Critical Focus | Breaking the Myths of Microscopy
THE MICROSCOPE
2014, Volume 62:2, pp. 63–73
DOI
https://doi.org/10.59082/CIRA1970
AUTHOR
Brian J. Ford
EXCERPT
Everybody knows the light microscope as the symbol of science — the universal touchstone that people immediately associate with high-end scientific research. But there is another side to this coin that is rarely discussed: Most of what we’re told about its origins is wrong. When people look back at the development of the microscope, they downgrade its practitioners and their skills in a uniquely patronizing fashion. It doesn’t happen anywhere else in science. The work of the early astronomers is described with awe, pioneering surgeons are admired for their courage and dexterity, groundbreaking engineers are regarded as brave pioneers, and every physicist is a genius. But not the early microscopists. They are portrayed as inquisitive amateurs, who simply slashed into a few plants and got lucky.