The sharp-eyed lynx, outfoxed by nature

Natural History, June, 1998 by Stephen Jay Gould

When we evaluate the logic and rhetoric of Stelluti's arguments, one consistent strategy stands out above all else. Stelluti had finally become a true disciple of Galileo and of the primacy of direct empirical observation, viewed as inherently objective. Over and over again, Stelluti states that we must accept his conclusions because he has seen the phenomenon, often several times over many years, with his own eyes.

Stelluti had used this Galilean rhetoric to great advantage before. At the bottom of his beautiful 1625 engraving of three bees for Pope Urban VIII (Maffeo Barberini), Stelluti had added a little Latin note just under his greatest enlargement of paired bee legs. In a phrase almost identical in form to Galileo's anagram about Saturn, Stelluti wrote: Franciscus Stellutus Lynceus [Fabr.sup.is] Microscopio Observavit (The Lynx Francesco Stelluti from [the town of] Fabriano observed [these objects] with a microscope). This time, and for once, Stelluti had a leg up on Galileo--for the "slow stepper" among the Lynxes had made accurate observations, properly interpreted, while Galileo had failed for the much more difficult problem of Saturn. (This Latin note, by the way, may represent the first appearance of the word "microscope" in print. Galileo had called his instrument an occhiolino, or "little eye," and his fellow Lynxes had then suggested the modern name.)

But Stelluti's luck had run out with Cesi's wood, when he invoked the same kind of claim to buttress his errors. Consider a sampling of such statements, following the order of Stelluti's text:

The generation of this wood, which I have

been able to see and observe so many times,

does not proceed from seeds. . . .

The material of this wood is nothing other

than earth, because I have seen pieces of it

[perche n'ho veduto io pezzi] with one

part made of hard earth and the other of

wood.

Figure 7 shows a

drawing of a large oval

specimen, which I

excavated myself from

the earth.

The outer surface of

the other piece appears

to be entirely in wood,

as is evident to the eye

[in the drawing

presented by Stelluti].

Stelluti ends his treatise with a flourish in the same mode; he need not write at great length to Justify his arguments (his entire text only runs to twelve pages), because he has based his work on personal observation:

And this is all I need

to say, with maximal

brevity, about this

material, which I have

been able to see and

observe so many times

in those places where

this new, rare, and

marvelous phenomenon

of nature is born.

But Stelluti had forgotten the old principle now embodied in a genre of jokes that begin by proclaiming: "I've got some good news and some bad news." Galileo's empirical method can work wonders. But no faith can be more misleading than an unquestioned personal conviction that the apparent testimony of one's own eyes must provide a purely objective account, scarcely requiring any validation beyond the claim itself Utterly unbiased observation must rank as a primary myth and shibboleth of science, for we can only see what fits into our mental space, and all description includes interpretation as well as sensory reporting. Moreover, our mental spaces embody a complex architecture built of social constraint, historical circumstance, and psychological hope--as well as nature's factuality, seen through a glass darkly.