Observing techniques: Images from the microscopical life sciences, 1850--1895

With the rise of objectivity as a standard of truth in the sciences during the first half of the nineteenth century, the spheres of art and science came to be seen as increasingly polarized. Artists exploited subjective sensations, aesthetic sensibilities, and the human imagination while scientists demanded objectivity and truth unadulterated by human interpretation and idiosyncrasies. In spite of this active binary, this thesis claims that at mid-century the burgeoning microscopical life sciences entwined the aims of art and science, mixing subjective aesthetic response and objective observation just as Realist and Naturalist artists claimed to blend these values. Specifically, describing and depicting the transformation of living organisms (nature) into colorful specimens (artifact) presented microscopists with difficult rhetorical and aesthetic choices concerning objective study and subjective effect.; The dissertation begins by considering three aspects of the researcher's activities, observation (eye), drawing (hand), theory (mind), to demonstrate how they worked together to create microscopic knowledge and ways of seeing specifically driven by cell theory. Chapter two examines microscopy manuals to discern how instructors presented the initial transformation of the live, intact organism into a specimen or epistemic object. Concentrating on verbal and visual presentations of the animals' often violent demise, the thesis investigates whether aestheticizing the descriptions of these violent acts was a feasible or desirable strategy. Chapter three explores "color vision," microscopists' experiences with dyes, their production of microscopically readable pictures, and their aesthetic responses to the colorful views they created. The intertwining of subjective response and objective examination is considered through scientific examples and through a comparison to Naturalist painting. The last two chapters concentrate on the production and use of drawings and photographs to document and communicate microscopic knowledge. Opinions regarding the usefulness of the camera lucida are considered as well as ways in which the demand for drawings linked the microscopist to artistic practices. Chapter five offers a brief discussion of photomicrography, highlighting in particular a case study that reveals the persistent value of drawing in the face of technological advances in photography and microscopy.