Many of the greatest discoveries in science have been brought about by the creation of an ability to see what was previously unseen. The most exciting of these inventions was the microscope because it could be used by almost anyone.
It brought into focus a worlds of such amazing complexity and beauty in the most commonplace things and changed for ever our admiration for the intricacies of Nature. It first made people gaze in wonder at the very small as well as the very large. One person deserves the credit for launching this voyage of discovery into this microworld and for illustrating it with skill and precision.
Robert Hooke began his scientific career while still a student at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1653, where he met and worked for Robert Boyle. Over the next several years, amongst his many interests, he was active in developing powerful new compound microscopes, and used his beautifully crafted instrument to create a remarkable atlas of the microsopic world.
It was published in 1665 for the Royal Society under the title Micrographia and contained a series of sixty studies, fifty-eight microscopic and two telescopic picture of the moon and stars. The majority of Hooke's microscopic studies were of living things, a louse, a fly's compound eye, sponges, herbs, a bee's sting, fish scales, snail's teeth, insects, stinging nettles, and spiders. I can fully understand the amazement in looking at these things under a microscope as I have previously completed a unit in Environmental Biology, and I have looked at many of these things myself.
These pictures inspired scientists to embark upon serious systematic study of the detailed structure and function of insects and other small-scale intricacies of nature. The extraordinary fine tuning of the system of legs and arms that was revealed in these pictures of the tiny creatures such as the flea led many to believe this must have been designed ready-made for functions that it now performs. This claim would ultimately be superseded by Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin. Darwin acknowledged the debt he owed to this early collection of evidence. Without it, there would have been no problem for the mechanism of natural selection to solve.
To my upmost delight, we can view this extraordinary interactive 'fold out' book of this remarkable mans illustrations online and I would love to share this with you. It is well worth a look.
Ingenious indeed.
http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/proj/ttp/flash/hooke/hooke.html
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