ATOMISM, LYNCEUS, AND THE FATE

OF SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY MICROSCOPY

C.H. LÜTHY*
Harvard University

Anomalies in the Early Reception of Optical Instruments

,Judging by the arguments developed by the "moderns" in their lit-

erary battles with the "ancients," it would appear as if telescopes
and microscopes had shared the same fate. Both types of optical
magnifiers were celebrated as triumphs of seventeenth-century
genius: by displaying what no eye had formerly perceived, they
seemed to demonstrate the limitations of received knowledge.
Did not the "new worlds" encountered by their means equally dis-
prove ancient philosophy, just as the discovery of the New World
had disproved Ptolemy's geography?'
Several historical factors appear to buttress the assumption of a .
close kinship between the two instruments. Not only was the
Graecism "microscope" coined in 1625 as an explicit parallel to
the "telescope," baptized in the previous decade; but before the
successful propagation of these two neologisms, identical terms
such as fierspicillum, tubus opticus, or occhiale had been applied to
both instruments alike. After all, they both produced their novel
sights by means of dioptrical magnification, i.e. by a refractive en-
largement of the visual angle under which objects were scruti-
nized. In fact, throughout the 1610's, the identical tube with a
concave and a convex lens at its two ends was used for telescopic
and microscopic observations.

* I wish to express my gratitude to William R. Newman for his inspiration and

for several highly valuable comments on my first draft.
1 Innumerable
literary passages could be adduced here to demonstrate the
employment of microscopes and telescopes as "modernist" tools, but we shall
limit ourselves to one typical, if early, example. Henri Reneri, one of Descartes'
first disciples, wrote in 1638 to Mersenne that he was currently engaged in the mi-
cro-anatomical study of plants and animals: "Et quò facilius eas facere possim,
oculos novos arte mihi paravi, quibus fretus ea in seminibus, in germinibus, in
folijs floribusque deprehendo quae nemo veterum ob microscopiorum ignoratio-
nem observare potuit." R. Descartes, Oeuvres,rev. ed. C. Adam and P. Tannery
(Paris, 1964-73), 2: 102.

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For these and other related reasons, the available historio-

graphy continues to emphasize the common roots of the two in-
struments. Indeed, so similar do their fates usually appear to his-
torians that they continue to propagate the long-refuted legend of
Hans and Zacharias Jansen as the inventors of both instruments.2
But despite all first appearances, there exist four glaring and
important asymmetries between the fates of the two optical instru-
ments under consideration. A close look at these asymmetries
provides, as we shall see, a number of important insights into the
transformation of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century natural phi-
losophy.
The first asymmetry resides in the fact that, in contrast to the
telescope, the microscope was never invented. This claim, how-
ever surprising, is easily proven. Whereas telescopes require at
least two lenses, microscopes do not. Leeuwenhoek is famous for
having achieved the seventeenth century's keenest observations
with single-bead microscopes. But single lenses had been used for
centuries, functioning as spectacles, reading glasses, instruments
for miniaturists, and magnifiers of relics. Beginning with the late
sixteenth century, they also came to be used for the study of in-
sects and plants, and there are no coherent grounds on which to
exclude these studies from the history of microscopy. The inabil-
ity of historians to settle the question of whether Hoefnagel
(1592) or Moffet (1590's)-and one could add to their list
Colonna (1606) and others-had used magnifying glasses or com-
pound microscopes indicates quite clearly that there was neither a
clear break between the use of single and compound magnifiers
and between pragmatic and scientific uses of optical magnifica-
tion nor, a fortiori, any single moment which could legitimately
count as the date of invention of the microscope.3

2 P. Borel, De vero
telescopiiinventore cum brevi omnium conspiciliorumhistoria
(Den Haag, 1655), produces testimony to buttress Zacharias Jansen's claim that
he and his father invented the microscope in 1590. In the nineteenth century,
this version was defended most influentially by Pieter Harting. It has been re-
futed, however, by C. De Waard, De Uitvinding der Verrekijkers(Den Haag, 1906),
and by M. Rooseboom, Microscopium(Leiden, 1956), who have proven that
Zacharias Jansen was two years old in 1590, that his father died in 1592, and that
Zacharias antedated his true birth date. Nevertheless, Zacharias' impossible
claims survive with undiminished force in the recent literature: cf. H. and W. De
Martin, Vier JahrhunderteMikroskop(Wien, 1983), 9-11; H.P. Nowak, Geschichtedes
Mikroskops(Zürich, 1984), 3; and H. Moe, MikroskopetsHistorie (Copenhagen,
1990),15.
3 Govi has been the
only historian of microscopy to understand that the avail-

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The second asymmetry is related to the first and partly explains

it. From Van Helden's excellent monograph on the Invention of the
Tele.scope, we know that especially in England and Italy, an active
search for telescopic instruments had been underway throughout
the later half of the sixteenth century. According to a legend,
King Ptolemy had possessed a "Glass, or rather spectacle, whereby
for six hundred miles he saw the enemies ships coming," and all
kinds of mirror and lens combinations were tried to reproduce
the fabled optical effects. There was, incidentally, nothing philo-
sophical or speculative about these attempts: no one expected to
discover new objects in the sky or on earth, but only to perceive at
a larger distance what one would naturally perceive if one were
nearby. The military and navigational use of such a device was ob-
vious, and it is mostly in the context of military manuals that we
encounter references to it.4
Although some Elizabethan proto-telescopes may in fact have
been built, as Colin Ronan has recently argued with fresh evi-
dence in hand, the simple and successful principle of the Dutch
telescope (a convex objective lens and a concave eyepiece stuck at
the two ends of a tube) appears to have been found only in 1608
when a number of spectacle makers from the Dutch city of
Middelburg rushed forth to take out patents on just such a combi-
nation. But again, the surprise lay in the method of construction,
not in the idea of telescopic magnification as such. Despite Gali-
leo's famous claim that the philosophical establishment rejected
his novel instrument, we know of no more than a small number of
very marginal figures to have rejected it off hand. With the Jesuit
astronomers of the Collegio Romano at their helm, the decisive as-
tronomers and philosophers of the age instead either claimed pri-
ority, or scrambled to buy or reproduce the Dutch telescope.
Within a couple of years there were no voices left to cast doubt on
the veridical nature of the observations reported in Galileo's
Sidereus Nuncius.5

ability of microscopical tools in earlier centuries renders the usual invention de-
bates redundant. Cf. G. Govi, "Il microscopio composto inventato da Galileo," in
Atti della RealeAccademiadelleScienzeFisichee Matematiche2 (1888), 15.
4 A. Van Helden, "The Invention of the
Telescope," in Transactions of the
AmericanPhilosophicalSociety67 (1977), part 4. The quote is from G.B. Della Porta,
Natural Magickin TwentyBooks(London, 1658), 369.
5 On C. Ronan's
argument and G.L'E. Turner's objections to it, see Bulletin of
the ScientificInstrument Society37 (1993), 2-9. For a discussion of the validity of the
various priority claims, cf. Van Helden, Invention. On the absence of forceful ob-
jections to Galileo's microscope, cf. T.L. Thomas, Believingis Seeing:The Reception

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But whereas the newly invented Dutch telescope was thus noth-
ing but the fulfilment of an existing dream, such was clearly not
the case with the microscope. We know of no sixteenth-century
phantasies concerning microscopic vision. This startling lack of
expectations helps us explain why the magnifiers already in exist-
ence at the time did not manage to arouse any interest. What re-
mains intact of Vasco Ronchi's polemic scholarship is therefore,
not his mistaken belief in the Aristotelian and Renaissance dis-
trust in ocular evidence, but his surprise at the absence of any aca-
demic curiosity with respect to the existing dioptrical magnifiers.6 6
This second asymmetry is joined by a third: even in the years af-
ter 1608, when the Dutch telescope rose to sudden fame and
prominence, the fates of telescopic and microscopic magnifiers
remained radically different. John Wodderborn reported in 1610
that Galileo had turned one of his optical tubes earthward to look
at two or three insects. But whereas the printed renditions of Gali-
leo's celestial discoveries stirred an international enthusiasm over
his telescopes, not even a shadow of its splendor touched the al-
leged sibling, the compound microscope. Galileo's insects were of
no consequence, least of all to Galileo himself who only used
them to demonstrate the power and reliability of his optical
tools.7
It is often claimed that only Drebbel's much shorter and
handier double convex combination of ca. 1619 led the micro-
scope to its first scientific victories and subsequently to fame. But
even this is an exaggeration. It is true that Drebbel's instrument
impressed the members of the Accademia dei Lincei sufficiently to
make them think up a name for it-Faber suggested "microsco-
pium," Colonna "engiscopium." But what little reputation it en-
joyed in the late 1620's in the Lincei's small ranks was lost again in
the wake of the disbandment of their academy in 1630. Apart
from the famous Barberini bees of 1625 and a couple of further
Roman and Neapolitan observations by Stelluti, Severino,
Colonna, Odierna, and Fontana, the compound microscope pro-
duced no published imagery before 1650, and outside of Italy al-

of theTelescope,1609-1632 (Senior thesis, Harvard College, 1990).

6
Among his many writings, cf. V. Ronchi, "A Fascinating Outline of the His-
tory of Science. Two Thousand Years of Conflict between 'Reason' and 'Sense,'''
in Atti della FondazioneGiorgioRonchi30 (1975).
7 J. Wodderborn, Quatuor problematum quae Martinus Horky contra Nuntium
Sidereumde quatuor planetis novis disputandoproposuit (Padova, 1610), 7.

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most none before the mid-1660's. In comparison to the telescope,

which remained at the center of an international courtly race for
novel celestial sights and was surrounded by astronomical and
theological disputes, by emblems and by heraldry, the microscope
remained a barren tool.
The fourth and final asymmetry lies in the sudden "fall" of the
microscope three decades after its equally sudden "rise" to promi-
nence between 1655 and 1665.s This conspicuous turn of events
has been generally noticed, and of our four asymmetries, it is the
only one to have attracted the attention of scholars. In 1692,
Robert Hooke, the very man who in 1665 had published the cen-
tury's most successful micrographical album, deplored before the
Royal Society that the microscope had become an "Instrument,
but for Diversion and Pastime," with Leeuwenhoek as the "sole
Votary" left in the business of microscopical research. As to the
other four so-called "classical microscopists," Swammerdam had
died in 1691, Malpighi had ceased to publish in 1689, Grew had
turned to cosmology and theology after 1684, and Hooke himself
had never considered microscopy his main interest in the first
place.9 The first bloom of scientific microscopy was therefore
short-lived, and the eighteenth century appears to separate, like a
large desert, that early bloom from the successfully institutional-
ized microbiology of the nineteenth century. The pioneers of
microscopy had not managed to initiate a self-supporting re-
search program, and after the death of Leeuwenhoek in 1723, the
number of published reports on microscopical investigations
dropped off sharply for at least two decades. 10
Historians trying to proffer explanations for the microscope's
rapid fall from favor in the last decade of the century have come
up with two different types of explanation. The first argues along
technical lines. Seventeenth-century microscopy did not overcome
the problems of chromatic and spherical aberration, did not yet
possess the necessary dissecting, dying, and mounting skills, and

8 The
terminology of "rise," "decline," and "fall" is taken from M. Fournier,
The Fabrir, of Life. The Rise and Decline of Seventeenth-CenturyMicroscopy(Ph.D.,
Nijmegen University, 1991).
9 Cf. C. Wilson, TheInvisible World.Early ModernPhilosophyand the Invention of
the Microscope(Princeton, 1995), 227.
10 On this
question, see-besides the afore-mentioned works by M. Fournier
and C. Wilson-G.L'E. Turner, "The Microscope as a Technical Frontier in
Science," in Historical Aspects of Microscopy,ed. S. Bradbury and G.L'E. Turner
(Cambridge, 1967), 75-199; id., "Microscopical Communications," Journal of

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was hence unable either to produce standardized and generally

verifiable results or to advance to the structurally interesting cell-
biological and histological levels uncovered only in the nineteenth
century.
It is undoubtedly true, so the champions of the second explana-
tion respond, that frustration over the technical limits to optical
magnification reached a peak at the end of the century and trust
in the manufacturability of the allegedly much more effective el-
liptic and hyperbolic lenses waned. Nonetheless, the historically
correct question to ask is rather why the powers of magnification
achieved in their time seemed insufficient to practitioners and
philosophers alike. What level of resolution would have been
deemed sufficient? Or, in other words: what did microscopists ex-
pect to find with the perfect lens? Surely neither cytoplasm nor
cellular nuclei.
The point that emerges forcefully from our four asymmetries is
that the reception of optical instruments was guided, not at all by
their availability, but by hopes and preconceptions. The Dutch tel-
escope, although a true invention of the seventeenth century, con-
formed to prior expectations, even if no one had foreseen that
such a military tool would one day change the course of as-
tronomy. The microscope, by contrast, although it had in its sim-
ple form already been available to earlier centuries, aroused no
comparable interest, initially not even in the seventeenth century.
Our introductory observations concerning the late "rise" and
the early "fall" of the microscope leave us with the following ques-
tions. What was it about the magnification of the small that set it
off so starkly from the magnification of the far-away? Why was it
that microscopic magnification seemed so uninteresting at first,
so exciting later on, and so imperfect in the end?

Lynxes, Lynceus, and the Accademia dei Lincei

Talk of historical "expectations" is treacherous, for no one speaks

about the future in the future's terms. Our particular challenge is

Microscopy100 (1974), 3-20; E. Ruestow, The Microscopein the Dutch Republic. The
Shaping of Discovery(forthcoming, 1996). Cf. also the excellent article by C.
Wilson, "Visual Surfaces and Visual Symbol: The Microscope and the Occult in
Early Modern Science," Journal of the History of Ideas 49 (1988), 85-108. In
Fournier, Fabric of Life,ch. 2, the "rise" and "decline" of microscopy is measured
in terms of the number of printed works dealing with microscopical observations.

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to find expressions of disinterest in the possible results of

microscopical magnification from a time that by definition had
nothing to say on the matter.
Fortunately, though, we are aided in our difficult enterprise by
a Greek hero called Lynceus and by the eponymous lynx from
which he had taken his name. According to Francesco Stelluti,
Lynceus, one of the Argonauts,
was also of most acute eye-sight, and it is said of him that with his glance he
could penetrate the thickness of walls, and that he saw the moon on the first
day after new moon in the sign of Aries: he saw things clearly at a distance of
130 miles, and from Sicily he numbered the ships which left the port of
Carthage. There was another one by this name [...1, who saw so subtly, that
he penetrated with his eyesight the trunks of trees. I

Lynceus, in other words, possessed telescopic eyesight as well as

a glance that penetrated matter. It is to our great advantage that
speculations survive, from Aristotle down to the seventeenth cen-
tury, regarding the things a fellow like Lynceus might perceive. In
fact, Lynceus fills the roles of proto-telescopist and proto-
microscopist most valiantly.l2
If we tell Lynceus' story backwards in time, we have to begin by
mentioning that his name, in both its Latin and Italian forms, is
identical to the academic title carried by the members of Prince
Cesi's Accademia dei Lincei, the "Academy of the Lynx-Eyed." We
have already mentioned that it was the Lincei who named both the
telescope and the microscope, and we may now add that Stelluti,
whose characterization of Lynceus we have just quoted, was not
only of their rank but also the author of the earliest prints of ob-
jects magnified under the compound microscope. The many liter-
ary puns on the double significance of Linceo are clear evidence
that Stelluti and his colleagues consciously emulated the mytho-
logical Linceus.l3

11 "Uno
degli Argonauti chiamato Linceo fù anche di vista acutissima, quale
dicesi che con lo sguardo penetrava la grossezza de'muri, e che vedeua la Luna il
primo giorno dopo il nouilunio nel segno dell'Ariete: vedeua le cose benissimo
distanti da lui per cento trenta miglia, e dalla Sicilia numeraua le naui
ch'vsciuano dal porto di Cartagine. Fù vn'altro di questo nome, come scriue
Pausania nel lib. 4 figlio d'Alfareo, quale vedeua cos�sottilmente, che penetraua
con la vista i tronchi de gli Alberi." F. Stelluti, Persio tradotto in verso sciolto e
dichiarato (Roma, 1630), 37-8.
12 In the
history of moral philosophy, Lynceus also played the role of a figure
who saw behind the masques of human faces and perceived the true inner worth
of characters, cf. D.J. Drossaart Lulofs, De ogenvan Lynceus(Leiden, 1967).
13
Examples of such puns can be found, e.g., in G. Gabrieli, "11 Carteggio

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Their emblem was taken from Della Porta the title-page of

whose Magia Naturalis (in the 1589 edition) had brandished a
lynx together with the motto Aspicit et In.s?icit.l4 The motto im-
plied that the lynx did not only perceive the surface of things, but
penetrated to their essence. When the adolescent Prince Cesi
chose Della Porta's lynx as the eponymous emblem of his acad-
emy, he swapped the Neapolitan's motto for his own. Cesi's
motto, Sagacius illa, must be read as an exhortation addressed to
his academicians to perceive even "more acutely than her:" for ac-
cording to Stelluti, Prince Cesi had chosen
the lynx as the emblem of our academy as a stimulus and a continuous spur
to remind us of the acuteness of vision, not of the corporeal eyes, but of the
mind, necessary for the natural contemplations that we practice; and it be-
ing all the more necessary in those matters to penetrate the inside of things,
to know their cause and the operations of nature, which works internally, as
one says in a beautiful simile that the lynx does with its glance, seeing not
only what is outside, but also what hides inside. And although this is in real-
ity a mere hyperbola and (rhetorical) extension, there is, nevertheless, no
one who denies that this animal surpasses in acuteness of vision all others
[...].1'r'

Although Stelluti only paraphrased explanations proffered ear-

lier on by Cesi, Faber, and other Lincei, it is yet surprising to find
these words in the very book that contained some of the earliest
illustrations of microscopically magnified objects." Why does

Linceo della vecchia Accademia di Federico Cesi (1603-1630)," in Memoriedella

Reale Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Classe di scienze morali, storiche e
filologiche), VIth series, 6 fasc. ii (1938), I: 195; and S. de Renzi, Storia naturale ed
eruidizionenella prima età moderna:Johannes Faber (1574-1629) medicolinceo (Ph.D.
thesis, Bari, 1992-3), 130.
14 G.B. Della Porta,
Magiae Naturalis Libri XX. Ab ipso authore expurgati &
superaucti (Napoli, 1589). The lynx is not represented on the title page of the first
edition of 1558. Gabrieli, who has traced the evolution of the emblematic lynx in
the hands of the academicians, assumes that Della Porta himself had borrowed
the lyncean symbol from another sources; maybe from Konrad Gessner's Historia
Animalium of 1551. Cf. G.Gabrieli, "Emblematica Lincea," in Rendicontidella Reale
AccademiaNazionale dei Lincei (Classe di scienze morali, storiche, e filologice),
VIth series, 10 ( 1934) , 269-84.
15 The entire
passage reads: "[...] havendo questa [lince] eletta, acciò ne sia
vno stimulo, e sprone continuo di ricordarci dell'acutezza della vista, non de gli
occhi corporali, ma della mente, necessaria per le naturali contemplazioni, che
professiamo; e tanto più dovendosi in queste procurare di penetrar l'interno
delle cose, per conoscere le loro cause, & operazioni della natura, ch'inte-
riormente lavora, come con bella similitudine dicesi che la Lince faccia col suo
sguardo, vedendo non solo quel ch'è di fuori; ma anche ciò che dentro
s'alconde: e veramente ancorche questa sia vna mera Iperbole, & amplificazione,
non è pero chi non dica che questo Animale d'acutezza di vista passa tutti gli altri
[...]." Stelluti, Persiotradotto,37.
16 The various
explanations of the lynx are quoted in Gabrieli, Emblematica,
270, n. 2; and 273, n.1.

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he insist that it was not the "vision of corporeal eyes, but of the
mind" that Prince Cesi wished to enhance? Why does he not
connect microscopical research with Lyncean penetration of
"the inside of things" and of the "cause and operations" of na-
ture ?
An explanation of this curious phenomenon will be provided
further below. For the time being, it behooves us to notice that
neither Cesi nor Stelluti understood "internal" and "external" as
references to spatial, material, and therefore visualizable arrange-
ments. Della Porta's lynx or Cesi's Lincei, if they wished to see "the
inside of things," had to stare with the inner eye of their intellect.
But while the penetrating (and microscopical) aspect of
Lynceus' gaze was understood by the Lincei as a mere metaphor,
this was by no means true of the telescopic quality of his vision,
which was interpreted quite literally. This brings us back to the
asymmetry between telescopic and microscopic vision. Della
Porta, for example, had already in the last decades of the six-
teenth century added a vivid interest in applied optics to his origi-
nal fascination with all kinds of Renaissance arcana. Believing, like
many others, that telescopic vision was a technical possibility, he
had in 1579 even paid a secret visit to the Venetian glass
manufactories at Murano, where he assisted in attempts to pro-
duce an "instrument to see far" and of "spectacles which can dis-
cern a man several miles off.,,17
Through his writings, Della Porta was known to Prince Cesi's
group from the very beginning as an expert on optics, and as early
as 1604, he introduced Prince Cesi personally to the realm of mir-
rors and lenses. If we believe Faber, the Prince was busy construct-
ing telescopes (probably upon a sketch by Della Porta) even be-
fore Galileo had begun to do so.IS Once again we see how readily

17 G. Gabrieli, "Pratica e tecnica del

telescopio e del microscopio presso i
primi Lincei," in Atti della Reale Accademia d'Italia (Rendiconti della classe di
scienze morali e storiche), Vllth series, 2 (1941), 27. Gabrieli is quoting from
Della Porta's letters to Cardinal Luigi D'Este.
18 In 1604, Cesi
sojourned for two months in Naples, where he spent much
time in the company of Della Porta. There he, and later Stelluti, were shown opti-
cal gadgetry; cf. Stelluti's letter to Magni, 18 February 1611, quoted in G. Gabrieli,
"Giovani Battista della Porta Linceo," in Giornale critico della filosofia italiana, 8
(1927), 371. In 1608, Della Porta communicated to Cesi a plan for some new para-
bolic magnifier, while in 1609, he reported to have seen the newly invented tel-
escope, which he called a "hoax" stolen from his works (Porta to Cesi, 9 Oct.
1608, and 18 August 1609, quoted ibid., 369-70). He enclosed a sketch demonstrat-

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the actual telescope was integrated into a set of prior practices

and assumptions: Lynceus, we remember, had been able to per-
ceive "from Sicily [...] the ships which left the port of Carthage;"
Galileo, in turn, when demonstrating his tube to a group of
Venetian dignitaries, trained it on remote ships approaching Ven-
ice from the south, as if from Carthage.
Indeed, in contrast to the microscope, the telescope appeared
to the Lincei as the fulfillment of their sagacius illa. Della Porta, by
1610 Lincean vice-president, kept insisting that the Dutch had sto-
len their instrument from his books; and although even Cesi re-
mained unconvinced, the Prince allowed his academicians to cam-
paign for Della Porta's claim even after the latter's death in
1615.19 Too tempting was the notion that the telescope was an es-
sentially Linc,ean instrument-with the Neapolitan as the inventor,
Galileo, a Linceo since 1611, as its first successful user, and the
Accademia as the body that had named it.
This situation allowed the academicians to grow more punning
than ever. Joannes van Heeck (Ecchio to his colleagues) praised
Galileo for having added "to Lincean eyes such adventurous
glasses,"20 and Faber eulogized that

ing its construction, and it is presumably on the basis of this sketch that Cesi may
have begun to construct telescopes. Faber claims that during the period of July
and August 1609, just as Galileo, further north, also began to build his first tel-
escopes, "[e]odem Romae tempore Lynceorum Princeps Illustriss. Federicus
Caesius, rumore tantum e Belgio audito, idipsum instrumentum composuit et in-
ter complures in urbe magnates distribuit, nomenque Telescopij excogitavit et
indidit [...]."J. Faber, Animalia mexicanadescriptionibus,scholijsqueexpositaThesauri
rerum medicarumNovaeHispaniae, (Roma, 1628), 473.
19 After Della Porta's death in 1615, Prince Cesi made a
telling correction to
an earlier speech in praise of the modern scientific enterprise. The original ver-
sion had read: "basti nominare il solo Telescopio, che tanto ci aggiunge la vista, e
tanto ci awicina alle stelle, e cose rimotissime in un subito, quale ritrovato dal
Porta, e perfettionato all'uso celeste dal dottissimo Galileo prima favoloso, poi
mirabile, a tutti già utilissimo in uso, e d'osservationi, e di governo, e di guerra."
After Della Porta's death, Cesi corrected this passage to read as follows: "quale
non solo ritrovato in Padova dal Dottissimo Galilei: ma anco inalzato; e perfet-
tionato sin all'uso celeste apena uditone il rumore d'Hollanda; ha fatto in un
istesso tempo conoscere, e ricordare, che il Porta non senza fondamento già vi
specultò sopra, e ne promise effetti meraviglosi; e che quello che all'hora parve
favoloso, molto più probabile poi, gratissimo a tutti, et utilissimo in uso, e
d'osservationi e di governo, e di guerra n'è succeduto." Quoted from J.-M.
Gardair, "I Lincei: i soggetti, i luoghi, le attività," Quaderni Storicino. 48, fasc. III,
16 (1981), 770, n. 29. Nevertheless, the books of the Accademiacontinued to up-
hold Della Porta's priority, cf. J. Faber's lines in G. Galilei, Il Saggiatore (Roma,
1623), s.p.: "Porta tenet primas, habeas GERMANE secundas/ Sunt GALILAEE
tuus tertia regna labor."
20
Quoted from A.-M. Capecchi et al., L'Accademiadei Lincei e la cultura europea

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With the eyes of a lynx, he discloses the phenomena,

And shows the miraculous beliefs of the princes of learning
To be vain dreams. 0 daring deed!21

Stelluti, in equally graceless lines of poetry, exclaimed that Gali-

leo's invigorated eye had gone "beyond the vision of human
thought, and that next to him, Argus was "without eyes, and blind
Lynceus."z2 Sagacius Lynceo!

Aristotle's Lynceus and the Structure of Matter

Although our analysis of the Lincei's use of their emblem has

served us well in confirming the afore-mentioned asymmetry with
respect to the reception of telescopic and microscopic vision, it
has not so far provided us with a satisfactory answer to the riddle
thereby presented. In order to understand the failed connection
between the microscope and the lynx' ocular inspicit, we must go
further back in history.
The solution to the riddle lies once more in the hands of
Lynceus. For in his De generatione et corruptione, Aristotle had de-
clared that even the improved eye-sight of Lynceus could not pos-
sibly lead to the discovery of meaningful material substructures.
The Philosopher had, in other words, banned microscopy from
philosophical discourse even before it had become a practical op-
tion.
His surprising claim occurs in the following context. We recall
that Aristotle's notion of prime matter is that of a formless entity
which cannot exist on its own. It is only thinkable, but not imagi-
nable, let alone visible. The four elements, being the most ele-
mentary concretions of prime matter, are defined by pairs of
qualities of which they are only temporary bearers, and by the

nel XVIIsecolo.Manoscritti.Libri. Incisioni. Strumentiscientifici(Rome, 1991), 67.

21 Faber in Galilei,
J. Saggiatore, s.p.: "Phmomena hic retegit, mirandaque
LYNCISocello,/ Credita principibus somnia vana Sophis./ O audax factum [...]."
22 F. Stelluti in Galilei,
Saggdatore,s.p.: "E tu s'io ben riguardo/ Vigoroso, ed
altero/ Ti festi in guisa il guardo,/ Che trapassa il mirar d'human pensiero,/
Onde Talpa in Ceruiero/ Appò te GALILEO/ Fora, & argo senz' occhi, orbo
Lincèo." The only existing English translation of these lines is exceedingly faulty;
cf. S. Drake and C.D. O'Malley, The Controversyon the Cometsof 1618. GalileoGalilei.
Horatio Grassi. Mario Guiducci.Johann Kepler(Philadelphia, 1960), 158. Most cru-
cially, it is not the "Linceans" who are "eyeless," as these translators write, but the
mythological Lynceus. On the contrary, the Lincei are of course celebrated pre-
cisely for outrivalling even the most keen-eyed among the ancients.

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place within the layered cosmos towards which they naturally

strive. When several of these elements combine to form further
compounds (such as gold or blood), they lose their individual
forms or qualities in favor of one single and homogeneous new
form.
By contrast, the atomists had postulated that the contributing
atoms remained intact within the compounds. Aristotle rejected
this possibility with the argument that the atomists described not
true mixtures but mere heaps. He wrote that
if mixing is a composition of small particles [as the atomists claim], none of
these things will happen [i.e. no true mixing will occur], but the ingredients
will only be mixed according to the standard of sense-perception, and the
same thing will be a mixture to one man, if he has not sharp sight, but to the
eyes of Lynceus will not be mixed; it is also clear that we must not say that
things are mixed by means of a division whereby every part of one ingredi-
ent is set by the side of a part of the other; for it is impossible for them to be
thus divided. Either, then, there is no mixing, or another explanation must
be given of the way in which it occurs.
Whereas for Leucippus and Democritus, a finely grained micro-
world underlay the visible macro-world, such a fragmentation of
reality according to visual acuity was anathema to Aristotle. Galen,
who felt similarly, argued that if the atomists were right and visual
perception were the criterion by which to decide on the existence
of elements, we would end up with a world differently constituted
for eagles, lynxes, and humans.21 Since such seemed an impermis-
sible consequence, Aristotle's Lynceus, called upon as a counter-
factual eye-witness, could not but give testimony to the contrary.
In other words, Aristotle's proto-microscopist claimed that he did
not perceive anything beyond what was visible under normal con-
ditions. This meant that matter did not only seem to us, but truly

23 Aristotle, On
Coming-to-Beand Passing-Away,tr. E.S. Forster, (Cambridge,
Mass. and London, 1965), 328 a 13 ff.
24 Galen's
argument differs slightly from Aristotle's. After declaring that
sensus non est iudex on the definition of elements, he explains: "Neque enim quod
videtur simplicissima esse, & prima particula, sed quod tale est natura, illud verè
est elementum. Quòd sit illa, qui visu comprehenditur minima, ac prima
particula, vniuscuiusque rei dicatur esse natura elementum: alia quidem aquilis,
& Lynci, & siquis alter homo, aut aliud animal videndi acumine pollet: alia autem
cuilibet nostrum elementa apparebunt. Non igitur hoc modo, sed qui prima, &
simplicissima natura sunt, & qui in alia dissolui non possunt, elementa quiramus,
si volumus aut hominis, aut cuiuscunque rei alterius scientiam adipisci." Galen,
"De Elementis secundum Hippocratem libri duo, Nicolao Leoniceno Interprete,"
in Galeni Omnia Quae Extant in Latinum SermonemConversa,3rd ed. (Venice, 1556)
part 1, bk. 1, ch. 1, p. 2.

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was, a structurally undifferentiated homogeneous continuum.

Despite its name, the Aristotelian form, Fi8og, was thus every-
thing but eidetic. Forma gained its modern picturability only in the
course of the seventeenth century, when the qualitative Aristote-
lian forms began to be viewed as secondary and as subservient to
the first or geometrical qualities. From Norma Emerton's beauti-
ful study on this complex process, it emerges clearly that the six-
teenth-century revival of the minima naturalia debate and of the
Averroist interpretation of mixtures could only provide a first
platform for this transformation. Eventually, it was above all the
microscopical and crystallographic studies of the 1620's, '30's,
and '40's that convinced natural philosophers to replace the in-
tangible and invisible Aristotelian qualities with the spatial con-
tours of material entities as the ultimate level of causal analysis
and to transform the concept of forma into that of figura. 25
What has just been said of the Peripatatic philosophy of the
schools is, mutatis mutandis, also true of Neoplatonist and Her-
metic theories of matter. Like the occultum et manijèstum of six-
teenth-century alchemy, Della Porta's aspicit et inspicit used the
contrast of "inside" and "outside" only metaphorically. The popu-
lar teachings of the Neapolitan on physiognomy took its cue from
the alleged correspondence between facial expression and hu-
man character. The principle of aW¡.tŒas afj¡.tŒ, extended to all ob-
jects, meant that the essence of any natural body could be grasped
by discovering the signatures on its surface. The "inspection" of
the nature and powers of an object consisted, in other words, in
the scrutiny of its surface "aspects" and not of its material "in-
side."26

25 N.E. Emerton, The

ScientificReinterpretationof Form (Ithaca, 1984). The in-
creased prominence of the geometric figura over the qualitiative Aristotelian
forma is found, for example, in early writers such as Basso and Beeckman; cf. H.H.
Kubbinga, "Les premieres theories 'moléculaires': Isaac Beeckman (1620) et
Sébastien Basson (1621)," Revuede l'histoiredessciences37 (1984), 215-33.
26 On the transformation of the
spatial metaphores found in alchemy and the
occult sciences into corpuscularian concepts, cf. K. Hutchison, "What Happened
to Occult Qualities in the Scientific Revolution?," Isis 73 (1982), 233-53. M.L.
Bianchi, "The Visible and the Invisible. From Alchemy to Paracelsus," in Alchemy
and Chemistryin the Sixteenth and SeventeenthCenturies, ed. P. Rattansi and A.
Clericuzio (Dordrecht etc., 1994) 17-50. W.R. Newman, GehennicalFire. TheLives of
GeorgeStarkey(Cambridge, 1994), esp. ch. 3.

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14

The Microscope: A Corpuscularians' Tool

Our analysis pushes us towards a surprising but inevitable conclu-

sion. If all other theories of matter either denied or deemed irrel-
evant the existence of material sub-structures, then the micro-
scope was-by default-a corpuscularian tool. Phrased positively:
the discovery or recognition of the microscope as a philosophi-
cally relevant instrument implied a belief, not only in the exist-
ence, but in the explanatory meaningfulness of material sub-struc-
tures. This, however, was precisely the position defended by the
early seventeenth-century atomists.
A glance at seventeenth-century discussions of microscopy will
confirm the validity of our conclusion. When the microscopist was
finally accepted as a modern Lynceus on a par with the teles-
copist, he was routinely cited as a witness in the battle against Aris-
totle's theory of matter. Conversely, we find no users or enthusi-
asts of microscopy among the Aristotelians. For whatever else
microscopical observations might have proved, they clearly dem-
onstrated the falseness of Aristotle's belief in the homogeneity of
substances. Things did look differently under magnification.
Smooth-looking surfaces now appeared rugged, and their alleged
homogeneity dissolved into ubiquitous material impurities. Worse
yet, surfaces and liquids turned into minuscule stages for pan-
parasitical performances. Despite Aristotle's and Galen's protests,
it now seemed as if lynxes, eagles, and humans did see the world
differently.
The popularity of microscopy went hand in hand with that of
corpuscularianism. It has eluded the attention of historians of
microscopy that when Galileo eventually did mention the micro-
scope in print, this happened in the context of his recently ac-
quired atomist notions as propounded in his Saggiatore of 1623. In
what must count as the earliest known employment of micros-
copical evidence in a philosophical or scientific argument, Galileo
writes that "any material (material), be it stone, or wood, or metal,"
when studied attentively, best with the help of "a telescope accom-
modated to see very close things," i.e. a microscope, will display all
its "colors divided into minute particles."Z7

27 Galilei,
Saggiatore,105: "Direi al Sarsi cosa forse nuova, se cosa nuova se gli
potesse dire. Prenda egli qualsivoglia materia, o sia pietra, o sia legno, o sia
metallo, e tenendola al Sole, attentissimamente la rimiri, ch'egli vi vederà tutti i
colori compartiti in minutissime particelle, e s'ei si servirà per riguardargli d'un

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Although the allure of microscopy increased initially with the

same slowness as the appeal of corpuscularian concepts of matter,
the link between the two was obvious to all that used the new in-
strument. 28 Constantijn Huygens the Elder wrote in 1629 that
"material objects that till now were classified among atoms, since
they far elude all human eyesight" could now be clearly seen
through Drebbel's microscope. 29 In his introduction to Moffet's
Insectorum sive Minimorum Animalium Theatrum ( 1634) , Mayerne
mentioned microscopes as "necessary for the scrutiny of atoms, as
it were, with the eyes of a lynx."3° For Gassendi, in turn, the Lyn-
ceus represented the optimal microscopist. In 1649, he argued
that while the microscope managed to prove the differences be-
tween individual dust motes, Lynceus would be able to perceive
that the same held true for atoms. 31 In his atomist physiology of
1654, Charleton wrote that even "the smallest of all things discern-
able by the eyes of Linceus, though advantaged by the most exqui-
site Engyscope" consisted still of "Myriads of Myriads of thousands
of true Atoms."32 The title-page of Hooke's Micrographia of 1665, a
book with clear corpuscularian underpinnings, was adorned with
a Horatian couplet which said:
You may not be able, with your eyes, to see as far as Lynceus,
33
Yet you would not on that account scorn to anoint them, if sore.33
The ointment Hooke had in mind was, of course, again the mi-
croscope. And the Neapolitan physician Di Capoa wrote in 1689

Telescopio accomodato per veder gli oggetti vicinissimi, assai più distintamente
vederà quant'io dico." As for Galileo's terminology, let us recall that the micro-
scope had not yet received its new name in 1623.
28 "Atomism" and
"corpuscularianism" are used interchangeably in this essay.
29 G. Tierie, CornelisDrebbel(Amsterdam, 1932), 99-101. The
English transla-
tion follows S. Alpers, TheArt of Describing.
Dutch Art in the SeventeenthCentury(Chi-
cago, 1983), 18.
30 Sir Theodore
Mayerne's dedication (p. vi) reads: "Atque adeo (si
conspicilia ex Crystallo (quantumvis linceis oculis in perscrutandis
atomis necessaria) sumas, miraberis [...] [sic]." Th. Moffet, Insectorum sive
MinimorumAnimalium Theatrum (London, 1634) s.p.
31P. Gassendi, Animadversionesin decimumLibrum DiogenesLaerti, qui est de vita,
moribusplacitisque Epicuri(Lyons, 1649), 202-5.
32 W. Charleton, or A Fabrick of Sci-
PhysiologiaEpicuro-Gassendo-Charletoniana:
enceNatural, Uponthe Hypothesisof Atoms(London, 1654), 113.
33 R. Hooke,
Micrographia; or some PhysiologicalDescriptionsof Minute Bodies
made byMagnifyingGlasseswith Observationsand Inquiries thereupon(London, 1665).
Hooke quotes Horace in Latin: "Non possis oculo quantum contendere
Linceus,/ Non tamen idcirco contemnas lippus inungi" (Epistles,I.i: 28-9).

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that "the eyes of modern anatomists, improved by the microscope,

have become little less than lynx-like."34
These statements, chosen from various decades and countries,
demonstrate three different points. First, they prove the close as-
sociation of the microscope with the revival of atomism. Second,
they illustrate the reversal of the testimony of Aristotle's Lynceus:
the microscopist did, after all, see more than the average mortal,
thereby falsifying Aristotle's doctrine on the forma mixtionis. This
explains not only why atomism provided a philosophical frame-
work for the microscopist, but vice versa, why the microscope
added to the appeal of corpuscularianism.
But the passages just quoted also allow for a third conclusion.
As we have seen, most of them emphasized that the microscope
fell short of the perfection of Lynceus' eyes. Charleton, repeating
a calculation first published by Magnen in 1646, showed how
much further microscopists would in fact have to improve their
instruments to reach ultimate visual perfection. Given that a sin-
gle glowing grain of frankincense managed to fill an entire cathe-
dral with its scent, so Magnen had reckoned, there had to be at
least 777'600'000'000'000'000 (i.e. 777'600'000 billion) "Elemen-
tal Atoms," and these were still one step above the ultimate level
of material "Insectility."?5 By the 1680's it had become clear even
to the most fervent enthusiast that these were levels of magnifica-
tion that would never be achieved.
When taken together, these three conclusions produce the fol-
lowing sketch of the fate of seventeenth-century microscopy. The
late calling of the microscope to the service of natural philosophy
was due to the prevalence of non-corpuscularian theories of mat-
ter and causality in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centu-
ries, while its rise to prominence was connected to the revival of
atomism (in its various guises). The microscope successfully invali-
dated Aristotle's counterfactual Lynceus and provided important
impulses to the redefinition of matter and form in the seven-
teenth century. But despite attempts at improving the instrument
itself, it appeared doomed to miss the "Myriads of Myriads of

34 "[...]
gli occhj de'moderni notomisti dal microscopio avvalorati poco men
che lincei sien divenuti [...]" L. Di Capoa, Parere del Signor Lionardo di Capoa
Divisato in ottoRagionamenti(Naples, 1689), 96.
35 Charleton,
Physiologia,114. The calculation is taken from J. Ch. Magnenus,
DemocritusReviviscens:sive Vita et Philosophia Democriti(Leiden, 1648), 207. The
rare editioprima is from 1646.

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thousands of true Atoms" by a long stretch, which is why it began

to appear useless as soon as the validity of corpuscularian theories
had become generally accepted. Given its bluntness, it would re-
main impossible to find with it the exact shapes of those ultimate
particles on which the experienced world was now accepted to de-
pend.

Bacon and the Invisibility of Spirits

This brief history of the fate of seventeenth-century microscopy

captures the essence of the microscope's alliance with the cor-
puscularian cause and explains in large parts its reluctant rise as
well as its inevitable fall. But the picture demands further refine-
ment, because-especially with respect to its notions of causal
agency-seventeenth-century atomism was far less of a Demo-
critean revival than is commonly assumed. Few believed that the
geometrical shape of corpuscles alone explained the effects they
produced. Instead, most corpuscularians continued to believe
that spiritual agencies of some description were responsible for at
least some of their behavior. This implies that interest in
microscopical investigations of matter had to depend also on just
how much of the causal power of matter was deemed attributable
to its visualizable, i.e. geometric, properties. A brief glance at the
positions of Bacon and Power, respectively, will elucidate our
point.
No one recognized earlier and more clearly than Francis Bacon
the natural association of the microscope with the revival of
atomism. In what has to be regarded as the very first published re-
port on Drebbel's microscopes-a fact that has been curiously
overlooked even in the scholarship on this elusive magus-, 36 Ba-

36 Most historians assume that Drebbel invented his successful

microscope in
1620 or 1621. Cf. P. Humbert, "Peiresc et le microscope," Revuede l'histoiredes sci-
enceset de leur applications4 (1951), 155; S. Edelstein, "Drebbel, Cornelius," in Dic-
tionary of ScientificBiography,ed. Ch. C. Gillispie (1990), 4: 184; Fournier, Fabric of
Life, 20; Ruestow, The Microscope,12. Some have connected the invention with
Drebbel's and Adriaen Metius' visit to Zacharias Jansen's workshop at Middel-
burg in 1620, cf. Tierie, Drebbel,47-8; 85. But Bacon, who published his Instauratia
magna in 1620, distinguished the microscopic perspicillaclearly from both regular
spectacles and from "those other perspicillawhich [...]Galileo has invented;" and
since he only considered the microscopic perspicilla to have been "recently in-
vented" instruments, it seems clear that he was not referring to Galileo's micro-
scope but to Drebbel's. Moreover, he enumerated a number of objects he had

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con's aphorism II § 39 of the Novum Organum (1620) discusses

optical instruments under the rubric of the "cases of the en-
trance" (instatiae ianuae), and more specifically as "cases of the
lamp or of first instruction" ( instantiae lampadis sive informationis
primae), because of their ability to amplify and correct the imme-
diate work of the senses. When discussing the "perspicilla lately dis-
covered, which show us the latent and invisible minutiae of bod-
ies," Bacon offers the assumption that "if Democritus had seen
[them], he would have rejoiced a lot, believing a method to have
been discovered to see the atoms (which he had declared to be al-
together invisible) ."37
In his Novum Organum, Bacon was concerned with a method for
capturing nature despite her elusive subtlety. For Democritus, her
subtlety consisted mainly in the spatial minuteness of her ultimate
components. Bacon was thus right: Democritus would have "re-
joiced," for the microscope was about nothing if not about the
visual resolution of such spatial minuteness. But although the
meaning of subtilitas had always included that of spatial smallness
(like the atomists' À£1t'to¡.tÉpnŒ), the primary reference in six-
teenth-century talk of "the subtlety of nature" had been to the elu-
sive and secretive workings of nature, her trickery, and the occult
interconnectedness between natural objects. 38 In order to fathom
the cunning of nature, one needed to possess a mind of equal
cunning, that is to say, erudition ( eruditio) combined with divina-
tion ( divinatio) , two crucial Renaissance virtues rightly singled out

either studied under the microscope himself or heard others describe, and he re-
ferred to the opinions formed by users of these microscopes concerning their dis-
coveries. This allows us to conclude that "the recently invented perspicilla"had al-
ready been tested at least for a number of months. If we add to this that both Ba-
con and Drebbel were protégésof Jacob I; that Bacon had in 1618 become Lord
Chancellor, while Drebbel was employed by the Admiralty as an inventor of war-
ships, then we have a context within which a direct or indirect acquaintance of
the two men appears plausible. Cf. F. Bacon, Instauratio magna (London, 1620),
aphorism II § 39.
37 Bacon, Instauratio: "Primi
generis sunt [...] ea quae nuper inventa sunt per-
spicilla ;quae latentes et invisibiles corporum minutias, et occultos schematismos
et motus (aucta insigniter specierum magnitudine) demonstrant; [...]quale per-
spicillum si vidisset Democritus, exiluisset forte, et modum videndi atomum
(quem ille invisibilem omnino affirmavit) inventum fuisse putasset."
38 Cf.
especially G. Cardano, De SubtilitateLibri XXI, Ab authore plus quàm mille
locis illustrati, nonnullis etiam cum additionibus (Basel, 1560), esp. I: 8; and Scali-
ger's rebuttal in J.C. Scaliger, ExotericarumExercitationumLibri XV, de subtilitate, ad
HieronymumCardanum (Paris, 1557), esp. exercitatio1 on quid sit subtilitas.

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by Foucault.39 But, as Catherine Wilson has very recently pointed

out, the victory of atomism involved the transformation of the
Renaissance notion of subtlety back to a more clearly spatial un-
derstanding. Atomism replaced semiotic interrelations by propos-
ing mechanical models-which could be imagined, depicted in a
book, and potentially seen by a microscope.4o
The important point is, however, that despite his thorough un-
derstanding of the atomist position, Bacon declined to make it his
own philosophy. He nurtured strong sympathies for its cause but
considered its arsenal of random material units and empty spaces
too scanty to permit a satisfactory explanation of either the com-
plexity or the coherence of nature. Even during his most atomist
period, he did not cease to call atoms "seeds," to endow them
with "appetite, motion, and emanation" besides their more obvi-
ous attributes of "matter, form, dimension, place, [and] resist-
ance," and to adhere to an essentially dualist world of matter and
spirit.41 His own notion of "subtlety" is thus curiously suspended
between the sixteenth century's semiotic and occultist usage and
the atomists' purely spatial understanding. Bacon did indeed as-
sume that matter came subdivided into smaller units-and he
considered the microscope a very useful means for observing
them-, but the lawlike behavior of nature was due to spirits
whose operations could only be captured through induction but
not through direct observation.42

Pozuer's Material Ef fluvia

Bacon's belief in the agency of subtle spirits must not be seen as

evidence of philosophical atavism. For spiritual agencies survived
the century unscathed, and despite common assumptions regard-
ing the thorough mechanization of the seventeenth century's
world-view, not a single of its philosophers entirely dispensed with
them. Admittedly, those more favorably disposed towards ato-
mism than Bacon gave them a corpuscularian interpretation, but

39 M. Foucault, The
Order of Things(New York, 1970): 30-4.
40 Wilson, InvisibleWorld, ch. 2.
41 F. Bacon, Works,
ed. J. Spedding, R. Ellis, and D. Heath, 15 vols. (Boston,
1860-4), 10: 292; 387; etc. Cf. R.H. Kargon, Atomismin England fromHariot to New-
ton (Oxford, 1966), ch. 5.
42 Cf. Bacon, Instauratio, I § 57; and K. Lasswitz, Geschichteder Atomistikvom
Mittelalterbis Newton(Hamburg and Leipzig, 1890) 1: 418.

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even where they appeared as material effluvia and hence as

observables-in-theory, their causal efficacy set them apart from in-
ert corpuscles. As long as the horror vacui argument remained a
powerful incentive to keep nature's pores filled at all times, and as
long as biological processes remained an essential part of physica,
to require ensouled or otherwise self-propelled spirits, tenuous ef-
fluvia continued to appear as thoroughly indispensable entities.
Later in the century, it is true, Bacon's detached remark about
exulting Democritus was quoted out of context and used to enlist
the Chancellor as a supporter of atomist microscopy. The most
prominent such abuse was committed by Henry Power who
printed Bacon's sentence on the title page of his Experimental Phi-
losophy ( 1664) , a book commonly regarded as containing the first
English treatise on microscopy.43 In his In Commendation of ye Mi-
a
croscope, poem of dubious aesthetic merit, Power went even fur-
ther, rephrasing in the indicative what Bacon had stated but in
the conditional:

Thy Atomes (Brave Democritus) are now

made to appeare in bi.ilk& figure too.44
Both Boas Hall and Webster have claimed that Power was not
only hyperbolical but outright ironical when he wrote such lines.
They have characterized Power as a Cartesian rationalist who took
atoms to be detectable only by "the piercing Eye of Reason"45 and
by "Speculative and Metaphysical Evidence."4' According to them,
he 'jeered" and "rightly laugh [ed] at the notion [...] that the ef-
fluvia of the loadstone are visible through the microscope."47 But
they are quite mistaken. In his History of Generation of 1651,
Highmore had reported that magnetic effluvia, "by the help of
Glasses, have [been] seen in the form of a mist to flow from a
Loadstone, and other bodies whose aporcheas are more plenti-
ful," and Power, who had been acquainted with this passage at the
latest by 1658, had tried ever after to verify Highmore's observa-

43 H. Power,
ExperimentalPhilosophy,in ThreeBooks,Containing Newb Experiments
Mercurial, Magnetical (London, 1664).
Microscopical,
44 Power's
poem "In Commendation of yc Microscope" is reprinted in R.
Cowles, "Dr Henry Power's poem on the Microscope," Isis, 21 (1934) 71-80.
45 Power, 155.
46 Power, ExperimentalPhilosophy,102.
Experimental
47 C. Webster, Philosophy,
"Henry Power's Experimental Philosophy," Ambix 14 (1967),
169, n. 76. M. Boas Hall, "Introduction," in H. Power, ExperimentalPhilosophyin
ThreeBooks[facsimile reprint] (New York/London, 1967), xxii.

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tion.4g Far from 'jeering" and "laughing," Power nurtured high

hopes for the future of microscopy:
if the Dioptric:ksfurther prevail, and that darling Art could but perform what
the Theorists in Conical sections demonstrate, we might hope, ere long, to
see the Magnetical Effluviums of the Loadstone, the Solary Atoms of light
(or globuli aethereiof the renowned Des-Cartes), the springy particles of Air,
the constant and tumultuary motion of the Atoms of all fluid Bodies, and
those infinite, insensible Corpuscles (which daily produce those prodigious
(though common) effects amongst us) [...].

Not only was Power no Cartesian rationalist, but he in fact dis-

trusted the "Speculative and Metaphysical Evidence" adduced by
the champions of the rivalling corpuscularian schools. He specifi-
cally pointed out that
without some such Mechanical assistance [as the microscope], our best Phi-
losophers will but prove empty Conjecturalists, and their profoundest Specu-
lations herein, but gloss'd outside Fallacies.49

Atomist theories of causation not only could be, but had to be,
visually verified. In the 51st and last microscopical observation of
his Experimental Philosophy, Power returned to Highmore's visible
effluvia and stated in no unmistakable terms that

[t]his Experiment indeed would be an incomparable Eviction of the

Corporeity of Magnetical Effluviums, and sensibly decide the Controversie
'twixt the Peripatetick and Atomical Philosophers.50

Outstanding Contributions to the Corpuscularian Cause

Power's invocation of the microscope as the arbiter between

Aristotelianism and atomism is nothing else but a replay of Aristo-
tle's use of Lynceus as the arbiter between atomism and his own

48 N.
Highmore, The History of Generation, Examining the several Opinions of
diversAuthors, especiallythat of Sir KenelmDigby,in his Discourseof Bodies (London,
1651), 117. The word "aporcheas" presumably comes from to mean
particles "dancing away." Others, too, took Highmore seriously, most notably
Joseph Glanville, who wrote in The Vanity of Dogmatizing (London, 1661) that
Adam had, before the fall, possessed perfect vision: "His sight could inform him
whether the Loadstone doth attract by Atomical Effluviums;which may gain the
more credit by the consideration of what some affirm; that by the help of Micro-
scopesthey have beheld the subtile streams issuing from the beloved Minerall."
Quoted from Wilson, InvisibleWorld,64.
49 Power,
50 Power, Experimental Philosophy, s.p. [Preface, xvi-ii].
ExperimentalPhilosophy,57.

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hylemorphism. The remarkable fact is that although the actual

microscope could verify atomism no more than the mythological
Lynceus had been able to falsify it, many microscopists like Power
were convinced that since only a few orders of magnitude sepa-
rated them from the corpuscles they postulated, their philosophy
was all but confirmed. As Hooykaas has noticed long ago, the
corpuscularian theory came thus accompanied by
a clear-cut empiricism, which furnished the alleged evidence. The hypotheti-
cal character of the mechanistic conceptions was hidden; [and] the impres-
sion was established that it was based on experience.
In a more recent article, Meinel has investigated the nature of
this alleged empirical evidence, distinguishing six separate catego-
ries. Four of them turn out to be repetitions of, or elaborations
on, traditional Democritean, Epicurean, and Lucretian argu-
ments. Only the remaining two categories-to wit, evidence sup-
plied by alchemy and microscopy-were of more recent origin.52
By the end of the century, however, microscopy had dropped
out.5' Not only had it become all too clear that the visual confir-
mation of the corpuscles was not forthcoming, but it began to ap-
pear as if such a confirmation was even superfluous. The Oxford
physicist John Keill opened the Preface to his lectures of 1700 with
the following words:

Although now-a-days the mechanical Philosophy is in great Repute, and in

this Age has met with many who cultivate it, yet in most of the Writings of
the Philosophers, there is scarce anything mechanical to be found besides
the name. Instead whereof, the Philosophers substitute the Figures, Ways,
Pores and Interstices of Corpuscles, whichtheynever saw[...J .54

51 R. Hooykaas, The Conceptof Element.Its Historical-Philosophical

Development[=
authorized manuscript translation of Het begripelementin zijn historisch-zuijsgeerige
ontwikkeling(Ph.D., University of Utrecht, 1933), tr. H.H. Kubbinga] (s.l., 1983),
201.
52 Ch. Meinel,
"Early Seventeenth-Century Atomism. Theory, Epistemology,
and the Insufficiency of Experiment," Isis 79 (1988), 86-103.
53 As for
alchemy, Newman has over the past few years demonstrated that its
association with corpuscularian conceptions goes back to the medieval writings of
pseudo-Geber and beyond. This link, temporarily obscured by the dominance of
Paracelsianism but renewed by Helmont and others in the course of the seven-
teenth century, furnished corpuscularianism with a robust arsenal of arguments.
The stability of essences across chemical processes, together with a growing
number of quantative considerations, made alchemy a formidable ally in the
overthrow of Aristotelian hylemorphism. Cf. W.R. Newman, The "Summa perfec-
tionis" of pseudo-Geber(Leiden, 1991); and idem, "The Corpuscularian Theory of
J.B. Van Helmont and its Medieval Sources," Vivarium,21 (1993), 161-91.
54 Keill, "Preface," in An Introduction to Natural
J. Philosophy:or, Philosophical

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Newtonians such as Keill found themselves in a novel and quite

comfortable position. They did not need visual confirmation for
their hypotheses. In fact, they explicitly desired to sever the de-
pendence of the mechanical superstructure from its imaginary
corpuscularian basis. If the "mechanical Philosophy" wished to be
true to its name, it had to be mathematical, not picturesque; it
had to continue in the footsteps of Galileo or Kepler, not in
Gassendi's, let alone Descartes'. Newton had rendered the
atomists' phantasmagoric worlds of oddly shaped particles redun-
dant ; the phenomena could now be captured by analytic, dy-
namic, and statistical relations, and the mathematical description
of the behavior of bodies required no knowledge of the geometry
of their sub-structures.
These insights offer us a second reason to explain the demise of
microscopy. Not only did the hypothetical atoms remain hope-
lessly distant from the levels accessible to the magnifying eye, as
Magnen had several decades earlier already shown with his calcu-
lation, but the success of Newtonian dynamics also implied that
the causal powers of matter did after all not reside in their geo-
metrical or visualizable circumscription. This new understanding
of causality transformed the material effluvia of the corpus-
cularian microscopists into an upgraded, quantifiable version of
Bacon's invisible spirits.

Scientific "Anschaulichkeit: "Borelli vs. The Newtonians

This second reason for the microscope's "fall" ushers in the last
argument of this essay, concerning the role of the microscope in
the "visual turn" of the seventeenth century.55 To Keill and even
more so to eighteenth-century Newtonians, the micro-mechanics
of their predecessors appeared as silly bizarreries. But their laugh-
ter was unjust. Before Newton, the most plausible approach to-

LecturesRead in the Universityof Oxford,Anno Dom. 1700, 2nd English ed. (London,
1726), iii. (Emphasis added).
55 One of the
only authors to recognize that scientific visuality underwent a
dramatic change in the seventeenth century is van Berkel, who rightly points out
that there occurred a sudden move towards the requirement of "aanschouwelijk-
heid" for scientific explanations ("Anschaulichkeit" in German; best translated
maybe as "picturability" or "visualizability"). But this important theme still awaits
proper analysis. Cf. K. van Berkel, Isaac Beeckmann(1588-1637) en demechanisering
van het wereldbeeld(Amsterdam, 1983), esp. ch. 4.

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wards the erection of a universal mathematical model of nature

had for several decades been to begin with a classification of the
geometrical properties of atoms and of the laws that guided their
interactions. Take for example Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, today
unfairly neglected, whom Lasswitz has correctly recognized as the
one who, more brilliantly and tenaciously than anyone else,
undertook the task of creating for the corpuscularian theory a mathematical
foundation, based on mechanical laws, but without limiting himself to the
plausible illustration of possible and imaginable corpuscular processes
alone; he attempted to prove mathematically that his hypotheses needed to
produce the observed phenomena as a consequence.
Borelli's program was indeed grandiose. His three major works,
De vi percussion is (1667), De motionibus naturalibus (1670), and De
motu animaliurn ( 1680) are a coherent trilogy in which the author
attempts to establish the physiological functioning of organisms,
nature's most complex systems, by proceeding, step by step, from
a mathematical understanding of the behavior of the ultimate ma-
terial particles. Irrespective of Borelli's success or failure, here was
a model in which the results of microscopical anatomy were inte-
grated into an essentially mathematical analysis of elementary
physical processes.
Borelli's hope was that all physical, chemical, and biological
processes might ultimately be reduced to the law of shock as it ap-
plied to particles of different geometrical contours. His school
therefore attributed to the microscope an important role in the
investigation of the fine-structure of matter, which is why they rou-
tinely referred to it as to a "philosophical," a "mathematical," and
a "geometrical instrument."
The failure of Borelli's program in particular and of the
microscopical search for ultimate geometrical shapes in general
entailed the demise of what might be termed a "visually reduc-
tionist program" in early modern physics. Borelli and his col-
leagues had tried to erect a mathematico-deductive model of na-
ture in which the observed physical phenomena could all be re-
duced to the visualizable, depictable, geometrical properties of ul-

56 Lasswitz, Geschichteder Atomistik, 2: 325: "Er unternahm es, der

Korpus-
kulartheorie ein mathematisches, auf mechanische Gesetze begründetes Funda-
ment zu schaffen, indem er sich nicht damit begnügte anzugeben, wie sich viel-
leicht die korpuskularen Vorgänge mit einer gewissen Anschaulichkeit vorstellen
ließen, sondern indem er mathematisch nachzuweisen suchte, daß seine Hypo-
thesen in der That die beobachteten Erscheinungen zur Folge haben müßten."

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timate corpuscles. But, as Michael Mahoney has astutely pointed

out, the victory of Newtonian mechanics over the visual reduc-
tionism of corpuscularian physics (such as Borelli's) entailed a de-
parture from the representational modes that had been devel-
oped in the course of the century. Instead of the imaginary depic-
tions of third-dimensional microworlds, the new physics was
forced to return to the medieval diagram:

For the defining terms of the systems [such as force or accelerations] lay in
conceptual realms ever farther removed from the [pictorial] physical s ace
[...]Those terms could not be drawn; at best, they could be diagramed.

This implies that the relegation of microscopy to its marginal

eighteenth-century status was not just due to its own inability to
capture the causally relevant levels of matter, but also to the radi-
cal decrease in importance that its potential discoveries would
have had for a science defined by dynamic relations.
Conversely, the success of Newtonianism led to a gradual limita-
tion of the all-encompassing physica to the realm of inorganic in-
teractions. While the basic distinction drawn in seventeenth-cen-
tury physics had still been Aristotle's between natural and artifi-
cial, this distinction was replaced in the early eighteenth century
by that between animate and inanimate." Physica became "phys-
ics," at the exclusion of plants and of animals. By the 1730's,
Newtonian textbooks had banned all forms of life from their
pages; such non-quantifiable aspects of nature were left to the
natural historian.
The Leyden professor of physics de Volder had written towards
the end of the seventeenth century, in a quite Cartesian manner:
In metaphysics and mathematics, which deal with ideas alone-and these
clearly and distinctly perceived-certain reasoning thrives at last. In these,
reason rules supreme. But in physics, no matter how certainly we may draw
conclusions from an hypothesis, it remains uncertain whether the bodies we
have assumed in our reasoning truly exist or not.'9

57 S.
Mahoney, "Diagrams and Dynamics: Mathematical Perspectives on
Edgerton's Thesis," in Scienceand the Arts in the Renaissance,ed. J.W. Shirley and
F.D. Hoeniger (Washington, 1985), 200.
58 Cf. M.R. Reif, Natural
Philosophyin SomeEarly SeventeenthCentury Scholastic
Textbooks(Ph.D. thesis, Saint Louis University, 1962), 329; cf. also eadem, "The
Textbook Tradition in Natural Philosophy," Journal of the History of Ideas, 30
(1969), 17-32.
59
Quoted from E. Ruestow, Physicsat Seventeenthand Eighteenth-CenturyLeiden:
Philosophyand the NewSciencein the University(The Hague, 1973), 92.

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When his successors converted to Newtonian physics and 's

Gravesande's and Musschenbroek's textbooks conquered the
Continent, their prefaces wedded de Volder's Cartesian rational-
ism with Newton's aversion to unfounded hypotheses. They made
it very clear that physics was relying on nothing else but hypotheti-
cal assumptions when it spoke of last particles. "What truly is that
which remains confined within the surface of bodies? Is it not that
which specifically forms the body and is its substance? But of this,
we are ignorant," wrote Musschenbroek; "and of things unknown
to us," added 's Gravesande, "we are to deny or affirm nothing."6o
We hear the forceful echo of this development in the writings
of the only important microscopist left from the old century. In
the early years of the eighteenth century, Leeuwenhock men-
tioned in one of his letters a Dutchman who had claimed to have
seen with his microscope "not only mites [...] but the atoms of
Epicurus, the subtle matter of Descartes, the vapors of the earth,
those which our bodies transpire, and the influence of the
stars."6 Leeuwenhoek, who had begun his own career by validat-
ing an essentially Cartesian world, now called this man a "charla-
tan" without a trace of hesitation. 62 We recall that in 1664, Henry
Power had hoped to find precisely the kinds of things that the
"charlatan" now claimed to have seen; such sightings, Power had
thought, would decide the battle between Aristotle and atomism.
But by the early eighteenth century, things had changed: Aristotle
had been defeated despite the lack of evidence for the existence
of atoms, and the ontological questions of atoms had even been
bracketed by a new physics. The atom-gazer of Leeuwenhoek's re-
port was not only a charlatan, but he was old-fashioned at that.
Physics had moved beyond the need for visually verified founda-
tion to the higher planes of analysis. As a consequence, the insect-
infested world of the microscopists, the once-proud harbinger of
corpuscularian tidings, was now thrown back into the nether
worlds of a descriptive natural history that knew nothing of the
beautiful laws by which the world was held together. 63 When, in
the 1740's, scientific microscopy recovered and slowly regained

60
Quoted from Ruestow, Physics,123.
61
Quoted from Wilson, Invisible,World,223.
62 On the transformation of Leeuwenhoek's
philosophical outlook, cf. E.
Ruestow, "Images and Ideas: Leeuwenhoek's Perception of the Spermatozoa,"
Journal of theHistoryof Biology16 (1983), 185-224.
63
Limiting itself to the impact of the microscope on theories of matter, this

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former levels of scientific popularity, its actual and potential dis-

coveries were no longer of any consequence to a physics newly re-
stricted to the world of dead matter.
At the same time that the microscope fell, together with the ex-
pectation of watching causality at work, the telescope, its alleged
sibling, was being promoted to the new status of a positional in-
strument. It continued to sweep the skies, but no longer in search
of new vistas, but of calculatable data. Della Porta's motto, aspicit
et inspicit, thereby gained a new significance. Neither the causal
powers inherent in bodies nor their ultimate physical constitution
could be inspected directly. Once more essential properties had
to be inferred from macroscopic behavior. Only the methods had
changed: semiotic correspondences had been swapped for math-
ematical correspondences, which had to be discovered through
experiments and positional astronomy.

ABSTRACT

Recent scholarship, focusing on the rapid decline of microscopy after the late
1680's, has shown that the limitations of microscopy and the ambivalent meaning
of its findings led to a wide-spread sense of frustration with the new instrument.
The present article tries to connect this fall from favor with the microscope's
equally surprising but hitherto little noticed late rise to prominence.
The crucial point is that when the microscope, more than a decade after the
telescope, finally managed to arouse the interest of natural philosophers, it did so
as a corpuscularian tool, and as such it came to share the difficult fate of seven-
teenth-century corpuscularianism. The essay ends with the claim that the fall of
microscopy was not only due to the failure of microscopy to corroborate
corpuscularianism, but also to the changing definition of natural philosophy in
the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and to the separation of the
domains of living matter (to which the microscope found itself confined) from a
physicawhose recent mathematical framework excluded the organic world.

essay has not dealt with fate of this instrument in the domains of micro-anatomy
and embryology. These aspects of microscopy have been addressed by Fournier,
Fabric of Life, and Ruestow, TheMicroscope,as well as elsewhere. Their findings do
not seem to contradict, but in several unexpected ways to corroborate, the argu-
ments from natural philosophy offered here.

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