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Europe and the Microscope in the Enlightenment

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Europe and the Microscope in the Enlightenment Eu r o p e a n d t h e M ic r o sc o pe in t h e Enlightenment by 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 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest U643645 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 A bstract 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.
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