Laura Boyd-Clowes

“The study of the very small” A tiny look at how microscopy prompted a shift from Aristotelian-style biology to the
mechanical philosophy of the seventeenth century, specifically corpuscularianism as presented by Robert Boyle

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, European thought went through a period of

accelerated changes, resulting in radical reconsiderations of theoretical and methodological conventions.

This period is referred to as the Scientific Revolution. Whether it was truly a revolution, or merely a

gradual movement away from the prevailing philosophies - namely Christian theology and Ancient

Greek philosophy, especially Aristotelianism - is controversial1. Nonetheless, it is certain that there was

a significant difference in the way mathematics, medicine, religion and the natural sciences were done

before the so-called Revolution, and after. A major catalyst for these changes was the innovation of

powerful new tools and techniques for observation, including the telescope and the microscope. The

development of optical instruments for magnifying objects otherwise too small to study brought new

perspectives to classic philosophical and scientific problems. As this paper shall show, there were at

least two major effects of the introduction of the microscope into intellectual European society. The first

pertains to the accepted method of discovery: New technologies allowed for an emphasis on direct

observation, rather than faith in the unseen. The second effect of microscopy was theoretical: The ability

to observe previously invisible structures and organisms prompted a new round of age-old questions:

What is life? What is substance? What makes us human? Ultimately, pre-microscopic philosophy could

not bear the burden of this new data, and the result was a new physical theory, called

corpuscularianism.

The microscope drew popular attention after the publication of Robert Hooke's illustrated

Micrographia. It was widely read, and influenced the common understanding of the vast world lying

1
The naming of definitive revolutions in science is inaccurate, according to Thomas Khun inThe Structure of Scientific
Revolutions, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2nd ed.1970.
just beyond human visibility. Hooke identified plant cells, which he named after the similarly shaped

chambers of a monastery. He also reported on molds, fungi, insect parts and the structure of chemical

compounds. He was a perpetual tinkerer who fell upon an effective way to make high-magnification

lenses, which allowed him to inspect his studies in greater detail than was ever before possible. Hooke’s

place in the history of science is assured by his association with other great experimenters and

philosophers: he was employed as an assistant to Robert Boyle, and as the Curator of Experiments and

Secretary of the Royal Society of London participated in extensive discourse with the greatest minds of

the time, including Sir Isaac Newton. His experiments informed more than just the fields of entomology,

botany or optics; the discoveries that he and Dutch microscopist Antoine VanLeeuwenhoek contributed

to the Royal Society had general philosophical import.

Via Micrographia, Leeuwenhoek discovered his passion for studying the very small. His first

experiments as submitted to the Royal Society were direct copies of Hooke's experiments, but

demonstrated the possession of superior technical equipment and a keener eye. After Leeuwenhoek’s

election to the Royal Society, Hooke was charged with verifying the Dutch merchant’s experiments.

Most notably, it was Leeuwenhoek’s 1676 report of single-celled organisms that elicited doubts from

Society members, requiring a special trip from a team of respected officials to his hometown of Delft.

The Society was understandably skeptical, as the notion of invisible creatures, present in many different

substances, challenged the current conceptions of matter. Besides the seeming implausibility of such a

claim, the Society’s concern was that if such animalcules –as Leeuwenhoek called them – really did

exist in human bodies as well as in swamp muck and pepper water, then theories of life might require

reform. Importantly, Leeuwenhoek described his process in detail, making it possible for Hooke, or
anyone with access to a suitably powerful microscope, to replicate the experiment. Leeuwenhoek's

observations were finally vindicated by the Society four years later:

“…I omitted therefore farther to look after them, for about five or six days, when finding it a warm day, I examined
again the said water; and then much to wonder I discovered vast multitudes of those exceeding small creatures, which
Mr. Leeuwenhoek had described [italics added]; and upon making use of other lights and glasses, as I shall by and by
shew, I not only magnified those I had thus discovered to a very great bigness, but I discovered many other sorts very
much smaller than those I first saw, and some of these so exceeding small, that millions of millions might be
contained in one drop of water. I was very much surprized at this so wonderful a spectacle, having never seen any
living creature comparable to these for smallness: nor could I indeed imagine that nature had afforded instances of so
exceedingly minute animal productions. But nature is not to be limited by our narrow apprehensions; future
improvements of glasses may yet further enlighten our understanding, and ocular inspection may demonstrate that
which as yet we may think too extravagant either to feign or suppose.” (Hooke as quoted by Gest, 195)

Because of the Royal Society's commitment to Francis Bacon’s empirico-inductivist methodology,

which requires verification of hypotheses with thorough observational evidence (to which Leeuwenhoek

adhered strictly), they were required to take seriously the final verdict. This reinforced the growing

conviction that ‘seeing is believing', in spite of contrary ideologies. The microscope affirmed what the

empiricist tradition asserted: that rigorous experimentation and unbiased observation provide truths

about the world that mere hypothesizing cannot. Although it takes diligence and skill, nature’s mysteries

are indeed open to discovery.

Upon confirming Leeuwenhoek’s ‘little animals’, the Royal Society was forced to re-evaluate

some key premises in their collective philosophy. Microscopy in general was uprooting many common

assumptions about the basic constitution of things. Microscopical devices revealed more of the natural

world than had ever been observed before, suddenly exposing a new level of physical analysis. The

Aristotelian’s insistence on our intuitive ‘expertise’ with the human-scale world was cast into doubt,

particularly when the structure of mundane rocks and soil was shown to be unimaginably more complex

than it appeared to the naked eye:

“And whoever views sand through a good microscope will easily perceive that each minute grain has its own size
and shape as well as a rock or a mountain…” (Boyle in Ariew&Watkins, 264)
 The ground was literally shifting under foot. It became obvious that Aristotelian chemistry, with

its reliance on mmetaphysical elements, was incoherent under the microscope. Further problems arose

for the Aristotelians in their attempts to reconcile the new discoveries with teleological justifications for

nature. The world was beginning to look like it was built out of increasingly tiny parts, and nowhere on

the microscopic scale was there an explanation to be found for their arrangements.

This explanatory crisis set the stage for the development and defense of corpuscularianism, as

championed by Boyle and other figures of the Scientific Revolution. There may be something even more

fundamental in bodies that is outside of the scope of human perception, said the corpuscularians. They

called these imperceptible component parts corpuscles – ‘small bodies’, and regarded them as the basic

constituents of all matter. The principles of physics were reduced to two: matter and motion. Boyle is

generally given credit for his integration of experimental science into the new mechanical philosophy.

The corpuscular theory of matter was embraced by many, in and outside of the Royal Society, in virtue

of its testability: unlike Aristotle’s principles and elements, matter and motion are measurable. Boyle’s

theory was taken to task with the profound question, “What is life?” His answer surprised many of his

fellow Christians:

“As great a Number & variety of parts as a living Humane Body consists of, ‘tis highly probable that the Lump of
Stupid[38] matter out of which they were fashion'd, was contriv'd into this admirable System” (Boyle in MacIntosh,
161)

The problem of how living cells, and the complex organisms they composed, could come from

combinations of corpuscles was solved by a mechanistic interpretation: According to Boyle, cells, along

with everything else, are a unique interaction of collisions and particularly shaped corpuscles. Unlike

René Descartes’ mechanism, Boyle did not expect corpuscularianism to explain all phenomena. His

theory was based on actual experiments, and was exceptionally flexible without being an all-
encompassing system. But it did account for microscopical discoveries, which alternative theories were

unable to do.

In their attempts to learn about tiny things, microscopists thus pushed the philosophy of the

seventeenth century into new territory that radically altered perceptions of reality. The emerging science

of microscopy, of which Robert Hooke and Antoine VanLeeuwenhoek were driving forces, highlights

the connection between technological advancement and new theoretical development. It was a

microcosm for the Revolution that surrounded it, representing a rupture with previously established

ways of thinking, and demanding new ways of addressing standard philosophical questions.

Works cited:

H. Gest. The discovery of microorganisms by Robert Hooke and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. Notes and Records of the
Royal Society of London. London. 2004 58, 187-201

R. Ariew, E. Watkins (eds.) Modern philosophy: an anthology of primary sources. Hackett Publishing. Indianapolis. 1998

MacIntosh, J. (ed.) Boyle on Atheism. University of Toronto Press. Toronto. 2006

Bibliography:

L. C. Palm. Leeuwenhoek and Other Dutch Correspondents of the Royal Society. Notes and Records of the Royal Society
of London. London. July 1989 43, 191-207 http://www.jstor.org/stable/531382

W. S. Keezer. Spontaneous Generation, Pre-Formation and Epigenesis. Bios. Beta Beta Beta Biological Society.
Germantown, MD. March 1965 36, 26-32

B. Waggoner. Robert Hooke (1635-1703) http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/hooke.html