, written not following the Linnaean method, but containing interesting material, had to be reduced and included into the Latin natural history framework. Typical of this kind of non-Linnaean research was that of Johann Conrad Eichhorn. Isolated in Danzig, this amateur, who did not belong to the Danzig Society of Science, carried out his project of the development of local knowledge between 1769 and

1783, and published several editions of a book on water animalcules in 1775, 1781, 1783 with additions. Eichhorn observed about 70 species of water animalcules and supplied the reader with excellent iconography. His naturalistic drawings are among the clearest of the entire eighteenth-century {Fig. AA). There are several indications that he was, and considered himself to be, an amateur. From 1773 onwards, anyone working on infusoria could integrate his observations into the emerging Latin context, especially in Germany and the northern countries. However é

F ig. AA. Eichhom’s realistic drawings allowed him to be considered by Müller (Eichhorn 1781, pi. 2). The xerox erased the nuances of the original. - 328 -

Eichhorn scornfully disdained the growing international network and presented himself as the champion of local knowledge:

I do not ignore that in Prussia, others have written and it is known that in our waters, and particularly in Danzig, these animals can be found very easily, while Baker and others had so many difficulties in finding them.^^

He thus claimed to write for the people of Danzig, and only for them. Second, Eichhorn gave typical vernacular and diagnostic names g to the animalcules as had been done by Joblot sixty years before, including blackbird, water-goat, water-leave, pork-head, water-dog water spider, tiger animal, water-lion, crocodile, water- swan, water-bear, etc.93 Eichhorn also appeared to have no interest in nomenclature or in classification. The main merits of Eichhorn’s works, which later inspired naming a species of infusoria after him, were his descriptions and drawings. So good were they that in 1777 Müller established the Latin synonymy of Eichhorn’s figures of infusoria with the one he had himself observed and reverted to in

1779.94

However, even guided by the motivation of local knowledge, the democratic microscope, conceived there as securing his own assertions by multiplying observations, was also present in

Eichhorn’s book. He used a simple system of microscopical measure, linked to the kind of sight used to distinguish the animalcule: naked eye, lens, simple microscope, double microscope, each step being equal to an increase in power. But especially, he said that he observed his 70 species between 10 and

30 times each,95 which clearly shows that he also worked with

9 2 Eichhorn 1781, 8. 9 3 Eichhorn 1781, 49, 53, 54, 56, 59, 60, 64, 67, 68, 70, 73, 74. 9 4 Müller 1777, Müller 1779, 51-52. 9 5 Eichhorn 1781, 8. - 329 - series conception as a scheme for his investigation. Between 700 and 2100 observations were then carried out before publishing his book. Confirmed by his excellent iconography therefore, Eichhorn’s methodology was not different from that of other scholars of his time. Indeed, if, since the time of Trembley, the laboratory had adopted experimental series as the main methodology, the systematists also worked on series of observations of specimens in order to better establish the description of a species. Such that not only the repetition of the observations, but the conception of the experiment and observation as series and not isolated was a criteria that progressively turned out to be understood as prescriptive rather than, as previously, descriptive for microscopical inquiries as well as for other types of research. Goeze, for instance, dedicated seven years between 1775 and 1782 to the study of helminthology using the microscope to elucidate the structures of hundreds of worms. In Munich in 1775, to answer the question whether moss had or did not have a sex, the cryptogamist Necker w ro te:

to be entitled to propose an answer to this issue, there is lacking a series of observations and experiments several times repeated.^ ^

Although he had declared himself to be an amateur, Eichhorn’s work was, like that of Spallanzani and Hill, to be included in

Muller’s systematic project, notably because of Eichhorn’s brilliant iconography, which acted as an important aspect of the democratic microscope. Including a local work into his universal project reveals that the democratic microscope worked throughout

Muller’s systematic project to collect all existing data which could be fruitful for the advancement of knowledge. Contrary to Hill, who

9 6 Necker 1775, 21. - 330 - had rejected synonymy, Müller was to apply the method of synonymy to help him to recover less-known work. Müller supported the general deontology he had proposed in a 1771 paper announcing another work on entomostracae, published in

Philosophical Transactions:

I propose giving the description and history of these insects [monoculus] with their figures drawn to the life, as seen by the microscope: this I shall do in a work which I am projecting. To render it more complete, I beg the favour of all naturalists to communicate their observations, which I shall not omit to give them the credit of, and at the same time, if they should find any other species, to send them to me. It is very easy to transport these insects, as they live very well in a small quantity of water for several weeks, without a necessity of a change.^ ^

6.4.3 The definitive foundation: Miiller’s 1786 Animalcula infusoria

The increasing number of studies on infusoria were to be gathered together by Müller in a new book. The posthumous 1786 Animalcula infusoria fluviatilia et marina was in fact much more than an enlarged edition of the 1773 Vermium. Not only was the number of species described multiplied by 2.6, from 147 to 379, but the two other orders analysed in the Vermium, Helminth and

Testacea, had now been separated from infusoria, being promoted to an order taking up all of 367 pages in-quarto. Moreover the book eventually included 50 plates representing 823 infusoria, drawn in different positions, some of them represented in the stages of division {Fig. AB). Müller also combined together marine and fresh water infusoria. In order to write his 1773 Vermium, Müller managed to deconstruct the previous categories in Hill’s 1752 History of animals, Pallas’ 1766 Elenchus zoophytorum, and

9 7 Müller 1771b, 242. - 331 -

TakJX nF .

Fig. AB, Muller's plate showing the division of a Kerona (fig. 5,6,7, 8) (Müller 1786,252, pi. XXXIV). - 332 -

Linnaeus’ 1767 Systema Naturae, before reconstructing a classification from almost top to bottom, gathering a much larger number of observations. By contrast with this organisational work for the Vermium, with the 1786 Animalcula infusoria, the natural history of infusoria was now based on a more cumulative scheme, which the similarities between the 1773 and the 1786 version demonstrate clearly (see tables I and H).

Table I. Number of genera and species of infusoria in 1786

Genus N. species C h a ra c te r 1. no external organs thick bag Monas 10 form of a point Proteus 2 variable form Volvox 12 spherical Enchelis 27 cylindric Vibrio 3 1 elongated with membrane Cyclidium 10 oval form Paramaecium 5 elongated Kolpoda 16 sinuated Gonium 5 angulated Bursaria 5 hollow

2. with external organs nude Cercaria 22 with tail Trichoda 89 hairy Kerona 14 horn shaped Himantopus 7 fringed Leucophra 26 everywhere ciliated Vorticella 75 top ciliated hidden head Brachionus 22 top ciliated Tot. 17 378 (+ 1)

Testifying to the now established field of research on infusoria, no rejection of previous genera was to be found in this 1786 version, as was the case in 1773 with Linnaeus’ Chaos and some of Hill’s genera. Some reorganisations of a few genera were made, and four genera were added. Müller adopted the previous Linnaean - 333 - genus Proteus, but invented three new genera for infusoria with external organs, Kerona, Himantopus, and Leucophra. The increase in the total number of species was mainly due to an augmentation of the number of species per genera. In every genus the number of species augmented, some of them adding a few species {Cyclidium,

Bursaria) while the others multiplied the number of their species between two and three {Monas, Volvox, Enchelis, Vibrio, Paramaecium, Kolpoda, Bursaria, Cercaria, Vorticella). The number of species in the genus Trichoda was multiplied by 11 between

1773 and 1786, from 8 to 89!

With the repetition of previous observations that allowed for the calibration and better definition of certain characters and species, with the increased number of species described, and the consequent increase in comparisons among species, some new genera were to appear. Certain species previously belonging to a genus such as the Brachionus, were also redistributed among new genera, while itself Brachionus was better defined. However, problems also emerged in the reorganisation of certain genera. Indeed, to classify creatures, they had to be grouped according to their commonality, i.e. sharing several similar characters. But sometimes a confusion of characters can exist. In 1773, a problem of classification was encountered by Müller for Vorticella, the largest genus (including 40 species) since the time of Linnaeus. Indeed, while genera like Volvox and Paramaecia were specified by only one character —spherical and elongated shape respectively— several criteria entered into the character of the genus Vorticella: either ciliate, with tail, no tail, and with foot. However, according to the descriptions of the genus, Vorticella were clearly - 334 - recognisable: contractile worms, naked, with rotatory lashes. But contradictory criteria brought confusion, as shown by table J.

Table J. Characters for Vorticella.^^

With tail ciliated

ciliated nude (no tail)

Vorticella belonged to different subgroups, “with tail”, and

“ciliated”, but also “ciliated” and “nude” as shown in the table given by Müller. Besides this, another kind of subdivision was included in a footnote of the text, containing more systematic and exclusive characters “no tail, no foot”, “with tail”, “with foot”.^^ There was thus clearly a confusion in the classification of this genus, as for other genera such as Brachionus and Trichodae. In 1786 this confusion was eliminated because Müller stressed that all the infusoria he had classified as Vorticella had a top ciliated, and made it the defining character for the genus. He thus subordinated the remaining characters (limbs and their types) which became hierarchised and exclusive. Vorticella, always described with top ciliated, were thus either with or without limbs, then either with tail or with foot, and either with simple or composed foot.

^ ^ Müller 1773-1774 I, 24, right column. 99 Müller 1773-1774 I, 96. - 335 -

Table K. Müller’s table for the subdivision of Vorticella in 1786^ QQ

Character n. species no tail no foot 3 3 with tail 1 7 with foot - simple 2 0 - composed 5

Contrary to the combination of characters for Vorticella in 1773, which confused the criteria of the ciliated, the 1786 table could be reduced in a logical tree (Table L).

Table L. Logical tree of Müller’s chart for Vorticella

top ciliated

no hmb with limb

simple compos. 20 5

In a similar cumulative, rather than more organisational way, for the number of species, the research field of infusoria was also increased by Müller’s system of referencing authors. A comparison of the changes in the citations of authors by Müller in the infusoria part of the 1773 Vermium and the 1786 Animalcula infusoria, shows this increase and makes apparent the field of research, with a different distribution according to the countries, periods and authors, through several charts. Chart 4 shows the number of citations of authors for the 1773 and 1786 works, distributed by c o u n try .

100 Müller 1786, XXVI-XXVII, 254. - 336 -

Chart 4. Number of citations of authors per country in Mtiller’s works of 1773 and 1786701

V250

-200

-150

-100

-50

England Sweden Geneva Holland France Italy Germ. Denm.

In Chart 4 the countries for which the number of observations cited diminished slightly between 1773 and 1786 are on the left; England and Sweden. All the other countries saw an increase in observations cited, although with different slopes of increase. Holland, France and Italy did not surpass forty observations in 1786, while Germany and Denmark (i.e. Müller) respectively had 159 and 241 observations. While the observations of Müller constitute all the data for Denmark, the increase in German citations confirms that a trend in work was emerging there.

This chart of course only relates to Müller’s system of references, and, although intended by him to be systematic, does not indicate all the work on infusoria done by European scholars up until this time. Nevertheless, one can rely on Müller for his references, because he based it on a large international network of scholars interested in microscopy, infusoria and natural history. Although he missed out on perhaps a third of the available data on infusoria —for instance he did not quote the observations of

Huygens’ in the 1703 Dioptrica— it is important to understand that not every mention of a microscopic water animalcule was to be collected and referred to by him. Indeed, two main factors limited Müller’s gathering of information, already of course in 1773.

^ ^ ^ The left part of each double column corresponds to the data for 1773 and the right part for 1786. - 337 -

First, the availability of a text could be an obstacle. Citing an observation was dependent on the availability of a book or a journal, and Müller of course could not cover everything, such that he missed out on important research. The best example of this is probably a 1774 Italian book on tremella, by Bonaventura Corti, a friend of Spallanzani and correspondent of Bonnet who published in Modena. His Osservazioni microscopiche sulla tremella was not quoted by Müller, who either did not know it or could not obtain a copy. A fourth of Corti’s book was dedicated to the observation of microscopic animalcules, with good drawings and descriptions of about ten species {Fig. AC).^^2 Corti, notably, was the first to publish figures of the spontaneous division of certain infusoria into four animalcules in Italy {Fig. AC, 1, 2, 3 ). 1^3

The second aspect that could limit the quotation of an author’s observations was related much more to the use of language —and figures— as tools to allow others to have a clear idea of the kind of creature the author was dealing with. In other words, an observation would be quoted by Müller providing that the democratic microscope had been used to a certain extent by the author. The main criterion concerned the description and classification or “systematical report”. If the description allowed the species to be identified without ambiguity, then it had to be cited, otherwise it did not. Of course, a good iconography was an aid for description, and could sometimes replace it. We can therefore understand why a scholar such as Joblot was more frequently cited by Müller than Leeuwenhoek (respectively 24 and

13 citations in 1773, 33 and 15 citations in 1786). Famous

102 Corti 1774, 69-93. 103 Corti 1774, pi. 3, f. 2. II. a jRa . nr. I t j f . I . . u . ' e _ c ^ Ip JK f, t « 1 / c % r

Ftà.Prr^ /ii/.vm ly .fi. 6>.6d r

T t W a

fur-xai.

U) OJ 00

jy .x y : Ijr. XVS. S iÿy .x n .

Fig. AC. Good drawings of several animalcules by Corti (1774, pi. II), among which fig. I, 2, and 3 show animalcules dividing. - 339 - scholars such as Buffon and Needham were cited only once by Müller, while little known scholars such as Hermann, Goeze and Eichhorn were, like Spallanzani, cited more than 20 times each, for the same number of observations. The systematics of infusoria contains a social geography of European microscopists which redistributed the roles and levels of importance to scholars according to the new democratic rules promoted by Linnaean social philosophy.

As a consequence, the schema acting behind Müller’s collecting of data corresponded to his conception of the democratic microscope, of course shared and supported within the growing milieu of Linnaean natural history. Considered through the schema of the democratic microscope for the description of species, and given the absence of certain authors, Müller’s system of references nevertheless supplies the best extant comprehensive database for eighteenth-century microscopy. In terms of the historical amount of data, two further charts, based on the same data, allow us to grasp more precisely the period and countries in which infusoria were mainly considered through the democratic microscope. Based on Müller’s citations, chart 5 demonstrated the three waves of studies on animalcules then infusoria distributed per country, and chart 6 shows the authors cited by Müller, distributed per year of b irth . - 340 -

Chart 5. The three waves of studies on animalcules then infusoria, per country and period of publication 250-

200

O Deutschland □ England AHoll O France + Italy X Denmark

1670-1739 1740-1764 1765-1786

The data for this chart are the same as for the previous; each author was put in one of three periods distinguished according to the date of publications. The first period (1670-1739) corresponds to what I have termed the first wave of studies of animalcules, and includes Leeuwenhoek, Swammerdam, Hooke, Power, Borel, Bonanni, and Joblot. It shows that, notwithstanding the claim of historians that Leeuwenhoek was the “founder of protozoology” or the “father of m icrobiology”,^04 the 1786 foundation of systematics of infusoria kept, from the first wave of research on animalcules, not Leeuwenhoek’s but Joblot’s research which was dominant over those of the Dutch and British. The second period (1740-1764) opens with the polyp, mainly continuing with Hill and

104 Dobell 1932, 362; Ford 1991, 1. - 341 -

Baker’s works, and ends with the works of the Germans, Rosel,

Schaeffer, Ledermiiller, prior to Spallanzani. This period can be seen as the second wave of studies on animalcules, linked to the polyp, and centred on England. In this second wave, British scholars made many observations, although the total number of observations in this wave did not really change in comparison with the first wave. But, with the polyp, the object had changed. The third wave (1765-1786) begins with the works of the mid 1760s by

Spallanzani, Wrisberg, Pallas, Gleichen, and continues with the

Germans and Müller. For the first time, these works gathered a critical mass of microscopic research that progressively lead to a demand for a systematic description of animalcules, a trend for which Müller’s Vermium and Animalcula infusoria capped off. Animalcules were transformed there in infusoria and in true species. In this third wave of research the take-off is clearly evident for Müller in Denmark, and it is supported by an increasing number of studies published by German scholars. In comparison with the first two waves, the amount of data gathered by Müller in the third wave represents eight times the amount for each of the previous waves (in average 420 against ± 54).

A final chart, chart 6, depicting the citations of authors distributed by year of birth, indicates very clearly the gap between the first and the second waves of research on animalcules. As we have already seen, this gap, situated historically between 1700-

1720 and 1740, was fulfilled by the research for democratic microscopical objects, such as insects and cryptogam. - 342

Chart 6. Frequency of observation per authors cited bv Müller, distributed by year of birth, with a logarithmic scale Hacking: P. and 3 anonymous).

1000:1

Müller O

100 Gleichen Joblot O O Hillo GoezeO ^Eichhorn Bakero Spallanzani^ Hermann O Wrisberg Shrank Leeuwenhoek 1 0 RoeselO Roffredi O LinnaeusO OPallas OLedermuller Trembley Schaeffer O Leske Martini O O QDO Waller Swammerdam Ellis Bonnet Bloc*fi Borel ee- -(□jBonanni. o e—e—ee - e -e-e— e— Power Hooke Buffon Geer Unzer Fabricius Roos Needham Adanson Beguillet Maal ^ing

.1 1600 1620 1640 1660 1680 1700 1720 1740 1760

The chart neatly shows two clusters of scholars who are quoted by Millier. The first cluster contains people born between 1620 and 1645, and is clearly separated from the second group that begins with scholars born 1698 (Baker), but all the others are born between 1700 and 1750.

This chart clearly allows us to distinguish the first wave of studies on animalcules that were to be taken into account by

Müller, and for which first Joblot and second Leeuwenhoek were the main authors. It confirms that the gap was also a generation gap: the enthusiastic generation of the authors born pre 1650 who generalised the use of the microscope were the main scholars who worked on animalcules. A period of fifty years —two generations— was necessary in order to reconstruct new methods and new microscopical objects in accordance with the democratic - 343 - microscope before launching the second wave. The second and third waves of studies on animalcules then infusoria, geographically located, are of course mixed into the second cluster. The critical mass of research appears for the authors born in the period 1700-1750; but the authors born before 1720 are mainly non-Germans, while the authors born after 1720 are mainly G erm ans.

6.5. Impact of the systematics of infusoria

To conclude with Müller’s systematics, and with the legend of “no heir of significance”, in fact no “heir” was necessary or could even appear. The natural history tradition, to which Müller’s work belonged, was the main channel by which knowledge was to be transmitted to further generations without necessitating an “heir of significance”. Such an attitude appears to be rooted in the story, criticised by Catherine Wilson, according to which “the conceptual profundities of seventeenth-century science are followed by the taxonomic trivialities of the eighteenth”. ^05 still the main issue, hidden by the taxonomic Latin natural history tradition, is not systematics, but the addressing of a social problem of finding a shared language for a shared object, a problem much more real and difficult to handle than the lovely conceptual dreams of the seventeenth-century philosophers —from which the academics distanced themselves. Indeed the natural history tradition had taken on a definitively Linnaean shape from the 1780s on, and this meant that everyone could have access to Müller’s text providing

105 Wilson 1995, 36. - 344 - that they were trained in the systematic model and in the basic language of the natural sciences. As puts by John Lesch, “the very extravagance with which the systematic model was embraced between 1750 and 1810 suggests that more was involved in its success than its appropriateness for particular sciences at a determinate stage of their development, and more involved in its demise than the evolution of those sciences to a higher s t a g e ” .!

Indeed, I believe the real importance of the systematic model lies in looking beneath its scientific operation, thus within its social impact and language determination. It was not the classificatory model, but the language that necessarily came with it that provided a tool for controlling the contingent social processes increasingly permeating the monde savant, and particularly the growing number of amateurs in science. Latin natural history supplied a shared language to the actors of these social processes, thus erasing the contingent aspect while submitting to a system of rules. Contingent social processes and their impact on the production of scientific facts represent an issue not only for laboratory science, as it arises from discussion among social historians of science, but it is also dealt with by systematists, especially those of the Latin tradition. This was an irreducible dividing point with the amateur naturalist tradition against which a new attitude took root which would eventually open up the space for future professionalisation.

The genius of Linnaeus was first in addressing this nebula of problems and building an efficient conventional system of rules to solve them, and the originality of Müller was in finding the means to apply this reform to the microscopical world. The development

106 Lesch 1990, 111 - 345 - of the systematics of infusoria matches perfectly the general extension of Linnaean systematics captured by historians in the second half of the eighteenth-century.M oreover, from the viewpoint of a Linnaean naturalist after the French Revolution, thus from the viewpoint of practically every scholar, the main work had been carried out by Müller, as acknowledged by Bruguière,

Lamarck, Cuvier and o t h e r s , 1^8 because he had reduced known described microscopic species to the basic canons of modern natural history: synonymy, binomial nomenclature, classification, characters, definition, and even iconography. Everything was organised into a system, and no reformation of such importance could ever touch on infusoria, because, as it appeared, following Linnaeus, Müller’s was both a cognitive and a social reformation of the knowledge on infusoria. From this viewpoint, there could be only one Müller, i.e. the scholar, or group of scholars who managed to reduce infusoria to Linnaeism. If the science of infusoria had continued to be studied with Leeuwenhoek’s, Baker’s or Eichhorn’s style, we would still be waiting for such a reformation, waiting for the specimens to be transformed into species almost unambiguously accessible to everyone trained, and looking for the knowledge to be universalised, at least for a range of people who believes in it. No one could reframe what had been framed by Müller, but many could of course change things within the classification, reformulate it, create sub-divisions, which actually was done by certain heirs of significance: Gmelin, in the thirteenth edition of Systerna Naturae, included Müller’s infusoria.

Bruguière and Lamarck, in 1792, adopted the whole of Müller and

Roche 1996, Stevens 1994, Duris 1993. 108 Lamarck 1815 I, 406; Cuvier 1817 IV, 90; Bory 1826, 5-8. - 346 - added some corrections. In Venice, Father Giuseppe Olivi (1769-

1795) planned the second volume of his 1792 Zoologia Adriatica to include “Vorticellae, Volvox, Hydrae, and generally the worms infusoria”, but he died three years later. It was Lamarck, in his

1815 Histoire naturelle des animaux sans vertèbres, who considered infusoria to be characterised enough to form a class distinct from the worms and the rotifers.no Thanks to the natural method and the subordination of characters^, Lamarck also attempted to base the classification of infusoria on the growing organisation, from the simple animal point to the most organised infusoria, with a tail.m

Through the European and then the worldwide diffusion of Linnaeism the abstract knowledge of infusoria was theoretically accessible to everyone, a knowledge which of course entered the schools (Herbst, Erxleben, Blumenbach, Leske in Germany, Ray, Cotte in France, Spallanzani and Olivi in Italy, the Linnaean Society in England) and was to be increased by certain scholars. While systematicians and didacticians signaled and discussed the existence of infusoria, resuming the main lines of the system, new empirical research and new actors appeared, such as Abraham Swaving in Haarlem, Paula-Schrank and Necker in Munich,

Prochaska and Moll in Vienna, Koch in Magdeburg, Schadeloock in

Mecklenburg, Villars in Lyon, Home and Dyllwin in London, Bose,

Girod-Chantrans, Bruguière, Dujardin, Lamarck and Cuvier in Paris,

Saussure, Senebier, Vaucher, Jurine, Candolle in Geneva, Olivi,

109 Olivi 1792, 295. 110 Lamarck 1815 I, 407-408, 449. 111 Lamarck 1815 I, 449-450. On the natural method and subordination of characters, see Moiso 1997, 91-94; Larson 1994, 36-39; Stevens 1994, 26-63; Balan 1979, 160ff; Foucault 1966, 275-276. - 347 -

Colombo, Guanzati, Vassali, Buniva, Rusconi in I t a l y ,and many others who continued to be fascinated by the new world revealed by the microscope, who could now make reference to a systematical framework in order to stabilise their observations.

Of course old skills were still prevalent, and were resistant to the new trend, more or less so depending on country. In the northern universities, theses concerning the Linnaean species Furia infernalis were discussed in 1790.^1 ^ Certain Italian scholars were still unacquainted with Müller’s and Linnaeus categories in the

1 7 9 0 s . up until the end of the century, the British microscope- makers continued their activity of mixing the genre. In Georges Adams Junior’s 1787 Essay on the microscope, the recent classification of infusoria by Müller found a place among the description of microscopes, and among the many “microscopical objects” which helped to run the business of several English instrument-makers, such as the flea-eye, the wing of a butterfly or a fish scale.115 The inconvenience of such a practice, used for obvious reasons of blatant advertisement, encouraged enormous confusion between scientific work, advertisement, amusement and the image of the microscope. This could be easily perceived by looking at the transformations undergone by the systematical references of Müller’s book. Adams maintained the names and the precise vocabulary for morphological determination —in Latin and English— as well as the classification. But Müller’s book was directed to the potential community of trained or to-be-trained

112 Prochaska [1786], Colombo 1787, Guanzati 1796, Swaving 1799. 11 5 Hagen 1790. 114 Colombo 1787, Guanzati 1796. 115 Adams (1787, 469-651) translated Müller's book into English, with additions and omissions. - 348 - naturalists able to understand and replicate these observations, and was written with the strong awareness of belonging to a tradition, perceived as a real link between past and future, providing a more complete knowledge of natural beings. Making visible this tradition was done thanks to the system of cumulative references. In Adams’ Essay, published one year after Muller’s

1786 Animalcula infusoria, nothing of this appeared. Almost all the references given by Müller were eliminated, and the only authors cited were those, taken from Muller’s, who had studied the five animalcules which had been of a particular interest to the British scholars, and mainly to Baker: Volvox globator. Vibrio paxilifer.

Vibrio anguillula, Vorticella rotatoria, and Trichoda proteusf^^

The book was reduced to the local tradition. But in the face of this local resistance, the main change was that for the first time, infusoria, linked to the microscope could be taken seriously within an universalised frame of knowledge. Contrary to Leeuwenhoek’s elitist work, Müller had responded to a critical mass of work by gathering it along with the socio-cognitive tool of the time,

Linnaeism. Supported by the critical mass of studies on infusoria, his work was to inspire many scholars, now that he had standardised the tools allowing to communicate on infusoria.

To the scholars of the following century, certain errors of

Müller’s classification were obvious. They were amended by excluding spermatic animalcules from the infusoria (Lamarck), by excluding some vegetables (Bory), such as some diatoms and the Volvox globator. As well some species were placed in other genera, as characters were better defined according to the growing

116 Adams 1787, 483-485, 503-506, 510-525, 575-576, 634-633. There are textual references in the pp. 534, 535, 550, 559, 563. - 349 - resolving power of nineteenth-century microscopes. These nineteenth-century scholars had at their disposal a much more organised, industrialised and standardised way of building microscopes, new iconographie techniques, such as the camera lucida, invented in 1804, not to mention photography.

Technological and physiological advances, embodied in the increasingly established science of infusoria, allowed for these changes. However, such a process was already extant and was being developed in Müller’s work, as shown, between 1773 and

1786, by the increase of species, the addition of genera, their partial reorganisation, and the refinement of certain characters. Müller in fact, not being the first to attempt to classify animalcules —that being Hill— was nevertheless the first to classify them in a Linnaean way and according to the physiological knowledge of his time. In the late 1760s the division of polyps discovered by Trembley in 1747, was not a valid concept to be applied to the emerging order of infusoria. Saussure’s discovery of the division of infusoria, known about in the early 1770s, was one of the physiological advances on which Müller based his work. Similarly,

Spallanzani’s 1776 failure to discover the fecundating power of spermatic animalcules was also another kind of physiological knowledge on which Müller based his inclusion of them into his classification. They are indeed animalcules living in a liquid, microscopic, with a tail, displaying spontaneous motion which die under certain conditions. Before physiological advances could meet systematics anew in Lamarck and Ehrenberg’s works, Müller’s successful Animalcula infusoria served as no less than a foundation for microscopical zoology for more than half a century to - 350 -

c o r n e . ”7 Thus the end of the third wave of microscopical research did not occur with Müller’s death, but in the years 1820s. In 1827, Bory still stuck to Muller’s method. In the 1840s, although based on Muller’s tool of communication, Ehrenberg represents a new continent. At this time the improvements of the microscope opened new spaces in which certain irreversible superstructures would appear: cellular theory, embryology, protozoology, study of the development, etc. As a necessary prerequisite to this new trend, Muller’s work had allowed an open community to constitute itself around a new object, the infusoria, thanks to a conventional language and a systematical model that permitted to solve the problems of communication and to absorb the amount of data that were increasing by that time. Transforming the animalcules into species, and remove them from their condition of local specimen, was the still valid operation showing the heuristical and socio- cognitive power which the meeting of Linnaeism and the microscope provided.

See next chapter. C h a p t e r 7

T h e D econstruction of a M y t h . P r o po sa l fo r a Re fo r m of

THE Ca t e g o r ie s u s e d fo r th e H ist o r y o f M ic r o s c o p y

7.1 Anachronism in the history of microscopy

The history of microscopy has been written largely under the influence of the instrumental history of the microscope. In this final chapter I will attempt to deconstruct the mythology which nurtures this history, showing that its prominent categories are presentist and how, historically and functionally, they became so.i

Whereas the refusal of presentist history is common place among historians, the anachronistic view has become a standard cognitive tool used to think about the history of microscopy. Examples of this anachronistic method can be found for instance in the identification, by contemporary scientists, of microorganisms observed by seventeenth-century microscopists.^ Indeed as we know, the Latin names and systematical report on animalcules simply did not exist before 1752, and was not shared by scholars before 1773. My intent in this chapter is to identify and to understand the origins of such a general anachronistic attitude among scholars who have a claim as recognised historians of microscopy.

1 Epistemologists have argued that certain forms of presentism are inescapable, see Brush 1995, 217-224. Jardine (2000, 265-266) has regarded the category of actor as being anachronistic. ^ See for instance Ford 1985, 1991. - 352 -

While, as Larry Holmes puts it, “historians of science have reached a general consensus that we should judge the scientists of the past, no longer by the standards of present, but in the context of their own times”,^ such an idea has barely penetrated the sanctuary of the history of eighteenth-century microscopy.

Furthermore, perhaps not systematically, but as a kind of necessary devotion to a tacit rule for this community, interpretation in the history of microscopy has been often replaced by a moral judgment, with such simple categories as

“good” or “bad”. This tacit philosophy of history has consistently entitled the historian to judge facts and actors, instead of reporting facts and their narratives, and to propose interpretations in order to understand their connection to each other. One can imagine what the history of physics would resemble if Galileo were considered “bad” based on the fact that he did not discovered the principle of relativity. A quick survey of the historiography of microscopy in the eighteenth-century shows that negative arguments are the standard strategy by which these judgments have become a normal part of the discourse of the historian. Here is a sampling: “The microscope was not able to bring, at its beginning, important contributions to the progress of knowledge”, the “microscope produced a negative revolution”, “the eighteenth- century failed to develop the study of microscopic life into a sustained and integrated field of research”, “The programme of microscopy does not survive into the eighteenth-century as a resource for natural philosophy except at the relatively popular

Holmes 1985, xvii. - 353 - level”.^ Other historians have explained the “decline of microscopy” employing the opinions of contemporary philosophers and essayists such as Locke, Malebranche, Addison or

Berkeley, not taking into account the huge work carried out by scholars who did not care about the metaphysicians’ opinions. For, as it is known, the academies that existed from the second half of the seventeenth-century onwards followed a simple model of communication: they never entered into a metaphysical or a religious discussion, which was the bread and butter of hundreds of Renaissance academies. Of course philosophy interacts with science but it does not replace it. Mazzolini for example has explained the “decline of microscopy” in relation to, among other, the argument debated by Malebranche and Locke that he whose eyes were microscopical would be unable to adapt himself to the world.5 But Mazzolini does not mention that at precisely the same time, the early 1700s, French scholars were carrying out experiments on the real microscopical eyes of the fly to obtain a better understanding of the problem of multiple eyes as opposed to a single mental image. The hundreds of “microscopical mirrors” of the fly’s eyes provided an appropriate object with which to investigate the issue.^

Quite the contrary, the present work has attempted to reconstruct comprehensively the use and practices of the microscope during the eighteenth-century in the networks of the monde savant and not in the history of philosophy, as well as to

^ Bemardi 1995, 114; Bennett 1997, 72; Ruestow 1996, 276; Casini 1987, 137. My emphasis in the quotations. 5 Mazzolini 1997, 209. ^ Puget (1704, 70-71) discussed this topic with Malebranche, Joblot, Carré, Lamy, etc. See the letter from Malebranche to Puget of the 5th of June 1706, and from Lamy to Puget of the 5th of July 1708 (Robinet 1961, 735, 789). - 354 - deconstruct the mythology that propped up an ahistoric attitude among historians. In this chapter I shall explore the influence of the achromatic microscopes on the historical representation of microscopy during the first part of the nineteenth-century, under two headings: the origins of the anachronistic attitude through the invention of what can be termed the “technological thesis”, and a description of the evolution of the memory for microscopy before and after the arrival of the achromatic microscope.

7.2 The invention of the “technological thesis”

Thanks to the achromatic standardised microscope built in series and widely available from the 1830s, a new trend of microscopical research rapidly emerged in Europe and America, and spread to many domains of biological research. It led to the foundation of the major microscopical societies of Europe and

America, around the middle of the century.7 Some of the texts written by the first generation of new microscopists, in the period 1820-1840, contain references to the authors of the eighteenth- century, but seldom to those of the seventeenth-century. This network of references tended to establish a new way of thinking about the history of the natural sciences, as well as of the young biological disciplines such as protozoology, histology and embryology. Sometimes the references were assessed by the scholars as scientific, and sometimes as historical, largely depending on the topic discussed. In the anatomo-physiology of infusoria, references to certain seventeenth and eighteenth-

^ The Royal Microscopical Society was established in the late 1830. See Turner 1989, - 355 - century authors was still considered a scientific strategy. The

French biologist Henri Dutrochet (1776-1847) experimented on the reviviscences of rotifers in 1837 taking into account the opposing opinions of Leeuwenhoek and Spallanzani. ^ As well, to shed light on the fecundating role of the spermatic animalcules in the 1820s, Jean-Louis Prévost and Jean-Baptiste Dumas discussed

Spallanzani’s 1776 experimental settings.^ Others, such as

Giovanni-Battista Amici in 1818, experimented on the microscopical motion of sap in the Chara, a cryptogam, after Corti.^o This attitude would still be found until the time of Pasteur. The anatomo-physiologists found certain of their experimental protocols in Spallanzani’s works and in other authors of the eighteenth-century. Dutrochet’s first work on rotifers of 1812 was for example largely influenced by the narrative structure of Spallanzani’s fourth memoir from his Opusculi di fisica animale e vegetabile published in 1776.1 ^ On the other hand, up until the 1830s, the systematics of infusoria continued to look back at eighteenth-century research. The systematists classified not only infusoria, but also launched historical classifications of the microscopists themselves, proclaiming a thesis that actually took on an historical rather than scientific value. The important influence of Müller on the research of infusoria was acknowledged and lasted for at least 60 years after 1770. Indeed, the gathering of the synonymy of many previous works served to transform his

1786 Animalcula infusoria into the standard to be cited, unseating all works which had previously appeared on animalcules and

8 See Ratcliff 2000, 107-113; Barsanti 1997, 73-77. 9 Prévost & Dumas 1821, 183-184, 195-196. See Castellani 1979, 223-225. Amici 1818. 1 1 Dutrochet 1812, Spallanzani 1776 II, 176-253. - 356 - infusoria. Gmelin, Bruguière, Bose, Lamarck, Cuvier, Bory, Dujardin and Ehrenberg rarely referred to previous scholars other than Müller. It was between the 1840s and the 1870s that microscopists definitively abandoned the idea that Müller had been paramount, and replaced him with the influence of Ehrenberg, “the Linnaeus of infusoria”. Between 1773 and the 1840s, however many microscopists recognised Müller’s influence.i ^

To begin around the period of the first diffusion of the achromatic microscope in the 1820s,Jean-Baptiste Bory de St.

Vincent (1778-1846), a French naturalist who was part of the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt, published with Jean Lamouroux, a long article entitled Microscopic animals in the 1824 Encyclopédie méthodique. He sketched out a short history of infusoria already conveying some of the clichés of the modern history of microscopy, notably the stereotype of the dilettantism of the ancien régime scholar: “the microscope was at first not appreciated for its true value, and the first observers who employed it seem to have been only looking for a way to amuse themselves”.!^ He then noted that the “imperfect instruments”, —those belonging to the seventeenth-century microscopists— were later improved,and quoted a dozen microscopists of the eighteenth-century, before calling on O.-F. Müller: “The facts appeared ridiculous up until his

12 Claparède & Lachmann 1858-59, 9. 1^ Gmelin adopted Muller's classification in the 13th edition of the Systema Naturae, Bruguière used the plates of Müller in the Encyclopédie méthodique, Bose 1801-1802, Girod 1803, Vaucher 1803, Savigny 1812, Oken 1815, Lamarck 1815-1822, Cuvier 1817, Schweigger 1820, Nitzsch 1824, Lam ouroux et al 1824, and Bory 1826 all discussed and improved the classification system of Müller. 14 Daumas 1953, 213. 1^ Lamouroux et al 1824, 515; Bory 1826, 5. 16 Bory 1826, 5-6. - 357 -

time because they were presented in a contradictory m a n n e r ”.

Müller was settled upon as the most influential scholar on the classification of infusoria up to the time of Lamarck, whose book on invertebrates dated from 1815. Bory had as well a biased opinion on many eighteenth-century scholars. As a partisan of spontaneous generation, he spoke not surprisingly of Needham, as an “excellent observer, of good faith, most superior to Spallanzani whom he did not sneer af’.i^ Lamouroux and Bory then considered

Müller to have “added a new class to the animal k i n g d o m ” , 19 which highlighted the contrast before and after Müller. In 1826 the article was transformed into a book entitled. An essay towards a classification of microscopical animals, and the contrast became a classification of pre-Mullerian and post-Mullerian periods.

Bory’s classification of microscopists seems to have been something of a shared knowledge, crossing political and geographical frontiers. In 1815, Lamarck already considered Müller to have studied more infusoria than anyone else, and his work was consequently perceived as foundational. The standard view of Müller, similar to that of Bory, was further strengthened by the Prussian microscopist Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg (1795-

1876), who opposed spontaneous generation and reorganised the classification of infusoria. 21 In a memoir read before the Berlin

Academy in 1830 and published in 1832 in German, then translated into French in 1835, Ehrenberg presented a similar classificatory history in a more systematic way. The same two

17 Bory 1826, 6. 1 ^ Bory 1826, 7. On spontaneous generation, see Farley 1977, 31-46. 1 ^ Lamouroux et al 1824, 517. 2 0 Lamarck 1815 I, 406. 21 Jahn 1971, 288. For a short biography of Ehrenberg, see Jahn 1971. - 358 - epochs were identified in the history of infusoria, legitimated by two criteria, the method of investigation and the fact of using a Linnaean classification. With a well-known reputation in many

Academies and in the public sphere interested in infusoria since the 1830s,22 Ehrenberg reinforced Bory’s idea, an idea shared by the network of the microscopists. Similar to Bory’s ideas, the first period was considered as marked by a nebulous, unsystematic and irresolute method of classification, up to the point of Muller’s

1773 Vermium. A second phase began with Müller, and was characterised by a serious and more systematic method of research and classification.23 The opposition of serious versus vague and irresolute methods was already structuring the emerging memory of the microscopical “discipline”. Moreover the “linear model” was now displaying characteristic steps of a gradual development fitting with the representation of knowledge in progress commonly thought at the time to find its impulse in scien ce.

The history of the classification of microscopists by the scientists does not end here. In 1841 the French microscopist Félix

Dujardin, in the first chapter of his Histoire naturelle des zoophytes - infusoires, wrote a historical genealogy of the research on infusoria in which he distinguished three phases.24 This triadic scheme was perhaps influenced by the “law of the three states” proposed by Auguste Comte in his Cours de philosophie positive.

Nevertheless Dujardin left untouched the first two periods of Bory and Ehrenberg and added to them a new one. The previous scheme

2 2 See Claparède and Lachmann 1859, 9. 2 3 Ehrenberg 1835, 129-130. 2 4 Dujardin 1841, 3. - 359 - was thus followed and enlarged historically so as to include the recent transformations produced by the achromatic microscope.

Consistent with this technological novelty, Dujardin also provided new rationale, besides the classificatory scheme, for dividing history into three periods, also establishing the idea which everyone had been vaguely expressed here and there. The kind of microscope used by scholars was to be considered the major factor responsible for the justification of the boundaries between the three periods. First, the observers working since the time of Leeuwenhoek in 1672 used simple microscopes, and observed without classifying. A second period of morphological classification began a century later, with Müller in 1773, a period during which scholars used the compound microscope. Eventually, the contemporaneous and scientific period arose in the 1830s, thanks to Ehrenberg and the achromatic microscope, and allowed for a classification based on the organisation of infusoria. The historical equation is easy to understand; each period is characterised by new discoveries and by methods of classification depending on different types of microscope, ergo discovery is strictly determined by the microscope one has at his disposal. This last sentence shall be referred to as the technological thesis.

Like many of his contemporaries who were familiar with the first generation of achromatic microscopes of the 1810s and 1820s, those of Fraunhofer, Amici and Chevalier, Dujardin was well aware that a huge amount of research had been carried out on infusoria during the eighteenth-century, and sketched out a quick genealogy of the microscopists in the introduction to his book. He named many of the scholars from Leeuwenhoek forward, crediting them, at the same time, with the idealised identity as “microscopists”. For - 360 - the first period, from 1672 to 1773, he cited seventeen scholars he regarded as the major eighteenth-century microscopists. It is worth naming them, to show how relative the importance of

Leeuwenhoek compared to eighteenth-century scholars was during the first days of the achromatic microscope. They are, in the chronological order used by Dujardin: Leeuwenhoek, Baker,

Trembley, Hill, Joblot, Schaeffer, Rosel, Ledermiiller, Wrisberg, Linnaeus, Pallas, Ellis, Eichhorn, Spallanzani, Gleichen, Goeze and

B l o c h . 25 Except for Louis Joblot, whom he wrongly identified with the year 1752,26 such a list indicates without any ambiguity a bias towards Enlightenment scholars. Even with major omissions of many other scholars, especially Italian, Dujardin identified at least —probably thanks to Müller’s books— the works published within the European network of scholars studying infusoria and related topics between 1742 (Baker) and 1782 (Bloch). They represented a critical mass of people as compared to the lonely Leeuwenhoek, who died in 1723. Dujardin, who was still following the work of Bory and Ehrenberg, characterised the second period (1773- 1820s) by the foundation of the classification of infusoria systematised by Müller, which, as remarked by Dujardin, “served as the material for the nomenclators who came next to h i m ” . 27

There he mainly quoted French authors, such as Bruguière,

Lamarck, Cuvier and Bory de St. Vincent. He could have add to this listing many German, Swedish, Italian, British, Dutch, Austrian and others who had adopted the classification of Müller. Dujardin, born in 1801, although not educated as a naturalist, was a young

2 5 Dujardin 1841, 6-8. 2 6 Dujardin does not seem to have noted that Joblot’s book of 1754 was an enlarged reprint of the original edition published in 1718. 2 7 Dujardin 1841, 11. - 361 - contemporary of the French scientists he quoted, and even knew some of them personally.

The classification system of Dujardin was not without historical foundation. It at least represented existing lines of forces, and provided an outline of the scholars who had worked and influenced the course of research on infusoria. His classification was later used in certain dictionaries, such as the Larousse.

Eighteenth-century microscopical activities were thus not totally erased from memory, and certain important scientists recognised their existence and influence on scientific research even at the beginning of the 1840s. From the point of view of a deconstruction of the historiography of microscopy, the major problem raised by nineteenth-century knowledge of this period concerns the technological thesis and its impact on the historical representation that was later to set up the history of microscopy. 1841 was not the first year in which the technological thesis appeared in a scientific book, but it may be the first moment at which it was systematically linked to a chronological reconstruction, schematising and labelling the historical matter magnified by the equation: “good microscope = discovery / bad microscope = amusement”. Not that champions of this thesis were unable to find evidence to support it, at least in this particular period. Certainly, the technological thesis was a convincing argument for understanding the changes which had taken place during the 1820s and 1830s. It was, moreover, a rationale, explicit or not, which motivated the research of instrument makers such as Fraunhofer, Brewster, Amici, Charpentier, Mandl, Lister, Lerebours carried out

^ ^ Larousse 1880, 690, entry “Infusoire”. - 362 - between 1810 and 1842.29 But the technological thesis — sometimes employed as an advertisement for selling the new microscopes— did not need to be limited to its original context of production, i.e. the industrial market of microscope makers.

Following up on the dynamism of the British craftsmen who had been perfecting marketing methods since the 1740s, the dissociation between the instrument-maker (producer) and the scholar (consumer) was finally achievable with the invention and standardisation of the achromatic microscope. The extension of the technological thesis beyond the commercial sphere thus depended mostly on who you were talking to, because microscope makers wanted to sell their microscopes, while scientists were also hoping to prove that their knowledge was improved in comparison to scholars of the previous period. A new generation of scientists put the technological thesis into general use, so as to extend it to the history of microscopy. Microscopes were now improved and their standardisation was a goal of research.They fulfilled the desire of scholars of previous centuries to push their research further thanks to better instruments .22 But with the new instrument came a new ideology synthesised into the technological thesis. This new positive category emerged in relation to the new optical instrument, and was helpful to account for contemporaneous developments. It was even more significant for

2 9 Chevalier 1827, Brewster 1832, Chevalier 1839, Mandl 1839, etc. On marketing and other aspects of the achromatic microscope, see Rudd & Jaecks 1996, Jackson 1994, Dorries 1994, Nuttall 1979. 2 0 Concerning the rivalries of the emerging market of microscope and glass industry between Bavaria and England, see Jackson 1994, 562-574. ^ ^ See Dorries 1994. ^ 2 It was common during the eighteenth-century to complain of the optical limitations of the current microscopes, see Bonnet 1781 [1764] II, 290. - 363 - helping to negatively represent the methods and results obtained with the microscope in the previous century.

7.3 Losing memories

Since the 1830s, the technological thesis had been frequently used as one of the major categories with which microscopists started to read the history of their “discipline”. B u t the discipline in question did not exist in the eighteenth-century, a period characterised by systems of practices of the microscope. The first creators of the new discipline of microscopy in the 1830s,

Dutrochet, Ehrenberg, Dujardin, Perty, Bauer, Home, Pacini, Kutorga, d’Orbigny, Nordmann, Lister, Turpin, Zigno, cast on the two previous centuries the categories by which they understood the science of their own time. In 1830, for instance, Ehrenberg decided, with no historical research on the subject, and perhaps influenced by the Prussian botanist Carl Ludwig Wildenow, that

Linnaeus “did not have a good m icroscope”.^4 The technological thesis legitimised a hypothetical rejection of the microscope as used by Linnaeus, which inverted previous rationales. Indeed, in 1806 Wildenow had considered it unfortunate that Linnaeus had made no use of the microscope for the determination of cryptogam, whereas 25 years later Ehrenberg deemed Linnaeus to be a much wiser and cautious scholar than his contemporaries, because he had refused to use the “bad” microscopes of his time.

3 ^ Contemporary epistemologists still make use of this without a critical approach. Hacking (1983, 192-194) followed the evidence provided by British historians on the “bad preachromatic microscopes”. ^4 Ehrenberg 1835, 129. Wildenow (1806, 55) criticised the errors of Linnaeus on cryptogam, due to his neglect of the microscope, but not the quality of the microscope. - 364 - disagreeing with their “misuses”.W ildenow ’s argument was thus inverted by Ehrenberg. But the only valuable information that this judgment of Ehrenberg gives us has, of course, nothing to do with

Linnaeus’ microscope, but rather shows that, in the 1830s, the technological thesis became an important category used by scientists to construct anew the history of microscopy. To the contrary, an historical investigation into the status of the microscope in the Swedish Academy shows that if the Linnaean rejection existed, the causes for it were most likely not linked to the fact of owning a good or a bad microscope.

The second aspect of the technological thesis as it applies to history is that it focused on the microscope —precisely on its optical part— thus eliminating many other dimensions determining a microscope as a research tool. The emphasis on the improved optical properties of microscopes increased the dissociation between optics and mechanics, although it brought to light several aptitudes that made a good microscopist, which were mentioned from the seventeenth-century forward. They range from the capacity to distinguish and select relevant objects during observation, to the skills in dissecting, drawing, planning experiments and reporting them, to the knowledge of natural history. Of course, technical training in using the microscope was available in many previously treatises of physics, optics, natural history and microscopy, in articles and leaflets published from the end of the seventeenth-century. It also extended to related technological improvements and inventions, such as cutting knifes later called microtomes, micrometers, camera obscura and solar

^ ^ Ehrenberg 1835, 129. ^ ^ Concerning Linnaeus’ microscope, see Ford 1985, 112-118. - 365 - microscopes.37 But this practical knowledge, considered a practice difficult to transmit only through books, was not standardised in the eighteenth-century. The technological aspects as well as the aptitudes for observation, skills, and contextual knowledge were widely discussed and developed in the above-mentioned new treatises of microscopy of the 1830s, as an essential part of the training of a microscopist. Similar aspects were also to be found, but in a less technical and systematic way, in the treatises of microscopy and advertisements for microscopes published from the previous century.38 Curiously, in the 1830s, this constellation of new optical and technical tools was not considered to be relevant categories for understanding the history of microscopy, interpreted almost exclusively through the technological thesis, with a strong focus on its optical aspect. Nineteenth-century scholars screened out the results obtained by microscopists of the previous century, results considered to be very poor, rejected for the most part when structural changes occurred such as the emergence of the cellular theory and Ehrenberg’s works. While the instruments, tools and general apparatus necessary to perform microscopical observations increased thanks to many inventions which appeared from the 1820s onwards, the early history of microscopy focused on the results obtained without paying much attention to the practices, procedures and instruments, as if one could perform microscopy without knifes, glasses, scalpel, scissors, lamps, light, dyes, condensers, etc. Moreover, when categories other than those strictly optical were involved in the historical interpretation of microscopy, they enabled scientists to

3 7 About them see Crary 1991, Hammond 1981, C&C 1932. 3 8 Baker 1742, Adams 1746, Baker 1753, Ledermiiller 1760, Della Torre 1763, Brander 1769, Della Torre 1776, Adams 1787. - 366 - reinforce an emerging belief, expressed already by Bory: the myth of the eighteenth-century scholars dabbling with the microscope.

Ehrenberg, for instance, wrote at the end of his historical sketch that his own observations had been made thanks to the use of stains, with which he was able to “discover” a nutritive system composed of hundred of stomachs in i n f u s o r i a . 39 He recalled the previous trials of the staining technique, by Trembley and Gleichen, and added scornfully: “but their experiences were amusement rather than w o r k ” .^ o

With the establishment of the major universities in Europe, the new generation of microscopists of the 1830s was educated with a background of science, skills, aptitudes and prejudices, sharing the newborn knowledge of the history of microscopy. Moreover, this knowledge fitted into certain ideas that presented, especially in the

French medical milieu, the microscope as a worthless or dangerous instrument.41 Apparently, owning a new microscope reinforced and generalised this rupture, even leading to a widespread break with the past. If most of the techniques and knowledge linked to the microscope had been slowly elaborated over two centuries, nevertheless, it had become history and was not contemporary science any more. The new generation of scientists was not trained as historians, and the irreversible dissociation between historical and scientific awareness probably began during the first part of the

3 9 This system was discarded with the theory of protoplasm during the 1860s. Ehrenberg’s theoretical contribution was later thought to be the division between protozoa and metazoan, according to Claparède and Lachmann (1858, 4-5), see Jahn 1971, 288. 40 Ehrenberg 1835, 129. 4 1 Notably Bichat (1801, introduction) rejected the microscope for tissue anatomy, an old song sung by many historians and philosophers of microscopy. Contemporary scholars such as Dominique Villars (1804b, 91) were outraged by Bichat and Richerand’s claim. - 367 - nineteenth-century. In the field of microscopy, it led to a forgetting of the previous knowledge and practices of the microscope, framing the future of the history of microscopy as a mythological system of ideas. Not that this was characteristic only of the new monographs on microscopy from that period, to provide a schematised summary of the main history of their field.

The history of their own discipline was a hobby of many scientists at the beginning of the nineteenth-century, with the most prestigious among them being Cuvier. His rather reductionist style in regards to the memory of science, which took into account only discoveries, and neglected procedures and practices, served as a model for a century of the history of science.

7.4 The functions of the historical reconstruction

Categories other than the technological thesis came also to influence the historical perception, such as the thematic history of an organism. In 1827, Bory wrote an essay coining the term règne psychodiaire, the name for the kingdom of microscopical animalcules situated in-between the vegetable and the mineral kingdoms. In his study he provided a scornful historical sketches of some genera, such as the tremella (a vegetable) and the rotifer.

According to him, after Michel Adanson’s works on tremella,

“nobody wrote anything in which the word tremella was employed without mentioning its animality”.42 “An error of Spallanzani, reproduced without examination by most of the people who meddle with micrography without being acquainted with the

4 2 Bory 1827, 9. - 368 - microscope or without the ability to use it, accredited belief in the resurrection of rotifers and other animalcules”. T h e function of such historical report is apparent, tending to deny the importance of previous research —from 60 years ago!— by claiming it full of errors. It served to discredit Spallanzani, bringing him closer to being a bad microscopist, and to which Bory was an opponent, being a supporter of spontaneous generation. Nevertheless this

“thematic history” was not treated in the same way everywhere.

For example, Dutrochet, who elucidated the structure of the rotatory apparatus of the rotifers from 1810 on, contrasted later the “Leeuwenhoekian thesis” of a rotation of a wheel with the thesis of Spallanzani for whom motion was a vibration of lashes.^4

Ehrenberg in his Infusionsthierchen published in 1838 also partially summarised the history of the rotifer.45 This kind of history thus appears especially rhetorical. It helped to clearly explain an opposition of ideas irregardless of the historical genuineness of the original authors.

In the debate over whether scientists should write histories of science, G.S. Brush has claimed that a technical background is necessary to write history, while others have focused on the tendency of scientists to spontaneously become historians of their own discipline.46 For a deconstructive approach of the history of microscopy that reveals the fabrication of its central mythology, the behaviour of the new generation of scientists appears highly relevant. Indeed, the new microscopists were the first ^‘historians” of their science. If there is any spontaneity, it is in the scientists’

4 3 Bory 1827, 6. 4 4 Dutrochet 1837, 634-635. 4 5 Ehrenberg 1838, 492-496. 4 6 Brush 1995, 215, 229-230; Theerman 1985. - 369 - legitimation to transform themselves into historians of their discipline. But if everything that these new, and for most part, young scientists said about their current scientific discoveries was thoroughly checked and debated by the community of scientists, it was surely not carried out in such a thorough manner in the preliminary pages where their historical interpretations were freely displayed. The function of such a historical construction is not very difficult to imagine. Except for perhaps Dujardin and Bory who at least surveyed previous books, as their new texts highlighted the errors made during the “prescientific” period, they greatly helped to produce for the reader a contrast between the seriousness of the author’s current inquiry as opposed to the triviality of previous research. This first element, of course, had to be taken into consideration at this time, for who could deny, in 1840, that the conditions and instruments of the young microscopical science were stronger and better in 1840 than before? However the problem is not here. On the whole it lies in the fact that the discourse, delivered by scientists, was extended to the entire history of microscopy. Indeed, one can already suspect D utrochet in 1837 of appealing to the Spallanzanian theory of the structure of Rotifer issued in 1776. But what is then the meaning of resuscitating someone such as Leeuwenhoek, who died in 1723, and carried out his observations on Rotifers in 1703, and to compare them to recent microscopical observations?^^ Most likely the then unsolved question of the structure of the “wheel” of the Rotifer raised by Dutrochet benefited from the sharp rhetorical contrast which was increased by the opposed theses of the two

^ ^ D utrochet 1837, 634-635. - 370 - scholars.Nevertheless, there were other more recent scholars, such as Goeze, Eichhorn, Prochaska, Colombo, Guanzati and Schrank who had entered the same controversy,49 and whose ideas could have been discussed by Dutrochet in way of contrast to

Spallanzani’s. Dutrochet did not cite them, and probably he did not know their work, because the systems for communication were unable to circulate information everywhere in Europe.

Consequently the new microscopists reverted to famous scholars, such as Spallanzani and Leeuwenhoek. Among the huge amount of new data that the microscopists were managing from the 1830s onwards, the name of Leeuwenhoek appeared anew. For instance in the chapter zoosperms, the microscopist Donné contrasted Leeuwenhoek’s experiments on an impregnated bitch to Spallanzani’s failed experiments on fecundating frogs.This and other, mentions of Leeuwenhoek probably indicates that by the late 1830s, the memory of the Dutchman had started to reemerge,^^ and that the self-awareness microscopists had increased to the point that they began to attempt to find genuine ancestors. Later this discourse was to become a key element to the foundations of the “history of microscopy”, despite the fact that its original function was not entirely historical but also aimed at producing a contrast between a bad past and the good present. The ideas of these texts were shared by the emerging generations of scientists, and were probably consistent with the search for fathers and idols, fashionable categories of these positivistic days. And, of

4 8 Leeuwenhoek considered it to be rotating wheel, while Spallanzani resolved it as a crown of vibrating lashes. 4 9 Goeze 1772b, Müller 1775, Eichhorn 1781, Prochaska 1786, Colombo 1787, Guanzati 1793, Schrank 1793. See Ratcliff 2000. 5 0 Donné 1844, 296-298. 5 1 Dobell 1932, 381. - 371 - course, these scientists did not look to archives to write their texts, they worked mostly in their laboratories. In other words, these texts had no strong historical foundation, simply because this was not their goal.

While, with his 1841-1845 Histoire des sciences naturelles depuis leur origine jusqu’à nos jours chez tous les peuples connus, Cuvier was creating this framework for all of the whole natural sciences, Bory de St. Vincent, Dujardin, Pritchard, Home, Ehrenberg, Karting, etc. began to judge the previous century, but much more severely than the appraisal by eighteenth-century scholars of their predecessors.52 One can imagine what kind of history we would have if we were to study the history of the ancien régime natural sciences only through the selection of categories in the texts of Cuvier! This has unfortunately been the situation up to the present of the history of eighteenth-century microscopy: judged, but not studied; hanged before its trial. Important differences can be found between the two kinds of histories written by scholars of the Enlightenment and of the nineteenth-century. Since 1800 science had been reunified volens vel nolens by strong authorities who dictated which voice should be h e a r d . 5 3 Preceded by a growing educational literacy in Europe that enabled more people to work in the area of science, the language, theories and practices of sciences began to be widely diffused in a network of universities and societies, especially after the fall of Napoleon in 1815. History and natural sciences became disciplinary fields with strong visibility. And, for what concerns microscopy, a new and progressively improved instrument had emerged.

52 Cuvier 1841-1845. 5 3 On Cuvier and authority, see Outram 1984. - 372 -

Was the achromatic microscope the main cause which made it possible to create this new kind of “historical” discourse, or was it dependent on other factors? Before the apparition of the achromatic microscope, the interpretation of the history of the practices of the microscope was not perceived scornfully, close to the eighteenth-century discourse. The Geneva botanist Jean-Pierre Vaucher (1763-1841) who discovered the reproduction of algae in

1803 using a non achromatic microscope did not provide a disdainful account of the history of cryptogam initiated in the

1730s. To the contrary, he quoted many scientists since the time of Micheli in 1729, and reported their respective contributions to the history of microscopical botany. He thus considered the scholars of the previous century as equal to himself; their works could be seen as steps in a common project of describing and understanding a given part of nature, the class of cryptogam. This cumulative way of working is rather typical of the natural history practiced in the eighteenth-century. But a similar attitude can be also found in the field of micro-anatomy: the microscopist Antonio

Barba (1751-1827), a disciple of della Torre, published a treatise in 1807 on the “globular” micro-anatomy of the brain in which he did not do harm to the memory of his mentor.^4 While at the end of the 1820s the knowledge in part followed the common methods of natural science, the construction of a new memory for the history of microscopy seems to have been a phenomenon linked to the emergence of the achromatic microscope.

5 4 Barba 1819, iii-iv. 373

7.5 Fetishes, myth of creation and murder of father

A second element in this picture appeared after, in the 1840s, and signaled the birth of the mythology of the “fathers of microscopy”. Let us remind ourselves that it is commonplace to regard Leeuwenhoek as the father of protozoology, and Malpighi as the father of microscopical anatomy. Fournier considered the major microscopists of the seventeenth-century to be the true heroes of science.^5 Although there are roots of this attitude in the eighteenth-century, a strong difference exists between the texts written around the period 1820-1840, and the period which roughly followed. Up to this time, the historical model adopted for understanding the history of microscopy was a linear model, probably influenced, in the 1841 version of Dujardin, by the law of the three states which held court over French positivism. The new achromatic microscopes had meanwhile extended rapidly into many domains of biology since the 1830s, and, in emerging fields of research like histology and embryology, there was actually no reason to claim the importance of Müller’s systematical research. We have already seen that the memory of Leeuwenhoek changed between 1825 in Bory’s work and 1837 in Dutrochet’s. His full heroisation was completed also thanks to the progressive elimination of the influence of Müller. As well as that of other local glories, scholars also enabled the addition of previous scientists’ influence to the nineteenth-century rise of nationalism: the Dutch Pieter Karting (1822-1889), the first serious historian of the microscope and himself a histologist, published a paper in 1839 concerning the application of the recent cell theory to tissues. He

^ ^ Fournier 1991, 2-3. - 374 - recalled, on many occasions, that Leeuwenhoek, “our compatriot”, h a d , for a long time, made various microscopical observations of tissues,57 going so far as to use a quotation of

Leeuwenhoek as a prologue. Then, in 1843, Ludwick Fleck decisively paid homage to Leeuwenhoek’s work.58 Other reasons helped to place the focus on Leeuwenhoek. Ehrenberg claimed to have adopted his theory of the organisation of infusoria thought to be as complex as that of the mammalia, and curiously established

Leeuwenhoek as a symbol of his quest for a reform of the classification of infusoria. These different uses of Leeuwenhoek contributed the changing course of his place in history, feeding a mythology that was at times patriotic and usually served the interests of the young and newly established societies of microscopy, as well as those of individuals scholars. Microscopy could eventually pretend to be on the same scientific stage as astronomy or physics, displaying the instrument, the fetishised predecessors and all the pedigree of their 150 year-old roots. However, the hero was not Müller, who had not been previously heroicised, but considered by his contemporaries the unifier of the field of microscopical observations. Ehrenberg likely had a good reason to prize the work of Leeuwenhoek, because his own classification was based on what he thought was the internal organisation of infusoria --the famous “hundred stomachs”.59 And this new classification, proposed around 1835, supposedly consistent with Leeuwenhoek’s ideas, had overthrown that of

5 6 Harting 1942/1839, 35. 5 7 Harting 1942/1839, 35, 37, 39, 41. 5 8 Fleck 1843. 5 9 According to Ehrenberg, all animals possess a complete system of organs (Jahn 1971, 290-291). - 375 -

Müller, which was grounded on morphological and physiological characteristics updated by the time of Ehrenberg.

The sacrifice of the Müllerian classification could be fulfilled by inventing alongside it, the discovery of a new scientific “father”.

This was associated with a related murder of the father, of the real creator of systematical microscopy, Otto-Friedrich Müller, who had been for over sixty years considered the founder of the classification of infusoria, if not the “father”. Ehrenberg was, however, successful in his morphological descriptions, thanks to achromatic and standardised instruments, but he also publicised his system as an update to that of Müller’s. Twenty years later, in

1858, the biologists Edouard Claparède and Lachmann in their treatise on infusoria acknowledged that “one can not recognise the species of Müller with certainty. (..). Generally speaking it is impossible to look back with certitude before Ehrenberg”. would sound odd to many “historians of microscopy” whose hobby has been to identify precisely what bacteria was observed by Leeuwenhoek. Müller was dropped from the scientific tradition of microscopy —because he could no longer be used as a valid reference for scientific purposes— and was consequently removed from the historical tradition, because the scientists established themselves as the only reference for the history of their discipline.

Moreover, Müller did not have the quality of a hero: there was nothing to rediscover in his ideas, he defended the transmutationist theory, he did not suffer any ostracism from the community as did Leeuwenhoek, his work did not conceal a previously ignored “revolutionary” discovery or instrument, and it

Claparède & Lachmann 1858-59, 6. - 376 - was not that of an isolated monkish, and uneducated bricoleur such as Leeuwenhoek, all characteristics that fitted well with the image of a hero. The historical gap between the death of Müller in

1784 and the diffusion of the achromatic microscope in the 1830s was probably too small for a heroisation, because his work had been extremely influential for the historical course of the microscopical practices, as acknowledged by everyone up until the

1830s. In other words, Müller was too much of a scientist, too well integrated into the scholarly network of the eighteenth-century to become a myth. To the contrary, Leeuwenhoek fitted precisely the type. And in the 1840s, the time was ripe for such an historical invention: the young microscopical societies were in need of social acknowledgment, and to embody microscopy in the general program of the Western science, of Newton and Harvey, was assuredly as much a temptation as the thought of becoming progressively normal.

However important the revival of Leeuwenhoek in the 1840s, this was not the only model determining the emergent history of microscopy. As shown by Dujardin and others, the nineteenth- century systematists retained the knowledge of the major eighteenth-century scholars. In Berlin, London and Paris, although sometimes scornfully perceived, Trembley, Gleichen, Müller and Spallanzani were considered to have given a certain orientation to microscopy and to the study of infusoria.Conversely, the

^ ^ Schmarda (1846) discussed the microscopical observations of Leeuwenhoek, Millier and Schrank; Lachmann (1855, 8-9) referred to the works of Müller, Rosel and Gleichen on the structure of Vorticella; for Carpenter (1862, 3) Trembley “marked a most important epoch in the history of microscopic enquiry”; Pennetier (1865, 8, 10-13) reported Spallanzani’s experiments against spontaneous generation and Trembley’s description of the fission in polyp. See also Dujardin 1841. - 377 - medical milieu always expressed ambiguity towards the microscope itself, up until the end of the century. If certain MD’s and scholars —Raspail for example— fought in favour of microscopy, it was not before bacteriology was institutionalised that the microscope was recognised as a useful tool for the clinical research. By the middle of the century, the two extant historical theses were opposed, distributed between the medical world and the systematicians. In their historical accounts, certain authors, part of the medical world, jumped from discussing Malpighi and Leeuwenhoek to Bichat and neglected the eighteenth-century,^2 while the zoologists usually demonstrated knowledge of the

Enlightenment’s microscopical research. But if the systematists seldom spoke of the scholars themselves (Müller and Bichorn for instance) the latter were still present in the memory of the names. Andrew Pritchard (1804-1882), one of the most committed microscopical zoologists of the century, whose History of infusoria went through four editions, used the systematical reports for microscopical beings invented by Müller, and used M. to refer to Müller’s systematical names in exactly the same was as L. referred to Linnaeus.It was a small sign showing that the heritage still existed. Perhaps such was the stake of the heuristic method —to live on through time— while contingent social processes in science do not leave systematical traces.

The scientists after 1840 changed the memory of microscopy through two strategy. First they focused on different individuals who had never been looked at from this angle up to that time.

6 2 Frey 1858, 2. 6 3 For instance see Pritchard 1861, 634: P. aurelia M.; 710: Brachionus cucullus M. This method was established during the course of the seventeenth-century. - 378 -

During the 1820s-1840s, Leeuwenhoek was indeed treated like a good microscopist and observer as were many others, but his works were sometimes also considered as an amusement. The new favor reserved for the Dutchman and eventually for other seventeenth-century “scientists” from the 1840s onwards helped to thoroughly leave aside the major microscopical scientific practices of the eighteenth-century, and favoured eliminating the linear historical model. Elaborated during the 1820s, this model drew a linear progression in two or three stages, but, thanks to the technological thesis and the search for the fathers, the mythology of the predecessors rose to predominance. It laid the foundations of a new attitude, perhaps not immediately shared by everyone, thus creating the basis for a mythology of the golden age of microscopy, passing over the eighteenth-century under the pressure of mere prejudice. The creation of a mythology of the father could fit very well with the complementary topic of amusement. Actually, a real father does not play, he works with tools as does the good scientist. While of course children play and use toys, which is exactly what microscopes were before the achromatic period, as defined by the historians of microscopy:

“The ingenious design of lens system by Joseph Jackson Lister published in 1830, (..) lifted the microscope from little more than a toy to a scientific instrument”.^4 Everyone can feel to what extent such a dogmatic judgment, taken for grant by historians and epistemologists, represents an obstacle to work on the

Enlightenment practices of the microscope.

64 Turner [1973], 19. 65 See Hacking 1983, 192; Mendelsohn 1992, 9. - 379 -

The focus mainly on Leeuwenhoek implies another consequence.

It reinforced the use of the technological thesis for historical purposes. Championing antispontaneism, Claparède and Lachmann included a historical sketch in their 1858 study on infusoria, in which the technological thesis allowed them to criticise the works of eighteenth-century scholars. Trembley and Müller’s work, amongst the work of other scholars, was judged “insufficient, due to the insufficiency of their microscopes”.W h e n the microscopists of the generation of Pasteur, Koch, Fol, etc., began their work, the historical myth of foundation as well as the technological thesis were ready enough to unite with the tremendous needs of father figures and heroes that characterise the period up to the end of the nineteenth-century. In the fourties, David Brewster wrote a treatise on Galileo and other “martyrs of science”, which was successful and several times republished. In tune with the construction of this historical myth, in the 1820- 1830s Brewster and Charles Babbage had also launched a campaign against the “decline of science in England”.^7 From this time a series of “precursors of” was instituted in papers written on Joblot, Leeuwenhoek, Hooke, Malpighi, etc., each of them being rediscovered by his respective compatriot.68 The death of

Leeuwenhoek in 1723 was taken as the starting point of a century of “absence of research”.69 On the other hand, the technological thesis had much fortune. It is mainly upon this category that the history of the microscope has been written. Some of the books are still outstanding sources of information and have served as the

6 6 Claparède & Lachmann 1858-59, 6. 6 7 See Brewster 1841. On Brewster’s campaign see Jackson 1994, 365. On the question of Brewster as a hagiographer, see Theerman 1985. 6 8 Fleck 1876, Konarski 1895. 6 9 Rooseboom 1956, 56. - 380 - basis for many later works7^ These books are at the origin of the tradition of the history of the preachromatic microscope carried on mostly by Dutch and British historians. But whatever the quality of the books, the technological thesis was nevertheless tacitly present everywhere, enforcing the normality of a consequent mythology. Writing the history of the microscope equals writing the history of microscopy, an equation challenged only recently by modern historians.^ i

Harting 1866, Hogg 1867, Van der Veelde 1926-1929, C&C 1932, Daumas 1953. Mazzolini (1997, 200-201) and Fournier (1991, 6) rejected the technological argument on the assumption that microscopes were even worse during the seventeenth-century. C h a p t e r 8

Co n c l u s io n

In my conclusion, I shall first summarise the chapters of the dissertation, reiterating the categories used to explain the fate of the practices of the microscope. This will be followed by a general reflection on the theoretical articulation among these categories and by an attempt to define the historical framework which emerges from this work, before turning to look briefly at the wide investigations which remain to be carried out.

8.1 Shaping the practices of the microscope

The sources discussed in this work converge to show the consensus among elites and various academies, between 1700 and 1740, in the study of small-scale though not invisible organisms.

Such a programme inspired a consensual selection of objects and phenomena which were to be studied, and fixed as well the limits of visible things. But, in contrast to the previous century in which almost no social consensus on “decent” limits of visibility was attained by the entire community of scholars, in the early eighteenth-century, this limit was clearly indicated by insects, seeds and small eggs. To establish the microscope as a routine instrument notably meant curing the conditions of sharing instrumental practices and literary technologies related to it. I have characterised the use of the latter strategy using the notion of the democratic microscope. The democratic microscope inspired a - 382 - writing technique which was elaborated upon in the academic milieu in the first forty years of the century, enabling the microscope to function as a routine tool. Far from tracking its origin from the metaphysicist’s cabinet, the representation of the microscope was affected positively or negatively according to the use of the democratic or the elitist microscope. Textual practices of these two styles of scholarly work determined the quality of the representation of the practitioner’s work more than of the microscope, a representation which was rather independent from the visibility of the instrument. A levelling followed the adoption of the democratic microscope throughout most of Europe during the first half of the eighteenth-century, which corresponded, for the first time, to a social calibration of the microscopical gaze. The microscope regressed to become an instrument enabling the magnification of small-scale and just visible objects, a condition which allowed everyone for easy access to this new regime of observation. For the first time the members of several communities agreed on the interpretation of the observation of microscopic things, and this agreement was embedded in a process of shared observation which validated this knowledge. The new social gaze, which had opted for avoiding entities too invisible was opposed in part to the previous regime of vision represented by certain seventeenth-century microscopists. To speak of a programme at this time thus means two things, research on an object, but also a form of sharing knowledge. Completing the Italian programme of identification of bodies and mechanisms for the transmission of species was the main direction taken by

European scholars, French especially, but also Dutch, Italian and German. It is notably in the Paris Académie royale des sciences that - 383 - a critical mass of scholars was able, under the reign of Fontenelle, to transform the social status of microscopical observations into a heuristic method. The democratic microscope enabled a heuristic method of investigation for naturalia, which attempted to create a “scientific plus-value” which could lead to discoveries. Several aspects should to be retained from this period: a tacit problem was the use of form for scientific discussion within a framework that did not leave the scholar room for criticising the form of communication adopted. Being both a critic of the elitist method and the elaboration of the shared conditions of reproducibility of the microscopical inquiry, the democratic microscope was the result of such a trend. Lead by the impulse of Reaumur, who was followed by a network of scholars —Breyn, Vallisneri, Duhamel,

Bourguet, Frish, Derham, etc.— the democratic microscope implied a combination of the microscopical with the systematical report. Invisible objects were identified as much too related to the elitist microscope. Insects and seeds were among the first shared microscopical objects, while animalcules, not being reduced to discussion in a systematical report, were left aside.

It is during the 1740s that major changes occurred. The 1742 public announcement by Reaumur and Lyonnet of new natural objects which presented astonishing phenomena, was received with skepticism by the scholarly world. The polyp had the effect of increasing the level of the standard for communication, and designating the laboratory as a new space for research. We saw how the relationship between the scholar and the laboratory was strengthened, when spending more time there. The textual form of communication was the report of microscopical experiments, whose design changed and took on the shape of experiments in - 384 - series, a process cultivated by Bonnet and Trembley. The microscopical-experimental report was improved during this time, and was established as a style in and of itself. Indeed, the issues tackled by these scholars were the economy of words and the synthesis of multiple experiments in which the microscope played a role, as shown by Bonnet’s tables of parthenogenesis and by

Trembley’s experiments on regeneration. Both organisms, the fly and the polyp, were at the same time new and old. The polyp was new —Leeuwenhoek and an anonymous discoverer were not influential for Trembley— but the categories of ambiguous organisms and regeneration were already known, while the green fly was a paradigmatic insect, but the experimental demonstration of parthenogenesis had never been successful. Both invited rupture and continuity with objects, methods and styles of the previous scientific realm. Additionally, the strategy of communication adopted by Trembley —sending polyps all over Europe— allowed the microscope to be considered publicly as a research tool, and the democratic microscope was strengthened by this success. This visibility fitted the take-off in research on and production of microscopes from the late 1730s onwards, and we saw that the specificity of British instrument manufacturers was related much more closely to strategies of visibility and advertisement for the microscope, while less visible connections of instrument manufacturers were still to be perceived on the continent.

Considering Trembley’s research along with the take-off in production and advertisement of microscopes provided a new object for microscopical research —the aquatic animalcules.

Democratic and elitist microscopes were but two modes, positive and negative, of the descriptive, displaying the procedure - 385 - and interpretive style of a text which shaped microscopical objects. Elitist microscope texts were rejected and democratic ones were accepted by scholars. Without being considered as explicit rules, the democratic microscope, up until the late 1740s, had worked within the scholarly sphere of communication, independent from other academic norms such as the avoidance of metaphysical and religious issues in a text. It is the confusion of these issues with microscopical matter of facts in the French milieu of the late 1740s by Needham and Buffon which forced scholars to write anonymous texts on a core topic to the microscopical inquiry —spontaneous generation. Mastering a literary technology to the detriment of experimental accuracy, as in Buffon’s work, certainly allowed for revitalisation of the debate on microscopical entities, as indeed occurred. But such a strategy also endangered the legitimacy of the microscopical report when considered as a form of shared knowledge. A strong discrepancy emerged between the final literary outcome and enabling for repetition, a kind of social test assessing the scientific value of a text. It is probably thanks to

Buffon that French scholars seldom improved upon zoology in the second half of the eighteenth-century. One consequence of this trend was that the Académie des sciences kept a good distance from the spontaneous generation issue, and from the study of animalcules. I believe this was not primarily because scholars were in favour or against spontaneism —many examples show that the scholarly world was actually divided on the issue— but because the subject could not be treated by playing the academic game of eliminating the metaphysical aspect. In other words, the materialist and metaphysical issues, erased from academic texts, had been reintroduced in the microscopical report, while in similar texts — - 386 - by Needham and Buffon— the systematical report was either absent or rejected. This appears to be the main reason for which the spontaneous generation, although discussed anonymously, was delocalised from France, and shifted to England, Germany and Italy.

This episode also demonstrates that Enlightenment Europe reacted as a unique and single system, in which ideas, practices, instruments and issues circulated, but were not treated the same way everywhere. Indeed, although certain rules and styles of communication regarded as valid in a certain location were not valid elsewhere, there was still a common European system that kept and discussed an issue as it moved from one place to another.

The period which follows, between 1750 and the 1760s, is characterised by attempts at establishing the practices of the microscope in England and Germany as a science with a value based on the instrument more than on the object studied. John Hill’s use of a microscope as the criteria for his new “kingdom”, Henry Baker’s connection with instrument-manufacturers, his widespread editorial activity and his emergence at the centre of a network of “gentlemen microscopists” are good indications of the

British attempts to create a science characterised by the employment of an instrument rather by the object studied. The microscope was in Britain much more a goal in itself, fetishised merchandise, and employed less as a routine research tool. Doomed to failure given the lack of standardisation of microscopes, and as well given the old rivalries at the Royal Society, similar attempts were nevertheless repeated, embodied in the much more erudite but less well advertised tradition of

Nuremberg science. Ledermiiller promoted the study of microscopical objects as a discipline and Gleichen attempted to - 387 - establish a society for the study of microscopical animalcules in the 1770s. From the 1760s onwards, the democratic microscope took on a new shape while following the trend for quantification and standardisation related to the industrial revolution. Indeed, expressing the magnification used for an observation became a part of the job of scholars who employed the microscope. An increase in the standards for rhetorical precision corresponded to augmented accuracy in the making of microscopes, due both to the first “standardisation” of functions for the material used — brass, wood and glass— as well as to the dependency of microscope manufacturing on other advances in instrument making.

The study of preexistence and the search for the material of heredity of species, both eggs and spermatic animalcules, was an important programme for Enlightenment natural sciences. A European tradition, born in Italy amongst the quarrels of the late Aristotelians and the partisans of the new science, it spread throughout Europe, strengthened in the Académie des sciences, which continued to use the microscope as a research tool. Other research programmes existed for the microscope during the Enlightenment: research on instruments, regeneration, the embryo, the study of cryptogam, micro-anatomy, microscopical agronomy, especially phytopathology, and subtle anatomy. The study of animalcules was defined as a programme in the works of Hill,

Linnaeus, Pallas, and arrived to initial maturity with Müller. Such a programme had meaning only when the microscope functioned as a normal research tool. As we saw, Müller situated himself in a tradition other than the natural experimental programme. His main concern was to establish the systematical report for microscopical animalcules as a literary and socio-cognitive tool, in - 388 - order to supply the community with a solution for precisely determining microscopic animalcules.

8.2 Historicist categories: systems of practices and microscopical report

I believe this work provides evidence that what has up until now been called the “decline of microscopy”, and for which historians have looked for the best explanation, i is both a historical illusion and a sociological badge identifying the genus “historian of microscopy”. Chapter 2 has established that the only noticeable decline in the use of the microscope was in the Royal Society, while the Académie des sciences did not endure any particular decline, due to the routine status the microscope had in Paris, as a tool used for research since the end of the seventeenth-century.

Furthermore, I argue that in the “decline of microscopy” what is problematic is not the decline, which can be estimated and almost quantified. The problem is microscopy. I have not found a single eighteenth-century source speaking either of “microscopy” or of the “decline of microscopy”. This clearly means that microscopy is, like “biology” and “vitalism”, one of these words coined in the first half of the nineteenth-century which still allow anachronistic categories to pervade historical inquiry bearing the stamp of routine work.2 “Microscopy” was a creation related to the emergence of the standardised achromatic microscope, and figured as the heart of the identity of new microscopists. But there

ISee Belloni 1961, Mazzolini 1997, Fournier 1991, Nicolson 1935. Zpor criticisms of the term biology, see Jardine 2000, 261-262; Gasking 1967, Klein 1954. On vitalism, see Rey 1997, 19-23. - 389 - is no similar situation in the eighteenth-century. Indeed the main problem I dealt with in this work was understanding on what kind of subject I was working. On a discipline? On an instrument? How does one approach the web of short mentions of the microscope in hundreds of eighteenth-century sources, while it is precisely this kind of mention that has been purposefully rejected from accounts of historians of microscopy.^ Still great oaks from little acorns grow, and indeed to understand the status of using the microscope in the eighteenth-century implies a shift in the categories used. There was no microscopy as such before the 1830s, but people used the microscope to perform research, such that the object progressively defined in my work became a system of practices. However, this system of practices, which used the microscope was not a discipline with its own name such as chemistry or botany, and neither was it probably during the seventeenth-century. The practices crossed disciplines, applying themselves to many naturalistic disciplines, and to crafts, including drawing and instrument-making. The connection of the microscope and the laboratory was given a strong impulse by Reaumur with his research on minute-scale objects, by Trembley who established new standards for experimenting in series and oriented microscopy towards the aquatic minute organisms, and by

Spallanzani and Müller who definitively linked the microscope to aquatic invisible organisms. None of these authors spoke of microscopy, a term which has always been part of the Victorian mythology of science, in erecting the microscope as a goal in itself rather than a means for the research. The whole logic of the “history of microscopy” has been determined by these simplistic

^Fournier 1991, 16, 196. - 390 - categories, and it is not a surprise that the only place where the decline of “microscopy” as a decline in production can be established is in Britain.

Rethinking the history of the practices of the microscope obliges us to shift categories and, notably, to encompass the role of the forms of communication. A number of examples analysed in my work show to what extent microscopical investigation was in close and constant interaction with the forms of communication. The rejection of parts of Leeuwenhoek’s work was due to his use of the elitist microscope; Joblot’s work can be understood in part because he did not belong to the Académie des sciences] Linnaeus came to change the rules of his naturalistic writing in order to account for microscopical animalcules; the success of the polyp is, in a large part, due to Trembley’s strategy of generosity; the writing style of Needham and the authoritarianism of Buffon forced many French authors to hide themselves in anonymity. Eventually Müller enabled a community to establish itself around a shared object described in the same way, thanks to the systematical report for microscopical objects.

Managing authority in the forms of the communication adopted enables now the specificity of the microscopical report in comparison to the experimental and the systematical report to be outlined. The difference between the microscopical and the experimental report relates to three factors: first, the supremacy of the narrative process relates to the social isolation of the microscopical act. With the traditional microscope, there is no collective visual experiment. Second, there is a delay of the techniques of microscopical iconography over microscopical - 391 - narration. Working on the assumption that only one individual has access to the microscopical spectacle at any given moment, the microscopists who had a vantage point were those who were able to draw and to elaborate a morphological narration. Not only did microscopical iconography meet the text, being complementary to the narration, but it contributed to the heuristical process because it favoured, thanks to its realism, the “replication of the object”.

Microscopical iconography was directed towards the object, and this focus gave the microscopical report a centre which organised the text. Thirdly, the difference between the microscopical and the experimental report takes on its full significance when one considers the “necessity”, for the microscopical report, as completed by the “systematical report,” a literary technology belonging to the tradition of Latin natural history. When insects supplied the first shared microscopical objects, they were at once observed with the microscope, but also named and classified. Similarly, Trembley needed the help of the major entomologist of the day, Reaumur, to launch the polyp with a name and a suitable place in nature. Goeze and Müller also used the microscopical report, but with species —not specimens any more— determined systematically. The appeal of nomenclature and classification —the systematical report— for achieving a microscopical report is so forcefully necessary that it has become among the main hobbies of the so-called historians of microscopy, who, three-hundred years later, make determinations of the “species” observed by Leeuwenhoek. Still, in doing this, they are not making history, but filling a “hole” opened up by the microscopical report, while the systematical report appears to be lacking in their eyes. To fill this hole, they use a literary technique invented neither in the - 392 - seventeenth nor in the nineteenth-century, but in the eighteenth- century. The mystery of Enlightenment practices of the microscope is perhaps that, in order to remove its relation to authority, or better, in order to balance the microscopical report so as to reduce the weight of arbitrary authority, one had to tackle the problem represented by the systematical report for microscopical objects. It appears moreover that, in the case of Needham and Buffon, it is also because of the lack of systematical reporting in their work that authority could reemerge. If such were the case, one could identify a “law” which relates to a set of issues which, once addressed and solved, transforms itself into a structure engendering a new necessity that was absent before. Once a solution is selected, it becomes thus a good solution, closing the doors to other solutions. It is this conjunction of the microscopical report and the systematical report, which, once shared by a community, provided the conditions of possibility for the emergence of a heuristical discipline using the microscope in natural sciences. This “law” was dependent on the status of the microscopical object and on the expansion of the scholarly community. We saw Reaumur at the head of the trend of unifying the microscopical and the systematical report before the 1740s, for insects and seeds. Trembley did the same —he considered polyps to be a genus— but shortly after a new dispute which opposed the democratic versus the elitist microscope emerged. However, I do not consider this law as orienting the development of preachromatic practices of the microscope towards any sort of goal, because it became a law and expressed its necessity only after the social model of communication it carried became irreplaceable. Still, Müller’s invention of microscopical species - 393 - influenced the reinterpretation of previous specimens observed.

Notably, all the animalcules observed by Leeuwenhoek, Joblot,

Baker and others were considered to be species from the 1770s onwards. It was only when the microscopical and the systematical report converged on an invisible microscopic object in 1773, that the categories of democratic versus elitist microscope became, in a way, obsolete, and the process of discovery, from its contingent social basis, opened up a space in which heuristic processes could get off the ground. A world with the achromatic microscope but without Müller’s solution would probably have never left the door open to cellular theory.

This work has shown that the experimental report was not a concept enough adapted to understanding the particular problems of natural sciences and of the practices of the microscope during the Enlightenment. Experimental philosophy and the tradition of the Latin natural history each carry with them particular forms of communication. Their research object, their method of working and of writing, the style of their social sharing of knowledge are different. Everything shows that there are here two types of rationality which determined the attitude of the scholarly elite towards the world. Studying their interaction would, in the eighteenth-century, reveal another image of science during the

Enlightenment. By contrast, physics did not need a logic of classification and denomination, while a great deal of natural history has been defined through this kind of logic. Organisms are not phenomena. Both traditions however shared a similar scheme, which was in allowing the others to replicate their object of communication. Physics, experimental natural sciences and the - 394 - experimental report mainly replicated procedures, while natural history, especially Latin, reproduced organisms.

8.3 Toward a restitutive history

In contrast to the minor importance ascribed to Müller by classical historiography, we are now forced to admit that without

Müller or without someone who carried out similar work, baptising animalcules and transforming them into species, the field of not only protozoology, but also bacteriology would probably never have come into existence. Müller’s work, as well as the work of Linnaeus, do not relate to positivistic results —I do not speak of the classification systems which are always subject to new improvements— but they touch on the social and cognitive conditions of the possibility of scientific knowledge and its circulation. Indeed, literary, social and instrumental technologies are dealt with not only in the realm of the laboratory, as emerge from the discussion among social historians of science, but they are managed also by systematicists, especially of the Latin tradition. The matter of fact sought by experimental science, and the experimental report discussed by historians are equivalent to organism and the systematic reports on objects and systems for the Latin tradition. Another enlightenment shared problem was in finding an economical way to reproduce knowledge: Trembley and

Bonnet tackled economy in the microscopical report, while

Linnaeus and especially Müller tackled a similar problem, but for microscopical organisms, with binomial nomenclature. But, once the Linnaean substructure allowing non-ambiguous communication was institutionalised for the reproduction of knowledge. - 395 - establishing these conditions of possibility, they were not any more accessible to scientific knowledge, precisely because they enabled naturalistic knowledge to be exchanged with less ambiguity. In relation to this general trend is the conception of why science changed radically between 1780 and 1820, to the point that an enormous part of eighteenth-century production appeared entirely old-fashioned and unusable, apart from a few exceptions. The establishment of a presentist history, notably of Cuvier in the 1840s, institutionalised an interpretation of historical knowledge as being a direct function of the positive result obtained, the outcome considered scientifically valid. By encouraging a positivistic history, this trend harmed the previous century because it eliminated from explanation almost everything except the outcome. We saw the historians of microscopy working in a similar way, while during the eighteenth-century, language and practices, not only outcomes, were essential elements to the scholarly world. At the same time, Kantian philosophy was beginning to problematise subjective conditions of possibility of the knowledge. Studying the conditions of possibility became the object of philosophy, a trend neatly separated from scientific investigation.

Several examples in my work have shown that Shapin and

Schaffer’s model of winner and loser does not work for the history of the practices of the microscope. ^ Baker was undoubtedly a leader in microscopy in the context of the Royal Society, acknowledged by it, and with a European reputation, etc. Yet little remained of his. The mythology of Baker as a creative investigator

4S&S 1985, 342: “He who has the most, and the most powerful, allies win”. - 396 - only persisted in the mind of certain contemporary old-fashioned biologists and microscopists. We need to know the factors that distinguish heuristic from social knowledge. I believe that he who finds the most heuristic solutions, finds the key to close the door from the inside, and will influence the others more. What is a heuristic solution? It is perhaps the capacity to consider knowledge as a goal, and not as a means, and to take into consideration especially the surplus-value of shared knowledge. Müller was badgered a loser during the nineteenth-century; still his work was probably the most influential on almost any future microscopical investigation. Winner and loser does not deal with conditions of possibility and heuristic solutions.

In comparison to an intellectual or social history of science, I would not hesitate to qualify what I have attempted to do in this work as an attempt to escape from the presentist approach still active in these trends. The social history of science answers to social issues that emerge from contemporary tensions, it mirrors the time, just as intellectual history mirrored the time when the positivist credo was viewed as the valid truth. The study of the forms of communication shall of course not pretend to escape from presentism. However, behind the study of the forms of communication, the approach I have adopted consists mainly in a restitutive history, functioning like a translation which tries to catch all the nuances of the original story. This is a multidimensional history. When taking into account the multiple problems related to the practices of the microscope which the eighteenth-century scholars faced, one should avoid neglecting certain aspects which would appear as minor, but can still conceal a major importance. The problematic of the restitutive history is to - 397 - identify the intentionality of the projects in which the actors of a particular period participated.

For the restitutive history, the study of social systems, forms of communication, instrumental and institutional practices, laboratory procedures, forms of writing, economic, political, ethical and legal practices in science, conceptual and theoretical constructions as well as the deconstruction of historiographical categories, are all categories which have the same a priori value, and never exclude each other. They form in fact many historical methods, and are not a credo to be opposed to another historical school. It is the use of a single and isolated method which is subsumed by experimental regress, as applied to history. ^ Indeed, employing a particular method allows for self-verification of the tacit hypotheses on which it is based. In the field of human sciences, these tacit hypotheses were called epistemological filters by R. Droz. They are categorial blinders which a researcher wears without being aware of them, and which allow for the elimination of objects and issues that would not help to verify the tacit hypotheses introduced by the use of the method itself.^ The negative goal of restitutive history is the criticism and self- criticism of epistemological filters, their transformation into explicit hypotheses, their relation to a particular method, and their balance thanks to the use of other methods. Of course this is a challenge to be taken up by the historian. For the historian of sciences, the positive goal of restitutive history is thus the study of novelty and its influence on the scientific, technological and social

^Collins 1985, 84 has shown that what makes an instrument function is that it fulfills the expectations of the scientist who uses it. ^Droz 1984. - 398 - realms. The belief is mainly that there exist minor solutions to certain problems which have an enormous impact on the scientific realm: Müller solved one of them. Of course this also implies “to display the conventions and the craft”,”7 but not all conventions have the same efficiency, and I tried to display certain historical areas where conventions were changed into obligations, thus later appearing as necessary.

As a final conclusion, although my work opened more avenues than it can attempt to cover, I would like to emphasise several gaps that demand more investigation. Notably, certain geographical areas such as Spain, Austria and Russia could not be included in the inquiry. The work lacks an historical mapping of European developments in the practices of the microscope which could allow for a better understanding of the respective importance of various European cities engaged into microscopical activities. Many other case studies should be conducted in order to ascertain in which disciplines the microscope was employed as a routine tool. Certain fascinating cases were only hinted at. The Italian network of microscopical experimentalists could not be discussed, for lack of space. Microscopical drawing and iconography, gender issues and continental instrument makers remain an almost untouched domain. Studying the impact of the microscope in the arts and crafts would reveal other unexplored systems of practices. We know very little regarding the relationship between microscopical activities and the experimental and Latin traditions. How did the relationship between these two discipline evolve? What would be the importance of this evolution on the formation of biological

7S&S 1985, 18. - 399 - sciences at the beginning of the nineteenth-century? What is implied in the difference between social and heuristical construction of knowledge? All these questions imply a number of issues pointing towards new stories. - 400 -

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Abbreviations Used for Journals and Collections in the List of Primary Sources^

Abh. Ak. Wiss. Berlin Berlin 1788-1807 [1788] Sammlungen der Deutsches Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften Abh. Ak. Wiss. München Munich 1763-1776 [1768] Abhandlungen der Churfurstlich-Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften Abh. Bohm. Ges. Frag 1785- 1789 [1786] Abhandlungen der Koniglischen Bohmischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften Abh. Nat. Ges. Danzig Danzig 1747-1756 [1747-1754] Versuche und Abhandlungen der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Danzig Abh. Nat. Ges. Zurich Zurich 1761-1766 [1761] Abhandlungen der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Zurich Abh. Schwed. Ak. Wiss. Leipzig 1749-1783 [1753-76] Abhandlungen der Koniglischen Schwedischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Acta Erud. Leipzig 1682-1734 [1731-1733] Acta Eruditorum Lipsiensia Acta Phys. Med. Nürnberg 1727-1754 [1727-1742] Acta Physico Medica Academiae Caesareae Naturae Curiosorum Amoen. Ac. Upsaal 1749-1790 [1745-1767] Amoenitates Academicae Ann. Mus. Hist. Nat. Paris 1802-1813 [1812] Annales du Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle de Paris Ann. Sc. Nat. Paris 1824-1833 [1824] Annales des Sciences Naturelles Ann. Sc. Nat. (Zool.) Paris 1834-1843 [1835] Annales des Sciences Naturelles 2ème série (Zoologie) Besch. Ges. Nat. Fr. Berlin 1775-1779 [1775-1779] Beschaftigung der Berlinischen Gesellschaft Naturforschender Freunden Bibl. Brit. La Haye 1733-1747 [1736-1743] Bibliothèque Britannique Bibl. Fr. La Haye 1729-1749 [1731-1742] Bibliothèque Françoise Bibl. Rais. Amsterdam 1728-1753 [1742-1747] Bibliothèque Raisonnée des Ouvrages des Savants Comm. Litt. Nürnberg 1731-1745 [1731-1733] Commercium Litterarium ad Rei Medicae et Scientiae Naturalis Incrementum Institutum Comm. Reb. Gest. Sc. Med. Leipzig 1752-1806 [1758-1775] Commentarii de Rebus in Scientia Naturali et Medicina Gestis C.R. Ac. Sc. Paris Paris 1835-1847 [1837] Compte-Rendus Hebdomadaires de TAcadémie des Sciences de Paris Encyclopédie 1777-1778

^The first two dates indicate the years of publication of the journal. The dates in bracket indicate the span of the issues cited in the sources. 402 -

Diderot, Denis & d’Alembert, Jean le Rond, Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire des sciences des arts et des métiers, Paris, Briasson. Frank. Samml. Nürnberg 1756-1768 [1759] Frànkische Sammlungen von Anmerkungen ans der Naturlehre, Arzneygelahrtheit und Oeconomie Gall. Min. Venezia 1697-1717 [1697-1704] Galleria di Minerva Giorn. Lett. Venezia 1710- [1736] Giornale del Letterati d’italia Giorn. Stor. Raz. Med. Venezia 1783-1801 [1784-1791] Giornale per servire alla storia razionale délia medicina del nostro secolo Gott. Gel. Anzeig. Gottingen 1739-1892 [1779] Gôttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen Hamb. Mag. Leipzig, Hamburg 1747-1763 [1751-1754] Hamburgisches Magazin Hann. Mag. Hannover 1763-1790 [1772] Hannoverisches Magazin HASP Paris 1701-1786 [1702-1742] Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences de Paris Intr. Obs. Phys. Paris 1771-1772 [1771] Introduction aux Observations sur la Physique, les Arts et l’Histoire Naturelle Journ. Brit. London 1751-1757 [1752-1753] Journal Britannique Journ. Econ. Paris 1751-1772 [1751-1761] Journal Economique Journ. Etr. Paris 1754-1762 [1754-1756] Journal Etranger Journ. Sav. Paris 1665- [1704-1707] Journal des Sçavants Journ. Trévoux Trévoux 1701-1767 [1701-1755] Mémoires pour servir à l’Histoire des Sciences et des Arts, ou Journal de Trévoux Journ. Deutschland Frankfurt 1784-1792 [1786] Journal von und fur Deutschland Litt. Vôlk. Dessau, Leipzig 1782-1786 [1785] Litteratur und Volkerkunde, Mag. Neu. Phys. Nat. Gotha 1781-1799 [1791] Magazin fur das Neueste aus der Physik und Naturgeschichte M.A.R.S. Paris 1666-1699 [1678-1693] Mémoires de l’Académie Royale des Sciences de Paris (published in 1727-1733) MASP Paris 1701-1793 [1702-1767] Mémoires de l’Académie Royale des Sciences de Paris Mél. Soc. Turin Torino 1754-1772 [1766-1770] Mélanges de Philosophie et de Mathématiques de la Société Royale de Turin Mem. Acc. Siena Siena 1761-1781 [1763] Memorie dell’Accademia di Siena detta dei Fisiocritici Mem. Soc. Col. Firenze Firenze 1747-1752 [1747] Memorie della Società Colombina di Firenze Mem. Soc. Ital. Sc. Modena 1799-1846 [1818] Memorie di fisica délia Società Italiana delle Scienze Mem. Soc. Verona Verona 1778-1855 [1784] Memorie della Società Italiana di Verona Mém. Ac. Metz Metz [1876] Mémoires de l’Académie de Metz Mém. Litt. GB. La Haye 1720-1724 [1723] Mémoires Littéraires de la Grande-Bretagne Mém. Soc. Bar-le-Duc Bar-le Duc 1895 Mémoires de la Société des Lettres, Sciences et Arts de Bar-le-Duc Mém. SPHN Genève 1821- [1821] - 403 -

Mémoires de la Société de physique et d’histoire naturelle de Genève N. Abh. Ak. Wiss. München Munich 1778-1785 [1780] Neue philosophische Abhandlungen der Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften N. Abh. Nat. Ges. Danzig Danzig 1778 [1778] Neue Sammlung von Versuche und Abhandlungen der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Danzig N. Abh. Schwed. Ak. Wiss. Leipzig 1784-1792 [1784-1792] Neue Abhandlungen der Koniglischen Schwedischen Akademie der W issenschaften N. Act. Phys. Med. Nürnberg 1757-1791 [1791] Nova Acta Physico-Medica Academiae Caesareae Naturae Curiosorum N. Hamb. Mag. Hamburg 1767-1781 [1781] Neue Hamburgisches Magazin Nat. Ver. Maat. Wet. Haarlem 1799-1839 [1799] Natuurkundige Verhandelingen, Bataafsche Maatschappy der Wetenschappen Naturforscher Halle 1774-1804 [1775-1793] Der Naturforscher, eine physikalische Wochenschrift O œ 1779-1783 Bonnet, Charles. Collection Complète des Oeuvres de Charles Bonnet, Neuchâtel, Fauche (ed. in 8°), t. 1-18. Obs. Phys. Paris 1773-1826 [1775-1790] Observations sur la Physique, les Arts et l’Histoire Naturelle ou Journal de Physique Opusc. Sc. Calogerà Venezia 1728-1757 [1747] Raccolta d’Opuscoli Scientifici di Calogerà Opusc. Sc. Milano 1778-1804 [1796] Opuscoli scelti sulle Scienze e sulle Arti Phil. Trans. London 1666- [1691-1777] Philosophical Transactions Sav. Etr. Paris 1750-1789 [1760-1763] Mémoires des Savants Etrangers Sc. Op. Int. Milano 1775-1777 [1775] Scelta d’Opuscoli Interessanti Techn. Mag. Heidelberg 1790-1794 [1792] Technologisches Magazin

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Abbreviations Used for Journals in the List of Secondary Sources

Actas Ciba Actas Ciba Arch. Anat. Hist. Embr. Archives d’Anatomie, d’Histologie et d’Embryologie Arch. Sc. Genève Archives des Sciences Genève A rch ie f A r c h ie f Biography B io g ra p h y Biol. Med. Biologie médicale BJHS British Journal for the History of Science Bull. Hist. Med. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Bull. Sci. Instr. Soc. Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society Cahiers Haut-Marnais Les Cahiers Haut-Marnais Centaurus C e n ta u ru s Ciba Zeitschrift Ciba Zeitschrift Clio Medica Clio Medica Configurations Configurations Contributi C o n trib u ti Dix-Huit. Siècle Dix-Huitième Siècle Episteme E p istem e Forsch. Gesch. Opt. Forschungen zur Geschichte der Optik French Hist. French History Hist. Phil. Life Sci. History and Philosophy of Life Science Hist. Sc. History of Science Isis Isis Janus J a n u s JHB Journal for the History of Biology 425 -

Journ. Hist. Astr. Journal for the History of Astronomy Journ. Micr. Journal of Microscopy Journ. Hist. Ideas Journal of the History of Ideas Journ. Hist. Med. Journal of the History of Medicine Journ. Prot. Journal of Protozoology Journ. Roy. Micr. Soc. Journal of the Royal Microscopical Society Lessing Yearb. Lessing Yearbook Med. Biol. 111. Medical and Biological Illustration Med. Hist. Medical History Mikrokosmos Mikrokosmos Nuncius Nuncius Annali di Storia della Scienza Osiris O siris Parassitologia Parassitologia Past Pres. Past Present Persp. Sc. Perspectives on Sciences Physis Physis Rivista di Storia della Scienza Representations Representations Riv. Filos. Rivista di Filosofia Rev. Hist. Sci. Revue d’Histoire des Sciences Riv. Stor. Sc. Rivista di Storia della Scienza Sev. Cent. Fr. Stud. Seventeenth-Century French Studies SIC Science in Context STP Sciences et Techniques en Perspectives 2è série Smith Coll. Smith Collection of Studies in Modern Language SSS Social Studies of Science SHPS Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Tractrix T ra c trix Univ er sum Universum - Natur und Technik

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Animalcules of the infusions are, for eighteenth-century culture, any small-scale or microscopic creature that breeds into an infusion made of vegetable or animal substances left uncovered during several days. Animalcules was used, during the whole eighteenth-century, especially by non trained naturalists, to design any small-scale and microscopic insect and worm. Annelids is any segmented worm of the phylum Annelida. Castoreum or castor is a substance secreted by glands in the groin of the beaver. Character In the Latin natural history tradition, it refers to a morphological mark or a set of marks that allows to differentiate a species, a genus, an order and a class. They are respectively called specific, generic, order and classic character. Chromatic aberration is characterised by prismatic coloring at the edges of the optical image and color distortion within it. Compound microscope or double microscope is any microscope with at least two lenses, an ocular and an objective. Description In the Latin natural history tradition, the descriptio generis is a Latin sentence of not more than ten words, indicating the general shape of a creature, and it must be placed just under the name of the genus. Diagnostic name designates a method of naming an organisms by which the name recalls certain of the characters of the organism. Eels of vinegar or anguillulae are microscopic worms that breed into vinegar left open. Fission is the division of an organism into new organisms as a process of reproduction. Gemmation is a method of reproduction by gemmae, or bud. Genus is, in the Latin tradition, a collection of species, grouped according to their similarities. Kermes is a scale insect which lives on small oaks of the Mediterranean region. It is also a red dye formerly prepared from the dried bodies of female Kermes. Latin natural history tradition is the tradition of natural history that took its roots in the Renaissance, and its first shape in the seventeenth-century. Containing three main fields (botany, zoology, mineralogy), Latin was its major language. Limb is the graduated edge of an astronomical instrument (quadrant). Lorica is a protective sheath secreted by certain protists. Magnification or pow er is the magnifying capacity of a microscope expressed as the ratio of the diameter of the image to the diameter of the object. Microscope à liqueur refers to several types of microscope (similar to the Wilson, the Huygens types) used especially to observe the animalcules o f the infusions. Liqueur was, in the pre-1750 period, the French term used for an infusion. N aiad is an aquatic nymph. Naturalia is any object not created by human beings, while artificialia refers to any objects which the human created. Renaissance and ancien régime collectors and naturalists used to classify objects into naturalia and artificialia. Noctiluca is a genus of the dinoflagellate capable of producing light when in group, and which breed in sea-water. Nostoc is a freshwater blue-green algae, which occurs in jellilyke colonies. Polyparies is the common supporting structure of a colony of polyps. Resolving power is the ability of an optical device to produce separate images of close objects. It is now measured in millionths of millimetres. Reviviscence is a property of certain desiccated rotifers and animalcules to recover their motion when soaked. Rotifer is a microscopic worms, having one or more rings of cilia on the anterior end. It is nowadays the name for a class that includes 1500 species. Simple microscope is any mounted lens that can reach strong magnification. Species is a group of specimens having certain common morphological characteristics.

^Certain definitions were taken from the Random House Unabridged Dictionary. Spermatic animalcules is the name given by seventeenth and eighteenth-century authors to design spermatozoids. Spherical aberration is the variation in focal length of a lens from center to edge, due to its spherical shape. Spherule is a small sphere of glass, used as a magnifying lens. Spirit o f system refers to a theory-guided work. To eighteenth-century scholars, it opposes to spirit o f observation. Subordination of characters is using a hierarchy to classify the characters; the most general character, either morphological or physiological, designs the type of the class. System of sources I use the term system of sources to indicate the object of my methodology, working with a large numbers of primary sources interrelated each other in order to reconstruct a topic. Such interrelation is manifested by similarities (in ideas, practices, styles, forms) as well as “interquotation”. Vernier is a movable, graduated scale running parallel to a fixed scale of an instrument. Volvox is a colonia of freshwater algae forming a sphere of flagellated cells. Zoophyte is any invertebrate animal resembling a plant. In the eighteenth-century, it is synonymous with plant-animal, a creatures considered to be in-between vegetables and animals.