Jutta Schickore. The Microscope and the Eye: A History of Reflections, 1740-1870. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. ix + 317 pp. $40.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-226-73784-3.

Reviewed by Peter J. Ramberg (Truman State University)
Published on H-German (January, 2009)
Commissioned by Susan R. Boettcher

Microscopy in Britain and Germany, 1740-1860

A classic question in the history of science is how students of nature can generate reliable knowledge about it. How do we come to rely on instruments, like the microscope or the telescope, to extend our reliable range of vision? Jutta Schickore's The Microscope and the Eye is a detailed study that integrates philosophical and historical approaches to uncovering how biologists created reliable knowledge with the microscope in Britain and Germany in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Through analysis of primarily published works, Shickore attempts, and largely succeeds, in answering questions about how and when microscopy became a reliable source of knowledge. She argues that the currently accepted historiography, that "modern" microscopy began in the 1830s as a result of the emergence of academic scientific medicine in Germany, is insufficient, and that understanding the rise of microscopy requires the careful analysis of methodological and epistemological reflections and practices beyond technical, theoretical, or institutional developments.

Schickore's primary conceptual innovation throughout the book is the concept of "second order tools," referring to "practitioners' methods ... and more generally to their reflections about themselves as observers and the epistemic function of the microscope as a second order device" (p. 7). In other words, these "second order" tools are those used by microscopists to determine the reliability of their observations--is the microscope producing a "real" image or is it distorting it? The first half of the book treats the use of microscopes in eighteenth-century Britain. Schickore argues that, contrary to existing historical work, microscopy in the eighteenth century was not in decline or stagnating. As she argues in detail, microscopists actively considered how to use the microscope reliably as a simple extension of vision that would improve the knowledge of man's place in creation. Microscopes were used both for research and as sources of amusement in the polite settings of the salon. Case studies include the microscopic study of the nerves by Alexander Munro and Felice Fontana, the use of microscopes themselves as precision tools in surveying instruments and telescopes for measuring small increments, the study of optical illusions (by Thomas Young, Michael Faraday, and David Brewster), and the emergence of test objects, such as insect jaws, butterfly scales and small leaves, as second order tools to determine a microscope's resolving power.

The second half of the book on German microscopy should be of most interest to scholars of Germany. By the 1830s, German instrument makers had surpassed the British in the quality of their microscopes, and the rise of modern microscopy has traditionally been located in 1830s Germany, specifically in the institutional development of scientific medicine at the German universities. Schickore does not dispute this central claim, but does argue that German advances in microscopy were related as much to second order concerns (very different from those that she discusses in Britain) as with the emergence of scientific medicine.

Schickore analyzes the work of (among others) Johannes Müller, Christian Ehrenberg, Ludolph Treviranus, Alfred Volkmann, and Ernst-Heinrich Weber. Schickore argues here that the unlike the British, the Germans were not interested in assessing the properties of microscopes themselves through various test objects, but in elucidating the appropriate methods of preparation for each observed object. For example, Müller recognized that the microscopic study of embryos (a fundamental transformational process) and of blood (an unchanging component of the body) required different kinds of techniques. As a result, German microscopists focused on the techniques for preparation of tissues.

The primary case study Schickore has chosen here is the study of the retina, and she argues for a reinterpretation of how its structure was discovered. Traditionally, Treviranus has been credited with showing the structure of the retina as the optic nerve that spreads out and ends in various papillae, even though his theory of the retina was rejected within a few years of its publication. Because of this early rejection, Schickore argues, Treviranus's work was the culmination of a particular microscopical tradition, and not the end point of the discovery. Further, Schickore argues, Treviranus's theory was rejected not because of improved microscopes (resolving power had not increased), but because of second order concerns. Specifically, Carl Gottschke showed in 1837 that the appearance of retinal tissue under the microscope was directly affected by the preparation technique of adding water to the sample (Treviranus's preparatory technique), which distorted the tissue. To show how these second order concerns had become incorporated into microscopy, Schickore also analyzes the contents of several standard textbooks on microscopy that appeared between 1840 and 1860. Although all of them do discuss optical theory of the microscope, by far the largest portion of textbooks was devoted to discussing various second order techniques of sample preparation.

Despite its many convincing facets, two concerns remain about Schickore's work. The first issue is her concept of "second order tools" itself, by which she means preparations and procedures used in addition to the actual viewing of an object with a microscope. What Schickore calls "second order" concerns are similar to the long-familiar idea (to philosophers of science) of "auxiliary hypotheses" used in the Duhem-Quine thesis. According to Pierre Duhem, the truth value of any observation always depends on the truth value of the assumptions used in the techniques and instruments used to make it. Although Schickore is essentially discussing the historical formation of auxiliary hypotheses, she unfortunately does not compare the concept of secondary concerns with the established idea of auxiliary hypotheses, and it is not clear how they are different.

Secondly, Schickore emphasizes the importance of "organic chemistry" in the development of second order concerns in German microscopy. The way in which Schickore uses the phrase perhaps reflects the colloquial use of "organic" as "living." But unfortunately, in the 1830s, "organic chemistry" had already come to mean something very different--the study of compounds containing the element carbon. And, as Schickore uses the phrase (that is, in the materials she mentions used in preparatory techniques), it does not mean the use of carbon-containing compounds.

Finally, it would also have been useful had Schickore discussed any British response to the German approach to microscopy. The reader does not learn from her account whether there even was one. These concerns are relatively minor, however, and do not detract from the central arguments of her book, which are well argued and constructed. For those historians interested in a rich study of microscopy and a reinterpretation of an important period in the history of German science, I can highly recommend Schickore's book.

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Citation: Peter J. Ramberg. Review of Schickore, Jutta, The Microscope and the Eye: A History of Reflections, 1740-1870. H-German, H-Net Reviews. January, 2009.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=15660

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