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Project MICRO, MSA’s educational outreach program, asked the subscribers to the MSA "Microscopy" listserver, a worldwide list of ~4,000, to submit their favorite quotations from the great and not-so-great for use in the forthcoming manual, Microscopic Explorations. The response was amazing; there are far too many to use in the manual, and they’re much too good to throw away. They are presented here for your enjoyment. They were contributed for nonprofit educational use, from clippings pinned on lab walls all over the world; please don’t use them for commercial purposes.
1) Robert Hooke, in Micrographia ,1665 [the first "microscope book"]: "For the limits to which our thoughts are confind, are small in respect of the vast extent of Nature itself; some parts of it are too large to be comprehended and some too little to be percieved. And from thence it must follow, that not having a full sensation of the Object, we must be very lame and imperfect in our conceptions about it, and in all the propositions which we build upon it; hence we often take the shadow of things for the subftance, small appearances for good similitudes, similitudes for definitions; and even many of those which we think to be the most solid definitions, are rather expressions of our own misguided apprehensions then of the true nature of the things themelves. ....." ..."The texture of Cells of Cork and of some other frothy Bodies could not be so curious, but that possible, if I could use some further diligence, I might find it to be discernable with a Microscope. ... me thinks, it seems very probable, that Nature has in these passages, as well as in those of Animal bodies, very many appropriated Instruments and contrivances, whereby to bring her designs and end to pass, which not improbable, but that some diligent Observer, if helped by Microscopes, may in time detect. " "...by the help of Microscopes, there is nothing so small, as to escape our inquiry; hence there is a new visable World discovered to the understanding ....By this the Earth it self, which lyes so near us, under our feet, shews quite a new thing to us, and in every little particle of its matter, we now behold almost as great a variety of Creatures, as we were able before to reckon up in the Whole Universe it self.... 2) Manfred Von Heimendahl in his introduction to Electron Microscopy of Materials,1980: "Seeing is Believing". 3) Henri Poincare [French mathematician; late 1800s] : "The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it; and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful." " It is because simplicity and vastness are bothe beautiful that we seek by preference simple facts and vast facts; that we take delight, now in scrutinizing with a microscope that prodigious smallness which is also a vastness..." ( For more in that vein see: S. Chandrasekhar "Beauty and the quest for beauty in science" Physics Today July,1979) 4) Dr. W.W. Mayo, the founder of the Mayo Clinic and the father of the 'Mayo Brothers' needed a microscope for his medical practice. At a cost of $600 (in the early 1900's) this would mean he and his wife would have to put a mortgage on their house to obtain the microscope. His wife decided the issue by saying that if the microscope would help him to give greater service to his patients, he should have it. [now the quote:] "The difficulty of securing the microscope and its value as an aid to the practice of medicine gave it unusual value in our eyes, and perhaps for that reason Charles and I, even as children, became expert in its use." Dr. William J. Mayo, 1930. 5) Alexander Pope, 1733:
6) Voltaire in Micromegas: "One can be fooled by appearances, which happens only too frequently, whether one uses a microscope or not." 7) James Thurber in "University Days", a chapter in in My Life and Hard Times: "We'll try it," the professor said to me, grimly, ' with every adjustment of the microscope known to man. As God is my witness, I'll arrange this glass so that you see cells through it or I'll give up teaching. In twenty-two years of botany, I -' He cut off abruptly for he was beginning to quiver all over, like Lionel Barrymore, and he genuinely wished to hold onto his temper; his scenes with me had taken a great deal out of him. So we tried it with every adjustment of the microscope known to man. With only one of them did I see anything but blackness or the familiar lacteal opacity, and that time I saw, to my pleasure and amazement, a variegated constellation of flecks, specks, and dots. These I hastily drew. The instructor, noting my activity, came back from an adjoining desk, a smile on his lips and his eyebrows high in hope. He looked at my cell drawing. "What's that?" he demanded, with a hint of a squeal in his voice. "That's what I saw, " I said. "You didn't, you didn't, you didn't!," he screamed, losing control of his temper instantly, and he bent over and squinted into the microscope. His head snapped up. "That's your eye!" he shouted. "You've fixed the lens so that it reflects! You've drawn your eye!" 8) Henry Baker, Chapter 15,"Cautions in viewing Objects" of The Microscope Made Easy, 1742 [A popular book in its time]: " Beware of determining and declaring your opinion suddenly on any object; for imagination often gets the start of judgment, and makes people believe they see things, which better observations will convince them could not possibly be seen; therefore assert nothing till after repeated experiments and examinations in all lights and in all positions. When you employ the microscope, shake off all prejudice, nor harbor any favorite opinions; for, if you do, ‘tis not unlikely fancy will betray you into error, and make you see what you wish to see. Remember that truth alone is the matter that you are in search after; and if you have been mistaken, let not vanity seduce you to persist in your mistake. Pass no judgment upon things over-extended by force, or contracted by dryness, or in any manner out of their natural state, without making suitable allowances. There is no advantage in examining any object with a greater magnifier than what shows the same distinctly..." 9) Glenn Richards, University of Minnesota,microscopy instructor [circa 1980]: "There are many microscopes, but few microscopists." 10) Charles Shillaber [Author of the "classic" LM text, circa 1950]: "The microscope with its accessories is by far the least understood, the most inefficiently operated , and the the most abused of all laboratory instruments" 11) Victor Hugo, Book 3 Chap. 3 of Les Miserables: "Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the grander view? And in another chapter of Les Mis: "Philosophy is the microscope of thought." 12) Adrianus Pijper, South African Journal of Science 26:58-72 (1939): (The microscope is) "man's noblest, supreme, and most far-reaching tool." [Just BEFORE electron microscopy.] 13) E. M. Chamot, J. Appl. Microscopy 2: 502 (1899): "It is rather remarkable how slow American chemists have been in realizing the importance of the microscope as an adjunct to every chemical laboratory. . . . (The microscope is) as much a necessity in every analytical laboratory as is the balance." [Note the date; still true.] 14) Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) Poems, Second Series ca 1880:
15) K'ang Yu-wei (1858-1927) Ta T'ung Shu: The One-world Philosophy of K'ang Yu-wei transl. L.G. Thompson,1958: "In the age of One World, the power of the microscope will be one doesn't know how many times greater that that of [the instrument of] today. [Viewed through the instrument of today] an ant looks like an elephant. [Viewed through the instrument of] the future, the size of a microbe will be like that of the great, skyborne p'eng bird." 16) Theodore Roszak (1933 - ) Where the Wasteland Ends (1972) : "Nature composes some of her loveliest music for the microscope and telescope." 17) Peter Sewell ((President of an electron emitter company),1984. (Personal conversation on the event of the writer being hired for a position in Peter's electron microscopy lab. The only marginally relevant experience he had at the time was at an astrophysical observatory.) "A microscope is the same as a telescope - you just point a microscope down." 18) Woody Allen, quoted at the beginning of B.A. Palevitz et al. Protoplasma 109:23-55 (1981): "...can the human soul be glimpsed through a microscope? Maybe, but you'd definitely need one of those very good ones with two eyepieces." 19) Lawrence (Yogi) Berra, as quoted in Sports Illustrated 60(14):94, 2 April 1984 , quoted at the beginning of B.A. Palevitz and P.K. Hepler Planta 164:473-479 (1985) "You can observe a lot by watching." 20) Maxine Kumin, The Microscope [the full text of Kumin’s 1963 children’s book with the same title]: He worked, instead of tending store, At grinding special lenses for A microscope. Some of the things He looked at were: mosquitoes’ wings the hairs of sheep, the legs of lice, the skin of people, dogs, and mice; ox eyes, spiders’ spinning gear, fishes’ scales, a little smear of his own blood, and best of all, the unknown, busy, very small bugs that swim and bump and hop inside a simple water drop. Impossible! Most Dutchmen said. This Anton’s crazy in the head. We ought to ship him off to Spain. He says he’s seen a housefly’s brain. He says the water that we drink is full of bugs. He’s mad, we think! They called him dumkopf, which means dope. That’s how we got the microscope.
21) William Shakespeare [Out of context, of course] A Midsummer Night’s Dream: "And as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the...pen turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation, and a name." Macbeth: "I have the not, and yet I see thee still, Art thou not sensible to feeling as to sight? Or art thou but...a false creation? I see thee yet, in form as palpable as this which now I draw. Thou marshal’st me on the way that I was going, and such an instrument I was to use. Mine eyes are made the fools of the other senses, or else worth all the rest." 22) William Blake:
23) Anonymous Californian:
Today the toad is studied as A scientific topic No prince is found, although we look With vision microscopic. And yet, the prince is there - he's there As clearly as can be. Forget your microscope, my friend, And use your eyes to see! 24) e. e. cummings:
not. Progress is a comfortable disease: your victim(death and life safely beyond) plays with the bigness of his littleness - electrons deify one razorblade into a mountainrange; lenses extend unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish returns in its unself. A world of made is not a world of born - pity poor flesh and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this fine specimen of hypermagical ultraomnipotence. We doctors know a hopeless case if - listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go 25) Daniel Mazia, U.C.Berkeley cell biologist, shortly before his death in 1996: "The gifts of microscopes to our understanding of cells and organisms is so profound that one has to ask: What are the gifts of the microscopist? Here is my opinion. The gift of the great microscopist is the ability to THINK WITH THE EYES AND SEE WITH THE BRAIN. Deep revelations into the nature of living things continue to travel on beams of light." 26) Ned Yeomans, Department of Medecine, Harvard Medical School: An Ultrastructural Sonnet
And how much really fits into the plan
27) Iain Probert to his sister, Elaine Humphrey (after some of her micrographs had been used on the TV show X-Files), 1997: A Christmas Ode for the Scientifically Minded Twas the night before christmas And deep in the lab Something came crawling From under a slab it crawled to the agar To take a peek At all the bacteria Lying asleep it slithered through the jelly (as icky things do) Depositing slime And gobbets of goo Moving on to the 'scope' With a single aim To spell out a message Addressed to Elaine Dear Human' it wrote With some ink from a gland 'Forgot your card, Please understand' Having studied your kind And obtained my degree On a theses titled 'Humans and their relations with me' I find that you pry Into all that we do Without recognising We need privacy too! You took photos of each of my chums All of my aunties And Each of my sons You sold these photos to some t.v. show Keeping the money Isn't that so ? If you use our photos, to give others a fright You really don't know us For it is simply not right ! Now that we've informed you Please make amends Or we'll consult our lawyers Messrs S Bends We'll put an end to your scary sights By wearing bright colours And thick woolly tights Viruses and bacteria Will aim to be cute And all of your ventures Will go down the chute But heck, as it's christmas We'll give you a break Here is one scary picture And it isn't a fake ! Out of pouch, it took with a sigh, Its favourite photo Of Elaine's right eye! 28) Hilaire Belloc, in More Beasts for Worse Children:
The Microbe is so very small You cannot make him out at all, But many sanguine people hope To see him down a microscope. His jointed tongue that lies beneath A hundred curious rows of teeth; His seven tufted tails with lots Of lovely pink and purple spots, On each of which a pattern stands, Composed of forty separate bands; His eyebrows of a tender green; All these have never yet been seen - But Scientists,who ought to know, Assure us they must be so ... Oh! Let us never, never doubt What nobody is sure about! 29) Jonathan Swift:
30) Which has been anonymously corrupted to:
31) These are the words of the judge in an English court case (involving the classification of coal) in which expert microscopist testimony was called upon. The Lord President, Torbanehill Case, 1853, quoted recently in the McCrone journal, The Microscope: "....but one general remark may be made on the microscopic testimony, and it is, that there are those who see a thing, and also those who do not see it -- those who do see it, cannot see it unless it is there, and those who cannot see it do not see it at all. But very skillful persons looking for a thing and not seeing it, creates a strong presumption that it is not there. But when other persons do find it, it goes far to displace the notion it is not there." 32) Found in a fortune cookie: "If I hadn't believed it, I never would have seen it." 33) Nestor J. Zaluzec: Micro Carols
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