The Quest for the Invisible: Microscopy in the Enlightenment

Front Cover
Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2009 - 315 pages
Presents an account of the state of research into microscopy of the eighteenth century. This book connects changes in instrument design to an account of microscopical research during the eighteenth century and the rich social networks of communication that grew during this period.

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Contents

Reasons for a New Historiography
1
The Definition of Good Microscopical Objects 16801740
11
Production and Visibility of Microscopes in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century
13
The Study of Animalcules at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century
33
Insects Hermaphrodites and Ambiguity
57
The Break with the Past 17401760s
75
Towards Marketing Strategies for the Microscope in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century
77
Abraham Trembley the Polyp and New Directions for Microscopical Research
103
The Disputes over Authority and Microscopical Observations
125
Infusoria and Microscopical Experiments The True Invisible Objects 1760s1800s
147
The Quantifying Spirit in Microscopical Research and Keeping Up with Invisible Objects
149
The Emergence of the Systematics of Infusoria
177
From Spontaneous Generation to the Limits of Life The Microscopical Experimentalist Research from the 1760s to 1800
217
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About the author (2009)

Marc J. Ratcliff is based at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. In 2005 he won the History of Science Society Derek Price/Rod Webster Award for a paper on Abraham Trembley published in ISIS. He is currently working on twentieth-century psychology.

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