Christmas is almost upon us and I therefore propose to honour the festive season by picking out a few of the highlights in microscopy in which this art (or craft) has been practised mainly for enjoyment, though other things have usually followed. My examples will be spread across three centuries though some of them will include myself, since it has been my good fortune to have experienced the transition from the laboratory to the field in connection with two entirely different disciplines, namely, chromosome cytology and electron microscopy, both of which at the outset were complicated and difficult, requiring all the refinements of a well equipped laboratory, and yet, in the end, they became portable. There is virtue in simplicity, as you will see. Enjoyment of course comes in many forms. Thus we have Bronowski's recent dictum (The ascent of man, 1974, p. 432) : 'You must see that in a sense all science, all human thought, is a form of play. Abstract thought is the neoteny of the intellect by which man is able to continue to carry out activities which have no immediate goal (other animals play only when young) in order to prepare himself for long term strategies and plans'. In less general terms, enjoyment in microscopy, which is often so vividly expressed in the writings of the early practitioners, includes not only the craftsman's pleasure in the practice or enhancement of skill, something which man the tool-maker must have experienced during millions of years, but also includes surprise, or indeed astonishment, at the totally unexpected nature of what a microscope can reveal, together with aesthetic delight in contemplating elegant and beautiful objects and the mental satisfaction of unravelling puzzles, no matter how trivial. Thus an apparently simple problem such as the length of life of a flea can, as we shall see in the hands of Leeuwenhoek, be as absorbing in its stepwise following up of clues as the more modern pursuits of Robert Ironside or any of the other detectives who appear so often on television. Much early scientific writing delights us now by the uninhibited way in which thoughts, feelings, and experiences are expressed without the editorial censorship to which we ourselves are subjected. This shows clearly in Robert Hooke's Micro graphica (1665), that foundation stone of cytology. The modern Dover reprint makes it unnecessary for me to say much about it since many, or indeed all of us,
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Jan 1, 1978
Alvin Greenberg 
Open Access