| 英文摘要 |
Isobel Armstrong’s essay, “The Microscope: Mediations of the Sub-visible World,” to be found in the collection Transactions and Encounters: Science and Culture in the Nineteenth Century, addresses how the use of the microscope became a con-tested issue in Victorian Britain, especially before the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859). It shows how microscopy, an embodiment of technological mediation (or mediating device), was related to the idea of the sub-visible world in the field of natural science. Armstrong is largely concerned with the controversies over the use of the visual device after the microscope be-came a popular instrument of measurement. The mediation of the microscope transformed users’ perceptual abilities, which, in turn, enabled them to observe the minute beings hidden in the natural world. Like the telescope or the ligh-thouse, the microscope was a serious, utilitarian, philosophical instrument for mimicking the transformation of vision in the nineteenth century. Microscopy was not just about the calibration of an optical instrument or the reticule mea-surement of specimens with different sizes for examining phenomena experi-mentally. It was also about the philosophical idea of using an optical device for popular amusement. In such a case, the knowledge revolution was intertwined with science, technology, and philosophy, which gave rise to the transformation of microscopic vision at various scales of measurement. |
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