The Seeds of Life
Page 29
God had designed “monstrous eggs”: Roger, Buffon, 122.
you would need a microscope: Müller-Sievers, Self-Generation, 31.
a metal duck, complete with copper feathers: Riskin, “The Defecating Duck.”
The earliest musical notation: Alfred Crosby, The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250–1600 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 144.
Leibniz’s computer was a sort of colossal: George Dyson, Darwin Among the Machines: The Evolution of Global Intelligence (New York: Basic Books, 2012), 37.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: THE CATHEDRAL THAT BUILT ITSELF
a “force that would be sufficiently wise”: Roe, Matter, Life, and Generation, 29.
“An eye might stick to a knee: Ibid.
“the universe is but a watch: Fontenelle, Conversations, 10.
“Ah madame,” he sighed: Wright, Franklin of Philadelphia, 327.
“You say that Beasts are Machines”: Fontenelle, Letters of Gallantry (London, 1715), 25 (and in a slightly different translation in Roger, Buffon, 118).
the wrong end of his telescope: Freedberg, The Eye of the Lynx, 7.
“mystical letters” in those God-dictated texts: Ruestow, Microscope, 54.
“the Solar Atoms of light”: Wootton, The Invention of Science, 237, quoting Henry Power.
empty chatter would “give place: Hooke, Preface to Micrographia. Online at http://tinyurl.com/jq9rv8j.
“discern all the secret workings: Ibid.
a “continued Chain of Ideas: Inwood, Forgotten Genius, 309.
“It is exceedingly difficult: Wilson, Invisible World, 221.
The telescope had been easier: Ruestow, Microscope, 3.
Even the hard-to-faze Leeuwenhoek [FN]: Letter written on July 16, 1696, online at http://tinyurl.com/j9gf7mj.
long passages of Gulliver’s Travels: Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, Part 2, Chap. 1, “A Voyage to Brobdingnag.”
“If our eyesight were enlarged,”: Farley, “Spontaneous Generation,” 101, quoting G. de Gols, A Theologico-Philosophical Dissertation Concerning Worms (London, 1727).
“How then can we avoid crying out: Wilson, Invisible World, 190.
messy, exuberant, and overflowing: Ruestow, Microscope, 4.
“Many a young biologist,”: Crick quoted in Vilayanur Ramachandran, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, or Beautiful Explanation?,” Edge, 2012. Online at http://tinyurl.com/jtlqzsw.
Mathematics (and music and chess) [FN]: David Eagleman’s remark is from Burkhard Bilger, “The Possibilian,” New Yorker, April 25, 2011.
“it is ye perfection of God’s works: Richard Westfall, Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 327.
like a suspect disappearing: Wilson, Invisible World, 231. Wilson examines this topic in depth in Chapter 7, “The Microscope Superfluous and Uncertain.”
“legs with joints, veins in its legs: Wilson, Invisible World, 190.
“Why has not Man a microscopic eye?: Alexander Pope, “An Essay on Man,” Book 1.
The “subjects to be enquired into: Wilson, Invisible World, 226.
the “great secret” would remain a secret: Ruestow, “Images and Ideas,” 211.
“The history of a man: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (London: William Pickering, 1836), 244. Online at http://tinyurl.com/jdylw8t.
the new-made clock would have to tick: Matthew Cobb makes this point in Generation, 226.
“cardigans, symphonies, cars, and cathedrals: Davies, Life Unfolding, 6.
“You haven’t changed a bit”: Pross, What Is Life, 17.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: A VASE IN SILHOUETTE
“extend it further than the astronomers: Gasking, Investigations, 70.
“Ye cause of gravity: Richard Westfall, Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 505.
“He loved money: Roger, Buffon, xiii.
“Sloths are the lowest: Gould, “Natural History,” New York Review of Books, Oct. 22, 1998.
keep their eyes out for mammoths: Richard Conniff, “Mammoths and Mastodons: All American Monsters,” Smithsonian, April 2010.
Buffon happily played the part: Roger, Buffon, 364–365.
“badly founded” and “explained nothing”: Roger, Buffon, 138.
Buffon made a point of emphasizing: Müller-Sievers, Self-Generation, 34.
“in both sexes, a sort of extract: Roger, Buffon, 130.
a “symphony of witty and learned smut.”: J. B. Shank, The Newton Wars and the Beginning of the French Enlightenment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 435.
Think of warts or tumors or moles: See, for example, Erasmus Darwin, Zoonomia, 1:490.
“trash, regurgitations of occultism: Stephanson and Wagner, eds., The Secrets of Generation, 74, quoting Lazzaro Spallanzani.
“Beware,” one scientist warned: Roe, Matter, Life, and Generation, 98, quoting Albrecht von Haller.
“What is the difference between: Wilson, Invisible World, 128.
CHAPTER NINETEEN: FROGS IN SILK PANTS
“undoubtedly one of the greatest: Gasking, Investigations, 130.
with “some apprehension”: Spallanzani, Natural History, 217. Online at http://tinyurl.com/zgpdteo.
Spallanzani noted indignantly [FN]: Spallanzani, Natural History, 200.
Could it be that bats: My description of Spallanzani’s work with bats is based on the essays in Isis by Sven Dijkgraaf and Robert Galambos.
Isaac Newton, believed in spontaneous generation: Findlen, “Janus,” 235.
“So little is necessary to make an animal,”: Midgley, Science as Salvation, 85.
Both William Harvey and Robert Hooke: Ruestow, Microscope, 202, cites these examples of common beliefs and many more.
“viper-powder”—dried, ground-up snake: Thomas Birch, The History of the Royal Society of London (London, 1761), vol. 1. Viper powder turned up again a year later (Birch, History, 446, 448). Online at http://tinyurl.com/z3vb4go.
“the excrements of the earth: Thomas, Man and the Natural World, 55.
Those ignoble animals: Schmitt, “Spontaneous Generation,” 270. See also Browne, “Noah’s Flood,” 109; also, Roger, Life Sciences, 18.
“the picture of hunger”: Redi, Vipers, excerpt translated by M. E. Kudrati, online at http://tinyurl.com/zskm7nl.
“as though it were some pearly julep”: Redi on Vipers, translated and annotated by Peter Knoefel, 7.
“creeping up, all soft and slimy”: Redi, Insects, 31. Online at http://tinyurl.com/hea6j54.
Presumably it was the wheat: André Brack, ed., The Molecular Origins of Life: Assembling Pieces of the Puzzle (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 1.
The newfangled “vegetative force”: Pinto-Correia, The Ovary of Eve, 194.
The leading view, that semen worked: Sandler, “Re-Examination,” 195–196.
“in Nature, in no case: Pinto-Correia, The Ovary of Eve, 198.
“God creates, Linnaeus arranges,”: James Barron, “The 300th Birthday of the Man Who Organized All of Nature,” New York Times, May 23, 2007.
“the amours” of the frog: Pinto-Correia, The Ovary of Eve, 198.
“the nuptials of the newt.”: Dolman, “Spallanzani.”
“darting backward and forward”: Pinto-Correia, The Ovary of Eve, 198.
“The idea of the breeches: Meyer, Embryology, 174.
Spallanzani owed the idea [FN]: Ibid.
CHAPTER TWENTY: A DROP OF VENOM
Newton conked on the head: Newton claimed in his old age that it was the sight of an apple falling in his garden that gave him the idea that the moon, too, was falling toward the Earth. The story is controversial, and the “fact” that everyone knows—that the apple hit Newton in the head—is surely false. Richard Westfall, Newton’s best biographer, discusses the falling apple in Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (New York: Camb
ridge University Press, 1980), 154–155, and is more inclined than many to give the story some credence.
Galileo lugging rocks: Galileo supposedly performed the great drop in around 1590. David Wootton discusses the evidence pro and con in Galileo: Watcher of the Skies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 73. Galileo certainly described such an experiment, though without ever mentioning the Leaning Tower. Historians dispute whether this was a thought experiment or an actual test.
an analogy to snake venom: Gasking, Investigations, 135.
“priest cum scientist”: Birkhead, Promiscuity, 108.
“resembled in color and shape: Pinto-Correia, The Ovary of Eve, 207.
Neither did extracts from lung or liver: Sandler, “Re-Examination,” 221.
Somehow, semen was special: Gasking, Investigations, 134.
“I found the volume: Ibid., 135.
But when Spallanzani took: Ibid., 136.
He never put the viscous blob: Capanna, “Spallanzani,” 191.
Semen samples from humans, horses: Sandler, “Re-Examination,” 208.
These were bona fide animals: Ibid., 219.
“It is rather alarming: Gasking, Investigations, 132.
“My long experience in the world: Metz and Monroy, eds., Fertilization, 18.
So influential was Spallanzani: Ibid., 10.
did not “differ in the least”: Gasking, Investigations, 133.
“Reproduction was a uniquely female occupation: Farley, Gametes and Spores, 110.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: THE CRAZE OF THE CENTURY
in a Paris courtyard: This account is from Pera, Ambiguous Frog, 16–19.
“the craze of the century.”: Whitaker, Smith, and Finger, eds., Brain, Mind and Medicine, 271.
Audiences wept with Lear: William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 5, Scene 3.
was in fact “electrical fluid”: Gasking, Experimental Biology, 104.
endless opportunities for creative mayhem: Steven Johnson highlights this contrast between gravity and electricity in The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America (New York: Riverhead, 2009), 20.
Traveling lecturers set off foot-long sparks: Hochadel, “Shock,” 55–56.
“electricity took place of quadrille.”: “Experiments on Electricity,” Gentleman’s Magazine 15 (1745): 194. Online at http://tinyurl.com/jun7uq4.
don a pair of glass slippers: Ashcroft, Spark of Life, 16.
Electricity was always described: Pera, Ambiguous Frog, 3–5.
In England, France, Italy, even Poland: Bensaude-Vincent and Blondel, eds., Science and Spectacle, 75, and “Experiments on Electricity.”
“honored [the local electrical savants]: “Experiments on Electricity.”
“It is singular to see: Heilbron, Electricity, 318.
1,800 tingling, tormented soldiers: Ashcroft, Spark of Life, 15.
“I inadvertently took the whole [shock]: Brox, Brilliant, 98, and the American Physical Society, “Ben Franklin,” online at http://tinyurl.com/htzuxmn.
it demonstrated that the lightning bolt: Brox, Brilliant, 100, and Krider, “Benjamin Franklin.”
“heaven’s artillery.”: Stacy Schiff, The Witches: Salem, 1692 (New York: Little, Brown, 2015), 17 and 427n.
calamitous to the bell ringers: Brox, Brilliant, 99, and Cohen, Franklin’s Science, especially the section entitled “Lightning Rods Versus Church Bells,” beginning on 119.
Many religious believers opposed [FN]: Cohen, Franklin’s Science, 159.
The first person to die: “Account of the Death of Georg Richmann,” Pennsylvania Gazette, March 5, 1754. Online at http://tinyurl.com/zrm7ja4.
Joseph Priestley [FN]: Cohen, Franklin’s Science, 6.
“The first time I experienced it,”: Heilbron, Electricity, 18.
left her temporarily unable to walk: Heilbron, Electricity, 314, and Ashcroft, Spark of Life, 14.
“Instead of one of the two hands”: Strickland, “Ideology of Self-Knowledge,” 458.
where he met Benjamin Franklin: Porter, The Facts of Life, 108.
In London Graham opened a Temple: Syson, Doctor of Love, 3.
“the exhilarating force of electrical fire”: Porter, The Facts of Life, 109.
Graham promised “any gentleman: Ibid., 110.
“Even the venereal act itself”: Otto, “Regeneration of the Body,” and Stephanson and Wagner, eds., The Secrets of Generation, 14.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: “I SAW THE DULL YELLOW EYE OF THE CREATURE OPEN”
Luigi Galvani’s claim: See Piccolino and Bresadola, Shocking Frogs, 1–25; also George Johnson, The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments, 60–74, and Pera, Ambiguous Frog, xx–xxvi.
a frog broth: Historians have repeated the tale since Jean-Louis Alibert recorded it in his Eloge Historique de Galvani, published in 1801. For a skeptical modern take, see Piccolino and Bresadola, Shocking Frogs, 5.
by the French Revolution: Nicholas Wade, Marco Piccolino, and Adrian Simmons, “Luigi Galvani.” Online at http://tinyurl.com/hlogn33.
“a genius for electricity.”: Pera, Ambiguous Frog, 41.
“He had invented the first: Ashcroft, Spark of Life, 25.
The world “laughs at me,”: The quote is firmly entrenched in scientific legend. Frances Ashcroft, herself an esteemed chemist, quotes the remark in Spark of Life (8), but she comments in her notes that it was likely invented by a French astronomer, Camille Flammarion, in 1862.
“the first of the decapitated criminals: Ashcroft, Spark of Life, 28.
Spectators gasped that Foster had come back: “George Foster,” Newgate Calendar, Jan. 1803. Online at http://tinyurl.com/hpjcpav.
Spectators vomited and fainted: Ashcroft, Spark of Life, 29.
June 1816, near Lake Geneva: My account of that fateful summer is based largely on Johnson, “Mary Shelley and Her Circle,” in A Life with Mary Shelley, and Stott, The Poet and the Vampyre.
“We were placed hand in hand: Darby Lewes, ed., A Brighter Morn: The Shelley Circle’s Utopian Project (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2002), 147.
At Oxford, Shelley’s room overflowed: Richard Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit (New York: Harper, 2005), 37.
no more than electrified clay”: Ashcroft, Spark of Life, 9.
He grew so fat: Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002), xiv.
“preserved a piece of vermicelli: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Introduction to the 1831 edition. Online at http://tinyurl.com/zdse7rx. See also Ashton Nichols, “Erasmus Darwin and the Frankenstein ‘Mistake,’” Romantic Natural History. Online at http://tinyurl.com/jsc34ho.
“Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated”: Shelley, Frankenstein, Introduction to the 1831 edition.
“It was on a dreary night of November: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Chap. 5. Online at http://tinyurl.com/hpuarvv.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: THE NOSE OF THE SPHINX
“Only about one millionth of one billionth: Alan Lightman, “Our Lonely Home in Nature,” New York Times, May 6, 2014.
Robert Brown focused instead: The source for this section on Robert Brown is Nott, “Molecular Reality.”
The term “organic chemistry”: Brian Silver, The Ascent of Science (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 319.
“I can make urea: Ramberg, “The Death of Vitalism,” 178.
Lavoisier’s discoveries [FN]: For a (skeptical) examination of the quote attributed to the revolutionary judge, see Dennis I. Duveen, “Antoine Laurent Lavoisier and the French Revolution,” Journal of Chemical Education 31 (February 1954).
In one painstaking experiment: Hoffmann, Life’s Ratchet, 30.
But Helmholtz’s new experiments: Ibid., 41.
F. Scott Fitzgerald famously suggested: Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up (New York: New Directions, 2009), 69.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: “THE GAME IS AFOOT”
Across Europe, scientists had responded: Gasking, Investigat
ions, 138–139.
“surpasses the utmost powers: Peter Roget, The Bridgewater Treatises on the Power Wisdom and Goodness of God As Manifested in the Creation (London: William Pickering, 1834), 2:582. Online at http://tinyurl.com/glwuao6.
A decade before, two young colleagues: Gasking, Investigations, 140–142.
What modern thinker wanted to return: Farley, Gametes and Spores, 47.
“take pleasure in boring us: La Mettrie, Machine Man, 86.
“There will never be a Newton: Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment (London: Macmillan, 1914), 312. Kant’s remark is often cited in the form I quote in the text; J. H. Bernard’s translation here differs slightly. Online at http://tinyurl.com/jc9fjbm.
“When I observed the ovary,”: Baer, “On the Genesis of the Ovum,” 120.
“Every animal which is begotten: Baer and Sarton, “Discovery,” 324.
a fluid that “curdled”: Ibid., 317.
On the last day: Ibid., 325.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: CAUGHT!
On an October evening: Otis, Müller’s Lab, 63.
The two men left their coffee: Vasil, “History of Plant Biotechnology,” 1424, and Bechtel, Discovering Cell Mechanisms, 68–69.
“All cells come from cells.”: Wagner, “Virchow,” 917.
“all developed tissues can be traced back: Virchow, Cellular Pathology (London: John Churchill, 1860), 27.
a host of colleagues and rivals: Hunter, Vital Forces, 64–74.
“a great many little Boxes”: Hooke, Micrographia, Observation 18, “Of the Schematisme or Texture of Cork.” Online at http://tinyurl.com/gwhkl5s.
All through the 1700s: Hunter, in Vital Forces, describes a series of technical improvements in microscope design that dated from the 1830s (see 60–61).
Botanists spent their time: Gasking, Investigations, 168.
“stark fools and idiots”: Rudolf Virchow, The Freedom of Science in the Modern State (London: John Murray, 1878), 18.
the thrilling discovery of a Neanderthal skull: Schultz, “Rudolf Virchow.”