Why science needs wonder
It is easy to mock Brian Cox’s spellbound admiration on television as he looks heavenward, but the spark in his eyes isn’t there just for the cameras.
BY PHILIP BALLPUBLISHED 02 MAY 2012"There is perhaps a little irony in how, even as they attempted to distance themselves from a love of wonders found in the tradition of collectors of curiosities, these early scientists discovered wonders lurking in the most prosaic and unlikely of places once they were examined closely enough. Robert Hooke’s Micrographia (1665), a gorgeously illustrated book of microscopic observations, was a compendium of marvels equal to any fanciful medieval account of journeys in distant lands.
Under the microscope, mould and moss became fantastic gardens, lice and fleas were transformed into intricate armoured brutes, and the multifaceted eyes of a fly reflect back ten thousand images of Hooke’s laboratory. Micrographia shows us a determined rationalist struggling to discipline his wonder into a dispassionate record."
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