THE NATURAL HISTORY ELEMENT OF HENRY POWER'S EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY OF 1664: REFLECTIONS ON THE BIOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS OF A 17TH CENTURY HALIFAX MICROSCOPIST

摘要

While the published writings of Henry Power (1623-1668), which appeared under the title Experimental Philosophy in 1663, but bear the date!664, are well known to historians of science and are available in a reprint of 1966, and while his contributionsto science have received attention from several competent commentators (Cowles 1933; Cohen 1964; Webster 1963, 1967; Hall 1966; Hughes 2002) these have concentrated on his work in the physical sciences. Moreover, although Hall (1966) remarked that the microscopical observations are the most original part of his book - which also embraced mercurial and magnetic experiments - very little attention has been paid to the content of these , observations, most of which were biological, and Power's contributions to natural history have therefore gone largely unremarked. While many of these are inevitably trivial and, not surprisingly, some of his statements are erroneous, they include others that are highly meritorious and deserve greater recognition than hasbeen accorded to them. They are among the earliest accounts that show how the recently invented microscope revealed details of plants and animals in a way hitherto impossible, and was beginning to demonstrate the existence of minute forms of life of amazing complexity. His reports are also important in providing an insight into the sort of things that interested observers of nature at that time and of their attitude and approach to organisms and phenomena, and how they proceeded to investigate them. Not least they are also revealing of how little was known almost 350 years ago about even common plants and animals, and how difficult it was to appreciate the significance of some of their fundamental attributes which seem self evident today.