by Bill Mesler
NOTES
Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.
Chapter 1
Carlo Rovelli’s book The First Scientist: Anaximander and His Legacy, contains a wealth of information about this most underappreciated of Greek philosophers. Anaximander’s views on the origin of life are discussed in Henry Osborn’s From the Greeks to Darwin. Biographical details of Augustine are taken from Peter Brown’s Augustine of Hippo.
5 The Greeks have always received a lot of credit: Patricia Fara provides a superbly comprehensive, non-Eurocentric history of science in Science: A Four Thousand Year History.
7 He set his sights on the sun, the stars: Anaximander’s ideas on physics are discussed in David Park’s The Grand Contraption.
8 In Anaximander’s scheme: Osborn, From the Greeks to Darwin, 33–35.
10 Just as the Galápagos would provide: A beautifully written account of Aristotle’s stay on Lesbos can be found in Darwin’s Ghosts, by Rebecca Stott.
11 “was devoted at all times to magic”: Charles, Chronicle of John, 100.
12 “who persist in applying their studies to a vain purpose”: Lindberg, “Fate of Science,” 22.
13 Augustine also turned his inquisitive eye: Augustine, City of God, 102.
13 The policy was a result: Fry, Emergence of Life on Earth, 20.
14 Some forty years after Antony and Cleopatra: Cobb, Generation, 10.
Chapter 2
Francesco Redi’s account of his experience with the Franciscans and their supposed wards against poison can be found in a letter to Athanasius Kircher that was included in Redi’s 1687 book Esperienze intorno.
15 The grand duke had a reputation: The relationship between Ferdinando II and Redi is well elaborated in Harold Acton’s Last Medici.
17 “Doubt often wants to grow”: Redi, Esperienze intorno, 7.
19 A native of Brussels: A Short History of Chemistry, by J. R. Partington, contains a great summation of van Helmont’s place in the history of chemistry.
20 Many years later, he would write: Ibid., 44.
20 It involved mixing a sweaty shirt: Cobb, Generation, 10.
21 But Redi had an epiphany: Redi’s Experiments on the Generation of Insects contains a firsthand account of the events that led him to conduct his experiments refuting spontaneous generation.
23 The official cause was “apoplexy”: Acton, Last Medici, 106–8.
23 The new grand duke was his mother’s child: Cosimo III’s religious extremism is covered by Acton in The Last Medici and by Christopher Hibbert in The House of Medici.
23 A biographer would later describe Cosimo: Acton, Last Medici, 112.
Chapter 3
A large selection of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek’s letters is available under the title The Collected Letters of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, although this collection still contains only a fraction of his huge body of correspondence. Clifford Dobell’s Antony van Leeuwenhoek and His “Little Animals” offers a wealth of additional biographical information.
28 “You are either a Spinozist”: Duquette, Hegel’s History of Philosophy, 144.
30 Latin and Greek were virtually mandatory: Jonson, Works of Ben Jonson, 3:287.
31 Simple lenses had been around: The Roman emperor Nero was said to have watched gladiatorial combat using an emerald as a corrective lens. Between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, “reading stones” were crafted in Italy to assist older people with declining eyesight. Tommaso da Modena’s 1352 portrait of a bespectacled Cardinal Hugh de Provence is the first image of someone using a lens as a reading aid. Monks often used lenses to assist in illuminating manuscripts, and a Florentine manuscript from 1289 describes glass curved in such a way that it had “great advantage to old people with weak vision.” On account of its oval shape, the writer called such glasses lenti, the Italian for lentils. from the Italian lenticchia (“lentil”). From lenti sprang the world “lens.”
33 By the time Micrographia appeared: Van Leeuwenhoek’s house became the subject of a Jan Vermeer painting, A House in Delft. It is notable for being the only painting that Vermeer ever set outside the confines of his own study.
35 Oldenburg was released after the threat: Dobell, Antony van Leeuwenhoek and “His Little Animals”, 39.
36 In 1673, the journal included a letter: Ibid., 41.
36 Huygens wrote that van Leeuwenhoek: Ibid., 43.
37 “I have no style, or, pen”: Ibid.
37 Surely, Oldenburg wrote: Ibid., 42.
38 “The vermin only tease and pinch”: D. F. Harris, “Antony van Leeuwenhoek the First Bacteriologist.”
39 While examining his own saliva: Dobell, Antony van Leeuwenhoek and “His Little Animals”, 239.
39 In an old man who “never washed”: Ibid.
39 In a letter to the Royal Society: Ibid., 243.
40 “It was just as impossible”: H. Harris, Things Come to Life, 30.
41 He even convinced himself: Most of the smallest organisms that van Leeuwenhoek observed reproduced asexually by dividing in two in a process now known as binary fission.
42 In a 1692 essay on the state of microscopy: Bradbury, Evolution of the Microscope, 76.
42 One of his letters described a fit: Dobell, Antony van Leeuwenhoek and “His Little Animals”, 91.
43 On receipt, a clerk at the Royal Society: Ibid., 96.
43 The bequest was accompanied: Ibid., 97.
Chapter 4
Science historian Shirley Roe has written extensively on the pamphlet debate between Voltaire and John Needham, both in her chapter “Biology, Atheism, and Politics in Eighteenth-Century France” in the anthology Biology and Ideology and in her other academic works on the subject.
45 “It’s better to go along with the stories”: Park, Grand Contraption, 26.
47 In 1757, amid the reactionary climate: Parton, Life of Voltaire, 2:277.
47 “It is dangerous to be right”: Moland, Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, 14:73.
48 In a letter to his lifelong confidant: Becker and Becker, Encyclopedia of Ethics, 3:1771.
48 “Is it not the most absurd of all extravagances”: Voltaire, Works of Voltaire, 273.
48 “Miracles,” he said, “are very intelligible”: Roe, “Voltaire versus Needham,” 74.
49 “hold the Christian sect in horror”: Gay, Enlightenment, 391.
52 “One can say that in a single apple pit”: Malebranche, De la recherche de la vérité, 46–48.
53 “If one knew what all the parts”: Roe, “Biology, Atheism, and Politics,” 40.
53 He compared the process to that of “a clock”: Pinto-Correia, Ovary of Eve, 1.
54 French author Bernard de Fontenelle: Broman, “Matter, Force and the Christian Worldview,” 93.
54 “even the tiniest fibril”: Jacob, Logic of Life, p. 76.
56 “I could hardly believe my eyes”: Dawson, Nature’s Enigma, 95.
56 When he presented a demonstration: Stott, Darwin’s Ghosts, 96.
58 “My Phial swarmed with Life”: H. Harris, Things Come to Life, 40.
59 He was convinced that these: Ibid., 42.
59 “Living and animation”: Roe, “Biology, Atheism, and Politics,” 45.
60 Buffon did something else in Natural History: The significance of Buffon’s use of the word “reproduction” is discussed in detail in François Jacob’s classic The Logic of Life.
60 “Needham has seen, has imagined”: Roe, “Voltaire versus Needham,” 77.
61 In letters to friends at home: Mitford, Nancy, Voltaire in Love, 23.
61 “The more I glimpse of this philosophy”: Davidson, Voltaire: A Life, Kindle location 2058.
63 In a letter to Frederick: Hamel, Eighteenth Century Marquise, 370.
64 Maupertuis described Needham’s experiment: Roe, “Voltaire versus Needham,” 72.
64 “100,000 madmen of our species wearing hats�
��: Voltaire, Works of Voltaire, vol. 33, 1829.
64 He wrote another satire, Séance memorable: Ibid.
65 “If God did not exist”: Voltaire, Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, 10:402.
66 “If I examine on the one hand”: Roger, Life Sciences in Eighteenth-Century French Thought, 518.
66 “A watch,” Voltaire said, “proves a watchmaker”: Israel, Enlightenment Contested, 364.
66 “You had made small reputation”: Roe, “Biology, Atheism, and Politics,” 49.
68 “Men will always deceive themselves”: D’Holbach, System of Nature, 11.
69 In a footnote, he invited readers: Ibid., 21.
69 Voltaire called it “a great moral sickness”: Stott, Darwin’s Ghosts, 157.
69 To a friend he wrote: Roe, “Voltaire versus Needham,” 81.
69 “The world recoils in horror”: Ibid., 83.
71 “I die adoring God”: Espinasse, Life of Voltaire, 191.
71 He wrote a parody: Roe, “Voltaire versus Needham,” 83.
Chapter 5
Andrew Crosse’s second wife, Cornelia Crosse, published an account of his life under the title Memorials, Scientific and Literary, of Andrew Crosse, the Electrician. This work includes many of Crosse’s own memoirs, as well as accounts from friends. James Secord’s Victorian Sensation is a superb telling of the story behind the authorship of and associated controversy that greeted Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. It should be required reading for anyone interested in the history of Victorian-era science.
73 No right-minded architect: Crosse and Crosse, Memorials, 153.
78 “Hence without parent by spontaneous birth”: Nichols, Romantic Natural Histories, 129.
79 The analogy people drew: Andrew Crosse continues to draw interest because of the rather specious theory that Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley based her character Dr. Frankenstein on Crosse. The theory has even been the subject of a relatively recent book. Although Shelley did, in fact, attend a lecture Crosse had given on electricity, nothing prior to his 1836 experiment tied him to spontaneous generation, the creation of life, or anything else to do with the biological sciences. His famous experiment was stumbled upon purely by accident, and it happened several years after Shelley’s book was written. Rather than Crosse influencing Shelley, it was she who influenced him, at least in the way he was later perceived.
79 “a spark of being into a lifeless thing”: Shelley, Frankenstein, 34.
79 “So easy it is to deceive oneself”: Whittaker, History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity, 69.
80 A year later, Aldini electrically animated: Lane, Life Ascending, 149.
81 The first person known to have written: William Gilbert, the personal physician of Queen Elizabeth I, was the first to systematically describe electrical phenomena. Gilbert was of the category of late-Renaissance scientists who had begun to break with the Greek classicists. He made a great show of his contempt for scientists who based everything on Aristotle’s writings and would “toss off a few Latin words in the hearing of the ignorant rabble in token of their learning.” Yet when he gave his phenomenon a name in 1600, he used the Latin word electricus, meaning “from amber.” A century and a half later, electricus began to be replaced by the word “electricity.”
Gilbert’s reference appeared in the pages of his seminal work, De magnete, magneticisque corporibus, et de magno magnete tellure, published in 1600. His interest in magnetism was an outgrowth of his interest in astronomy. Gilbert was an adherent of Copernican theories of planetary motion, in which planets orbited the sun and not vice versa, and he came up with a rather brilliant theory for why this was so. He imagined the Earth—and all the heavenly bodies—to be giant magnets with their orbital paths based on magnetic fields. It was a remarkably prescient guess at a time before Newton had formulated his theory of gravity. Gilbert’s contemporary, the German astronomer Johannes Kepler, arrived at many of the same conclusions.
82 Still others called it an “imponderable fluid”: Tresch, Romantic Machine, 46.
83 So eager were people: Ibid.
84 Priestley also was the first person: Benjamin Franklin drew his friend Joseph Priestley into the field of electricity by posing to him a problem. At the time, scientists often used a kind of parlor trick to demonstrate the nature of electricity. All it required was an electrically charged metal can and a piece of cork tied to a string. The cork would be held close to the can and drawn to it. Once the can and the cork touched, the cork would itself become electrically charged, and it would be deflected away. Franklin noticed that if he placed the cork inside the can, the cork didn’t move at all, which perplexed him. Priestley figured out that this lack of movement was due to the equal attraction of the cork from all sides of the can. More important, Priestley was able to deduce that electrical force followed the same mathematical behavior Newton had used to describe gravity: diminishing as the inverse square of the distance between two interacting bodies.
Priestley’s book The History and Present State of Electricity marked the first appearance of the story of Franklin’s kite flying during an electrical storm, which Priestley almost certainly heard from the famously self-promoting Franklin himself. The image of the sagacious statesman bravely flying a kite in a rainstorm became the iconic depiction of one of America’s most colorful characters. Whether or not it actually happened remains an open question.
85 Crosse was a loner at heart: Crosse and Crosse, Memorials, 32.
85 Many years later, he would say: Ibid., 33.
86 Using an electric current: Humphry Davy’s contributions are beautifully recounted in The Age of Wonder, by Richard Holmes.
88 The novelist and future prime minister: Secord, Victorian Sensation, 10.
89 He sent Crosse a personal letter: Secord, “Curious Case,” 472.
90 In print, he was branded: Ibid.
Chapter 6
Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist, by Adrian Desmond and James Moore, is the seminal biography of Charles Darwin. Darwin’s views on the origin of life have been elaborated by the scientists Juli Peretó, Jeffrey L. Bada, and Antonio Lazcano, and the historian of science James Strick.
93 FitzRoy described the volcanic beach: Desmond and Moore, Darwin, 169.
94 In the three weeks before he arrived: Ibid.
95 They encountered a group of Spanish whalers: C. Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle, 381.
97 If these birds indeed turned out to be: C. Darwin, “Darwin’s Ornithological Notes,” 262.
98 “We seem to be brought somewhat near”: C. Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle, 400.
100 “One might really fancy”: Ibid., 402.
102 His ideas earned him a place: The horrible conditions of these workhouses would one day become infamous, but at the time, they were popular with the progressive reformers who dominated the Whig Party. The Poor Laws were passed with mostly Whig support and opposed both by Tory conservatives who favored traditional charity and by working-class radicals. Though Malthusian economics was cited by supporters of the laws, Malthus himself opposed them.
102 Darwin would later write: C. Darwin, Autobiography, 98–99.
102 Joseph Priestley, himself no orthodox follower: Priestley, “Observations and Experiments,” 128.
105 “The watch must have had a maker”: Paley, Natural Theology, 1.
105 When Darwin read Paley’s book: C. Darwin, Autobiography, 51.
105 “I fear there are but small hopes”: Desmond and Moore, Darwin, 191.
106 She wrote to him afterward: Brown, Darwin’s Origin of Species, 46.
108 “We went a little into society”: C. Darwin, Charles Darwin, 37.
110 His son later noted the book’s “simplicity”: Brown, Darwin’s Origin of Species, 67–68.
110 In its stead was nature: C. Darwin, Annotated Origin, 84.
110 “If you be right”: C. Darwin, Correspondence, 7:379.
110 “There is grandeur in this view of life”: The changes to t
his important paragraph in Origin has been traced at Darwin Online (http://darwin-online.org.uk/Variorum/1859/1859-490-c-1860.html).
112 It smacked of cowardice: As we write this book, the Institute for Creation Research, a Christian group with a mission to undermine science that contradicts biblical scripture, maintains a website with a section on the origin of life that notes Darwin’s failure to address the question in Origin, “even though it’s the title of his book.”
113 “The doctrines of the generatio spontanea”: Rupke, Richard Owen, 173.
113 “Is there a fact, or a shadow of a fact”: Peretó, Bada, and Lazcano, “Charles Darwin and the Origin of Life,” 399.
113 But when it came to his choice of words: Ibid.
113 “I have long regretted”: Ibid.
113 It would be, he guessed: Peretó, Bada, and Lazcano, “Charles Darwin and the Origin of Life,” 401.
114 “At the present day”: Ibid.
Chapter 7
Two excellent sources of information on Pasteur—although from radically different perspectives—are Patrice Debré’s biography (Louis Pasteur) and Gerald L. Geison’s critical reappraisal of the scientist’s work and life (The Private Science of Louis Pasteur). Geison’s otherwise excellent account falls a little short on Pasteur’s conflict with Pouchet, failing to adequately point out that, ultimately, Pasteur was right about spontaneous generation, at least in the observable cases presented by Pouchet, Bastian, and those who came before them. Bastian’s story is at the center of science historian James Strick’s Sparks of Life: Darwinism and the Victorian Debates over Spontaneous Generation, which does a good job of showing how the conflict between miasmatic theory and germ theory became wrapped up in the contentious debate over spontaneous generation.
118 Pasteur began his address: Pasteur, “On Spontaneous Generation.”
119 “We simply take a drop of sea-water”: Geison, Private Science of Louis Pasteur, 111.
119 “Mightn’t matter, perhaps, organize itself?”: Ibid.