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ABSTRACT
The invisible object, in the eighteenth century, is not an evidence. It is the result of textual and semantic learning. Which concrete strategies are used to construct and depict objects out of sight? How do we make them a cognitive reality acceptable to a scientific community? This paper first highlights the conditions for the emergence of a field of microscopic knowledge and its epistemological consequences. Then we consider the microscopic gaze in terms of learning, situated between the act of observation as such and discursive practices. We conclude by studying a concrete case of “negotiation of the invisible” in a correspondence between Carl Linnaeus and John Ellis concerning corpuscles observed in mushroom infusions.
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Notes
1 Hooke, Micrographia.
2 van Leeuwenhoek, “Observations”.
3 Other important works based on the microscope were published in theses years, e.g. Malpighi, De pulmonibus (1661); Malpighi, De formatione pulli (1673); Swammerdam, Histoire générale des insectes (1682).
4 See Rooseboom, Microscopium, 7; Ruestow, The Microscope, 2.
5 There are numerous publications about the history of microscope. Some of the main ones are: Clay and Court, The History of the Microscope; Ford, Lens; La Berge, “History of Science”; Lüthy, “Atomism”; Rooseboom, Microscopium; Rooseboom, “The History of the Microscope”.
6 Ratcliff, The Quest for the Invisible; Id. The Trembley Effect. According to Ratcliff, the “Trembley Effect” would mark the shift of attention to aquatic microorganisms.
7 In the twelfth edition of Systema naturae, the last genus on the animal scale is called CHAOS. Grouping together five species, as well as several observations of unidentified animalcules, this space obviously constitutes a new field of investigation. See Vuillemin, “Aux confins de la nature”.
8 Müller, Vermium terrestrium and fluviatilium.
9 Fournier, The Fabric of Life.
10 Ratcliff, The Quest, 6, 147.
11 Métraux, “Über virtual Details”, 226sq.
12 Ratcliff, “Maîtriser l’expérience du texte”; Ratcliff, Genèse d’une découverte, 64–70; Roe, “John Turberville Needham”; Vuillemin, “La fabrique d’une evidence”.
13 Müller, Vermium terrestrium and fluviatilium.
14 Daston and Galison, Objectivity, chaps 1 & 2.
15 Lamarck, Recherches, 88.
16 Métraux, “Der Todesreige”. For a comprehensive historical approach to the evolution of “biology” in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see the following classic works: Coleman, Biology in the Nineteenth Century; Duchesneau, Genèse de la théorie cellulaire; Jacob, La logique du vivant; Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought; Pichot, Expliquer la vie.
17 See Bernardi, Le metafisiche dell'embrione; Métraux, “Über virtuelle Details”; Vuillemin and Dueck, Entre l'oeil et le monde.
18 Rheinberger, “Invisible Architectures”, 121.
19 The principle of Linnaean determination is to eliminate as far as possible any connotative dimension to scientific language. The mention of genus and species is followed by an extremely brief definition, which targets a few aspects that allow the object to be identified more specifically, excluding all criteria that might vary or involve the subjectivity of the observer. On this question of nomenclature, see Barsanti et al., “Linné et l’histoire naturelle”; Müller-Wille, “Collection and collation”; Stearn, “The background of Linnaeus”; Vuillemin, Les beautés de la nature, 57–72.
20 Métraux, “Über virtual Details”; Ratcliff, “Wonders, Logic, and Microscopy”; Ratcliff, Genèse d’une découverte.
21 Parnes, “The Envisioning of Cells”, 73.
22 Ratcliff, The Quest, 33sq.
23 Ratcliff, “Wonders, Logic, and Microscopy”, 115.
24 Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, chap. X: «Revolutions as Changes of World View».
25 Fleck, Genesis and Development.
26 Heintz and Huber, “Der verführerische Blick”; Daston and Galison, Objectivity.
27 On this much-debated question, see Daston, “The Empire of Observation”; Licoppe, La formation de la pratique scientifique; Pomata, “Observation Rising”.
28 Vuillemin, Les beautés de la nature, 131sq.
29 Hanson, Patterns of Discovery. Hanson’s proposition is based on the theory of aspectual perception in the second Wittgenstein (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, II–xi).
30 Hanson, Patterns of Discovery, 21.
31 See Ratcliff, Genèse d’une découverte.
32 The manuscript cannot be naively considered as a purely private writing, without any intentionality of diffusion. There are numerous publications on the subject, for example Holmes, Renn and Rheinberger, Reworking the Bench; Monti, Ecriture et mémoire.
33 Hänseler, Metaphors under the Microscope, 67sq.
34 Ratcliff, Genèse d’une découverte.
35 Linnaeus, Systema naturae, 1326:
Fungorum seminum. Habitat, uti Semen Lycoperdi, Agarici, Boleti, Mucoris reliquorumque Fungorum, in sua matre, usque dum dispergatur & in aqua exclusum vivit & moritur, demum figitur & in Fungos excrescit … . Zoophytorum metamorphosis e Vegetabili in Animale. Fungorum itaque contrario ex Animali in Vegetabile. (Linnaeus’s italics; my underscores)
36 See note 12.
37 For a more detailed account of the history of this controversy and its importance in the Germanic area in particular, see Ratcliff, The Quest, 230–2.
38 John Ellis to Carl Linnaeus, London, 8th of September 1767, in Smith, A Selection, 213.
39 On Linnaeus’s microscopic skills, see Ford, “The Microscope of Linnaeus”.
40 Linné to Ellis, October 1767 (no date), in Smith, A Selection, 214.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid, 214–15.
43 Ibid, 216.
44 Ibid, 217 (my underscores).
45 Ibid., 216–17: “[I] will endeavour to find out what you mean by their ‘growing into Fungi’”.
46 Ibid.
47 Linné to Ellis, Upsal, 8th of December 1767, Ibid., 220:
I am beyond measure delighted with your observations upon the Lycoperdon in river water; that its powder moved about, and was transformed into that species of Mucor, which I have named Mucedo. I have long suspected this Mucedo to belong to Lycoperdon; but my suspicion has never before been confirmed.
48 Ellis to Linné, London, 15th of January 1768, Ibid., 223 (my underscores).
49 Ibid., 224.
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Nathalie Vuillemin
Nathalie Vuillemin is a professor of French literature at the University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland). Her work focuses on scientific discourse in the 18th century. She has written on visual epistemology with a particular focus on microscopic organisms. Her current research focuses on the scientific travel diaries of the eighteenth-century.