Visualizing the Unknown

How do scientists represent the previously invisible? How do they convince their peers, and communicate their observations with microscopes to a larger audience? Here, images are of crucial importance. A well-constructed scientific illustration could say more than a thousand words.

This project (2021-2027) explores the genesis of visual representations of the micro-world in early modern Europe. Observing strange and unknown structures through microscopes, pioneers such as Robert Hooke, Johannes Swammerdam, Marcello Malpighi and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek faced unprecedented challenges. They had to find ways to correspond about the unknown world of insect-anatomy, bodily fluids and bacteria. To do so, they developed new visual idioms to analyze, interpret and shape their observations.

In the same decades, a novel medium increased the prominence of the image: the scientific journal, starting with the Philosophical Transactions in 1664. Images included in publications had a powerful impact on readers, becoming crucial for the dissemination, discussion and confirmation of new knowledge.

To many, the scientific image seems an unproblematic, transparent agent. However, the process of observation, perception and representation was not – and still is not – self-evident. How can people be convinced that previously unthinkable creatures really exist? How are images constructed and manipulated to convey a message?

This project aims at unravelling the trajectory from microscopic observation to the dissemination of visual reports. We will not only study now-famous microscopists, but we will put their work in the international context of lesser known scientists, artists, institutions and publishers. Our hypothesis is that the practices developed in the seventeenth century, are still of great relevance today.

The project has given – and will  give – input to exhibitions, colloquia, public lectures, articles, books and an education program.

Background image: Johannes Swammerdam, Drawing of a bee’s eye in Icones operis Bibliae naturae, c. 1677. fol. 31v, Ms BPL 126 B. Leiden University Library