Abstract

Early-modern microscopy has long been associated with the ambition to go down to nature’s least level and make observations of the most fundamental parts, the particles, atoms, or corpuscles. In Stephen Gaukroger’s words, early-modern microscopy developed along the lines of a vertical model of explanation. Yet, as Gaukroger has shown us, during the early modern and Enlightenment periods, this model was put under pressure by horizontal models of explanations, which sought to explain natural phenomena in terms of relations between cause and effect taking place on the same level. In this essay, I explore Gaukroger’s analysis further as I show the benefits of revisiting early-modern microscopy in terms of horizontality rather than verticality. This allows to see how the leading microscopists subverted the notion of magnification as a descension to a more foundational level through the stabilization of the sub-visible world as a space in its own right.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-76037-2_12