“Micrographia in Context: Hooke on the Genealogy of Insects”

Jeremy Schneider (Princeton University)

This paper reconstructs Robert Hooke’s conjectures on the genealogy of insects in his Micrographia (1665). I argue that the relationships of kin and ancestry form a central message of his microscopic drawings and observations of insects. Section 1 is a brief introduction situating the argument. Section 2 places Hooke’s theorizing within the Royal Society’s debates about “generation” and shows how he develops his theory of an Ur-insect in his investigations of “mites,” culminating in the concept of a “prime parent.” Section 3 shows how Hooke integrates into mechanical philosophy the notion that insects are the members of the same family despite the diversity of their appearances. His conceptualization of insects as living machines allows him to trace a common blueprint within the anatomy of gnats, flies and ants. This shared blueprint is taken—although with limitations—as direct evidence of a prime parent, which provided the original plan. Section 4 illustrates how the anatomy of the crab serves Hooke as an universal reference-frame to outline the crustaceous blueprint that underlies all of the creatures already discussed as well as spiders, lice and “water insects” like crabs, shrimps and lobsters. Hooke delineates, in effect, the morphology of what we now call “arthropods” and argues that these creatures are different instantiations of one and the same blueprint. Section 5 investigates how Hooke’s genealogical studies of insects connect up with his studies of the Earth’s long history, emphasizing how his ideas about environmental change and fossils shape his conception of animals’ (family) history. Section 6 concludes with some contextualizing observations.

“Circulating Microscopy: The Quekett Microscopical Club, the Postal Microscopic Society, and Microscopic Periodical Culture”

Meegan Kennedy (Florida State University)

The role of professional societies in the development of modern science and scientific journals is well-established (Yeo; Gross, Harmon, Reidy). Currently, scholars are turning their attention to working-class and amateur researchers, and popular science.

The Microscopical Society of London was founded in 1839 to promote microscopical science, chartered as the Royal Microscopical Society in 1866. In 1865, the Quekett Microscopical Club was founded as an amateur alternative (“club”) to the RMS. But the divide was blurry: the membership overlapped, and Quekett meetings often consisted of outings and comic songs as well as informative sessions.

If the RMS and Quekett circulated microscopy through their meetings, both also did so by publishing journals. The Transactions of the Microscopical Society of London appeared in 1844, replacing an earlier journal. A reader’s suggestion in Harkwicke’s Science Gossip, taken up by M. C. Cooke, sparked the Quekett, whose Journal of Microscopy began in 1868.

The title of “circulating microscopy” best belongs to the Postal Microscopical Club, educating provincial microscopists from 1873. The PMS not only produced a journal but its members met virtually, via postal circulation of microscopic slides along various “circuits.”

This paper examines the status of the amateur microscopist when he (or she) circulates in mid-Victorian science. What is the role of the Quekett Club, balanced between professional society and casual ramble? How does a society constituted postally contribute to a scientific community founded on the authority of witnessing? And how do amateur microscopy periodicals testify to their societies’ origins and ambitions?

“Popularizing Instruments: The Microscope and Scientific Knowledge in Republican-era China”

Noa Nahmias (York University)

In 1935, popular science writer Gao Shiqi (高士其 1905-1988), published an article in a Shanghai journal titled “What if I cannot Afford a Microscope?” In it, he did not offer practical advice on how one can see microbes without a microscope, but rather put forth his vision for popularization of science in China: one that centered on the widespread and daily use of scientific instruments such as telescopes and microscopes. Gao’s call to popularize not only scientific knowledge, but scientific instruments, opens up the question of what role modern science would play in people’s lives, and what role the people would play in making science in modern China. This paper argues that scientific instruments, both as discursive figures and as physical objects, were a key element in defining what popular science meant and who would be its audience.

This paper adopts the term “popular science” while also building on James Secord’s formulation of “science as communication”. To that end, it shifts the focus to the question of how audience engaged with scientific instruments – what kind of access was afforded to what groups in the public. I draw on examples from periodicals, books and exhibitions, to show how instruments were used to define and delineate the role of audiences and the scope of scientific knowledge. I argue that popular science was being constructed by writers and editors as a unique realm of knowledge to be used differently by different publics.