Antoni van Leeuwenhoek and the Royal Society during the Dutch Golden Age Tatiana D ...

22 Pages·2007·3.37 MB·English

by  Steve Forde

Antoni van Leeuwenhoek and the Royal Society during the Dutch Golden Age

Tatiana D. Waterman
Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH

NEH Seminar 2007; The Dutch Republic and Britain:
The Making of Modern Society and a European World Economy

Antoni Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723), the founder of biology, has been derided by twenti-
eth-century biographers who have written carelessly, describing his station in life dismissively
as: cloth merchant, draper merchant’s servant, minor city employee… These biographies reflect
ignorance of the historical period in which Leeuwenhoek lived and of which he was a product.
In his unsurpassed biography of Leeuwenhoek, Clifford Dobell wrote,
Outside of Holland, little has been written about him, which is not almost comi-
cally inaccurate. The biographical dictionaries are stuffed with ridiculous state-
ments, and most historians of biology have hitherto been content to reprint their
mistakes. … To appreciate Leeuwenhoek properly, it is necessary to know not only
the particular history of many sciences but also the general history of his own times;
to see him in his true perspective, it is even necessary to understand the relations of
Holland and England in his day, and the peculiar circumstances which led to the
founding of the Royal Society and to his connections with that learned assembly.
(pp. 11-12)

Indeed, Leeuwenhoek first made his money in the textile business and then he devoted
himself to scientific research; this was not unusual for his era. Many of his contemporary scien-
tists were also connected to commerce or trade. Christopher Wren saw the market and profit po-
tential for the images seen under the microscope. Edmund Halley used his talents in mathemat-
ics and astronomy to benefit commercial navigation. England offered a substantial financial prize
for a method of calculating longitude. Cartography and surveying were collaborative projects
between individuals and nations: France and England—historic enemies—joined forces with the
Dutch to support and improve cartography; the famous Blau maps were the mainstay of all sea-
faring nations.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, science and technology were linked with
trade and profit. New technologies and advances in existing technologies were driven by the
needs of manufacturing and the demands of the growing markets. Antoni Leeuwenhoek was a
typical middle-class citizen of the Dutch Republic; his involvement with science, fostered by The
2
Royal Society, a non-academic institution of learning, exemplifies the scientific process of the
era.

The Instructor of Europe
“In physics, the Dutch Enlightenment was the intermediary between Britain and
the Continent. But in microscopical science and medicine, the Dutch Enlighten-
ment may fairly be described as the instructor of Europe, including Britain.”
Jonathan Israel (p.1043)

When Leeuwenhoek was grinding his lenses and looking at nature through his micro-
scope, it was a great time to be a citizen of the Dutch Republic. Vermeer, Rubens, and Rem-
brandt were creating their masterpieces in Delft, Amsterdam, and Leiden. Christian Huygens
and Willibrod Snell were discovering the secrets of the behavior of light, while Jan van der Hey-
den’s street lamps were illuminating the night. Quietly, Baruch Spinoza was putting the stamp
of his own intellect on the legacy of ideas that Rene Descartes had left behind, rejecting the Bible
as a textbook of nature’s laws. Huygens, too, questioned and challenged many of Descartes' de-
tails, even though he was positively influenced by Descartes’ central idea that the natural world
can be explained by mathematical modeling. Descartes, a religious refugee from France, was an
honorary Dutchman and a celebrity in Europe. Christian’s father, Constantijn Huygens, the Min-
ister of War in the service of the Prince of Orange, was devoted to science as well, and had spent
many evenings in the company of Descartes.
The university in Leiden boasted a faculty line-up of the 'who-is-who' in Europe. Under
the leadership of Herman Boerhaave and Willem Jacob ’s Gravesande, Newton’s physics was
annotated, popularized, and spread in continental Europe. The curriculum innovations were
strikingly advanced: the Leiden professors not only used books and lecturing for teaching the
humanities, but also instruments and demonstrations for teaching the newest scientific ideas and
discoveries. The ‘force tables’ used in physics classrooms today were first designed for ’s Grave-
sande’s physics classes. Voltaire attended ’s Gravesande’s lectures when he was preparing his
handbook on Newton. Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist, spent many years in the Netherlands
researching rare and exotic plants in Dutch collections. (His Systema Naturae was published in
Leiden.) Boerhaave’s medical textbooks were translated in many languages, including Turkish
and Japanese.1

1 Not surprisingly: the Ottoman Empire was at its peak; also, the Dutch were the only Europeans allowed trade privi-
leges by Japan. For more information, see Sharlyn Scott’s “The Dutch in Japan.”
3
With superb drainage engineering, the Dutch Republic (today’s Netherlands) had tamed
the raging of its rivers and seacoast, claimed new earth area from its marshes, and boasted the
best canal system in the world for transportation. By the mid-1600s, the Dutch Republic had be-
come the nerve center of European commerce and global maritime trade. Taking advantage of
its strategic geographic position and deploying its profitable and efficient ships, it became the
major transporter of European staples from producers to consumers. In the sixteenth century,
Amsterdam had the first commodities and stock market—complete with financial derivatives—,
which worked so well that it became the model for our modern financial markets. The United
Dutch East Asia Company, the VOC (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie), the largest trading
and shipping company in the world was at its peak. Its ships sailing all over the globe.
Governed by a novel system—with state governors rather than a king to lead them—the
citizens of the Dutch Republic enjoyed a “flattened” social ranking, with a prosperous middle
class to which anyone could belong. If one got along with his neighbors, was a productive
worker, and contributed to the peace and prosperity of the country, one was given the opportu-
nity of a good life. Women were on equal footing with men in terms of financial responsibilities,
social freedoms, and rights.
Undeniably, there were problems of exploitation and greed in the job market, but it was
not like the rest of continental Europe where royals and aristocrats did not plan or invest wisely
and did not care about the serfs. The Dutch were rich, powerful, and smart enough to reinvest
their profits. While in other parts of Europe property and life were precariously dependent on
one’s religious affiliation, the thinkers of the Dutch Republic were allowed to examine the role
of the clergy in religion and to question the place of clergy in the country’s social structure with-
out fear for their lives. Organized religion was put in the service of the Republic and its citizens.
These social norms did not all develop bloodlessly or without strife, but by the second half of the
seventeenth century the Dutch Republic had given the world a new paradigm for a tolerant soci-
ety. The model worked, and with their Protestant work ethic, the Dutch were content, taking
care of business with level heads and open minds, and prospering. Not since the golden age of
the ancient Greeks had the western world seen such dynamism of ideas in government, in the
economy, and in intellectual pursuits.

The Royal Society—Clearinghouse of Knowledge and Research
Across the North Sea, Britain was an emerging maritime power, vying with the Dutch for
trade and commerce, and copying many of the Dutch ways and methods. Britain had gone
4
through tough political times, surviving a civil war which along with the Glorious Revolution
limited the absolute power of the king. While in other European countries serfs were still work-
ing for an upper class that had given little thought to wise investing or use of resources, the Brit-
ish were ushering in the modern world with a slowly but steadily emerging middle class. A class
of farmers, traders, and shopkeepers was starting to prosper and entrench itself with a web of
commerce and finance, bringing the country out of the medieval mode of economy. Astutely, the
British parliament put the navy in the service of the national economy.
Safely beyond the reach of the Pope and the Inquisition, Christopher Wren, Robert
Hooke, and Edmund Halley were discussing the trajectories of comets in London coffeehouses.
These three were among the twelve founding members of the new Royal Society; in 1660, ten
years later, the Royal Society’s membership had grown to 230 men. Hooke was the experi-
menter and jack-of-all-trades for the Society; Wren, better known to us as an architect, was an
astronomy professor at Oxford. (Wren and Hooke directed the rebuilding of London after the
1666 fire.) Halley, the son of a middle-class soap manufacturer, was the astronomer known for
“his” comet. Halley’s family background may have been humble and “smelly,”2 but his father
knew how to make money; he also understood what money can and should buy. Recognizing his
son’s mathematical talent, Halley’s father spared no expense: tuition for St. Paul’s and Oxford,
and the bankrolling of a two-year sea voyage for his son. Keenly interested in navigation im-
provement, the East India Company provided Halley free passage on a merchant ship, the Unity.
While the continental astronomers with their new instruments were trying to make minute cor-
rections to Tycho Brahe’s naked-eye observations, Halley used his expedition to advance com-
mercial interests; he decided to map the southern skies. After some research in nautical weather
logs, he realized that the island of St. Helena was the best place for observations. On the Unity,
he took with him a 24-foot refracting telescope, a two-foot quadrant, a six-inch sextant fitted
with a micrometer scale, and an assistant. (His father gave Halley an allowance of 300 pounds
per year. The king paid the astronomer Royal in Greenwich 100 pounds per year.) In two years,
Halley became the Tycho Brahe of the South. His map of the southern sky constellations was of
invaluable help to navigators when they crossed south of the latitude of Cape Verde. Before
Halley’s map, under uncharted stars, in order to know where they were, ships had to sail close to
the coast of Africa for landscape clues, worrying about treacherous skerries.3 Halley’s work

2 Extracting fat from animal carcasses to be used as a base ingredient for soap produces an incredible stench
3 Skerry is a Scots word, meaning ‘a rocky outcrop close enough to the sea surface to cause damage to ships.’
5
saved lives and increased profits in shipping significantly. This feat brought him recognition in
London and membership in the Royal Society at the age of 21.
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge is the oldest public insti-
tution devoted to the pursuit of scientific research; it aspired to combine the role of research in-
stitute with that of a clearinghouse and repository of new knowledge. Its goals were, and still are,
to publish new scientific knowledge and promote its discussion, while also encouraging research.
Noble as this may sound, its founding members were practical men, part of the financial fabric
and trade web of the country. They saw and understood the connection between natural knowl-
edge and financial rewards. They also saw the difference and the disconnection between formal
university curricula and everyday business. A century after its publication, the venerable univer-
sities of Oxford and Cambridge had not introduced Copernicus’ model of the solar system into
their curricula; Galileo’s books, owned and discussed by the Royal Society’s members, had not
made it to university library shelves. Yet, in London, exotic knowledge was pouring in from
faraway places, as the ships of the British East India Company (E.I.C.) were bringing back flora,
fauna, tales about natives, and observations about weather, climate, and geology from all the
known parts of the globe. Knowledge was also generated at home; in Cambridge, Newton had
just invented calculus and was expanding Galileo’s legacy on the motion of bodies and gravity—
but not many of his university peers had heard about it yet.4 This new knowledge was welcomed
and published by the Royal Society—even though in some continental European countries one
could be burned at the stake for such activities. Such freedom of scientific pursuits was also en-
couraged and enjoyed by the Dutch.
Instrumental in establishing the Royal Society's scientific conduct was its first secretary,
and one of its founding members, Henry Oldenburg (c. 1619-1677). He initiated the practice of
sending submitted manuscripts to experts who would judge their quality before publication, and
he oversaw the publication of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society from its start
in 1665 until 1677. This was the beginning of both the modern scientific journal and the practice
of peer review. The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society continues to be published
today; it is the longest running scientific journal in the world. Oldenburg was born in Bremen,
Germany, the son of a professor at the Royal University of Dorpat. As a university student, he
trained in theology, an education not unusual for his time; it was a preferred education with

4 Newton was discovered by Halley, who coaxed both him and the Royal Society to publish his Principia; Halley
paid for the printing expenses.
6
Latin, philosophy, and possibly some mathematics—there were no science degrees at that time.
When Oldenburg was sent to England by the Council of Bremen to negotiate with Cromwell in
1653, he settled in London, married an English woman, and became a naturalized citizen of Eng-
land. Because Oldenburg was a foreigner in England, it was suspected that his extensive foreign
correspondence was political rather than scientific. He used the anagram Grubendol to reduce
the volume of mail coming to his name, and he also used his trusted in-laws to receive and send
his Royal Society letters. In the hysteria and panic that ensued when Admiral Michiel de Ruyter
led the Dutch fleet on his famous raid up the Medway, Oldenburg was imprisoned briefly5 in the
Tower of London, in 1667, even though he was a life-long friend of Robert Boyle, who defended
Oldenburg's innocence.

Training in Amsterdam
Seventeenth century image making was propaganda, art, craft, science, and, in Leeuwen-
hoek’s home country, it was also big business. According to experts, Vermeer used a single-lens
camera obscura to get ideas for his compositions; this act does not detract from his genius. His
choice of point of view, viewing angles, and his ingenious, purposeful placing of dots of white
paint on the canvas which produced dazzling results of shimmering light, were his gifted tech-
nique and his creation alone—a feast for the eyes and brain. Rembrandt became a rebel, using
light to show the truth, painting his subjects as they truly were rather than fabricate false beauty.
Vermeer, Rubens, Rembrandt and their colleagues were products of their scientific and techno-
logical times; they were also products of their financial times. The Dutch had the money to
commission and to buy numerous paintings. The artists who flocked to the Dutch Republic, ei-
ther as religious or as economic refugees, created great art in ample supply. This combination of
ample supply and numerous buyers also produced the right conditions for specialization.
As religious refugees from today’s Belgium flocked to the towns of the Dutch Republic,
the textile industry was booming. The new workers were received eagerly because they brought
with them know-how and techniques for making first-rate draperies cloth. Drapery—a light
cloth, made with long-staple wool—enjoyed excellent marketability in warm climate countries.
It was one of the most profitable goods manufactured and traded by the Dutch in the sixteenth
century.6 The openness of Dutch society and the free thinking attitude of its people made the

5 He was soon released; ten years later he died peacefully from illness at his home in Pall Mall.
6 For more information on draperies, see Jan deVries, The Economy of Europe in an Age of Crisis.
7
Dutch Republic a haven for refugees who brought their talents to their new homeland, supplying
the economy with dynamism rivaled only by the English.
Into this thriving commercial and scientific world, Antoni Leeuwenhoek was born in
Delft in 1632. His mother, Grietje van den Berch, following the early death of his father in 1638,
sent young Antoni to school in the village of Warmond. When he was a little older, she sent him
to Benthuizen to live with his uncle Cornelis Jacobsz van den Berch. In Benthuizen, his uncle
was the sheriff and bailiff of the village. The plan was for young Antoni to study law. It soon
became clear that Antoni's talents tended to be more practical, and that he would not make a
good lawyer. So, his mother sent him to Amsterdam to learn a trade when he was sixteen. In
1648, the year in which Antoni became an apprentice, the Treaties of Westphalia and of Munster
were signed. It was the moment when “Holland had taken her place in the very front rank of the
civilized world, as the home of letters, science and art, and was undoubtedly the most learned
state in Europe.”7
The van der Berch clan, Antoni’s mother's grandfather, her uncle, and her brother-in-law,
worked in the cloth trade. A friend of these relatives, the well-connected wool cloth merchant
Pieter Maurits Douchy, welcomed Antoni and placed him for apprenticeship with William Da-
vidson, a Scottish merchant of draperies based in Amsterdam.
Born in Dundee (Scotland), and married to Dutch women three times, Davidson "brought
to his third marriage, in 1660, a fortune of 230,000 florins, while his wife, Elisabeth van Clenck,
daughter of a family of high standing, brought with her a dowry of 24,000 florins plus goods and
jewels valued at 4,000 florins.” 8 Davidson was a distinguished wholesale merchant with exten-
sive connections in the Baltic ports of trade. He was the King of England's Agent in the Nether-
lands. When Mary Stuart, widow of Prince William II of Orange, came to Amsterdam in 1660,
she stayed at Davidson’s home. The burgomaster Cornelis deGraeff wrote excitedly about meet-
ing the Queen there. 9
Leeuwenhoek’s extended family behavior was typical of the middle class of the era.10
They desired to educate and train their young, and they either had the means or scraped together
to pay tuition and apprenticeship money. Young Antoni was motivated to make something of
himself, and took advantage of his schooling and apprenticeship. Additionally, a network of re-

7 Edmundson, G., History of Holland, (1922) Cambridge. Quoted in Dobell, p. 24
8 Municipal Archives of Amsterdam. Notarial Archives, No. 1821, fol. 218. Notary: Albert Eggericx.
9 W. H. van Seters, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 9, No. 1. (Oct., 1951), pp. 36-45.
10 For more on the middle class in the 17th –18th centuries, see Wrightson, Earthly Necessities, chapter 13.
8
lations gave Antoni the character references that were essential for getting a good placement.
The confidence of his relatives was well rewarded as Antoni proved to be worthy of his family's
efforts.
Antoni, at the early age of sixteen, not only performed the functions of book and
cash keeper with an important draper, but also managed, within the space of six
weeks, owing to his assiduity, to attain the diploma of Certified Mastership in
Cloth-Making.11

He did his family proud. He might not have taken to scholarly learning, but he was motivated
and smart in other ways. Success in his case was achieved through gainful employment, rather
than with a diploma.
When the Second English war with the Dutch (1665-1667) broke out, Davidson's position
in Amsterdam became very uncomfortable, but he stayed until the middle of 1665 in spite of
suspicions that he was supporting a native Dutch spy and disclosing the movements of the Dutch
fleet to the English. When circumstances worsened, he had to move to Hamburg, and then to
Antwerp. In his absence, Davidson gave the young Leeuwenhoek power of attorney.
William Davidson authorizes Antoni Leeuwenhoek to hand over to Bookkeepers
the bills, signed by [Davidson], relative to amounts chargeable in banco (fixed cur-
rency) to [Davidson's] account with the Amsterdamse Wisselbank, and to inform the
latter accordingly. Moreover, to make up in anticipation for any possible deficiency
of the present warrant, Leeuwenhoek is herewith given power in general to take any
other steps which may be required for the settlement of this transaction. (Original is
in Dutch.) 12

Leeuwenhoek did not learn English while staying with Davidson, because Davidson
spoke with Antoni in Dutch. English traders in overseas ports customarily had full command of
the Dutch language; the Dutch had been premier traders for centuries, so their seventeenth-
century partners or competitors knew the language that was necessary for trade. Years later,
when Leeuwenhoek corresponded with the Royal Society, he wrote in Dutch; Henry Oldenburg,
who also spoke Dutch himself, translated the letters into English.
After six years in Amsterdam, in 1654, Leeuwenhoek returned to his hometown of Delft
where he married the daughter of a silk and draperies merchant and opened his own fabric shop.
Of Leeuwenhoek’s five children with his first wife, only one girl, Maria, survived to adult-
hood—a sad but typical statistic of life at that time. He also survived his second wife; only
Maria was there for him at the end of his life. His shop business earned the family a comfortable

11 Haaxman, P. J., Antony van Leeuwenhoek, de Ontdekker der Infusorien, Leiden (1875).
12 translated, W. H. van Seters Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 9, No. 1. (Oct., 1951), pp. 36-45.
9
living. Leeuwenhoek was involved as a citizen in the usual way of the Republic, performing
civic duties for the town of Delft, “… as chamberlain to the sheriffs of Delft. He did his duty
diligently—sweeping the council room, arranging the decor, lighting the fire at the proper time
and also preserving any coal that might be left unconsumed.” (Dobell, p.31) He developed addi-
tional skills and earned the qualification of surveyor, a profession that required an understanding
of mathematics and facility with a telescope. By 1670, his good business sense, combined with
legendary Dutch frugality, helped him accumulate a fortune that afforded him the means to be
financially independent. At the age of almost forty, he could start devoting his time to his favor-
ite research, his lenses.

Looking Far and Near

In the beginning of the seventeenth century, a new era of technology-based science
dawned. The new method of science established by Galileo demanded results and conclusions
derived from observations and measurements, not extrapolations from the Bible or abstract phi-
losophical musings. Experimental data and reproducible results replaced meditational fancy.
Lenses to help extend the human eye’s ability, and timekeepers to quantify the measurement of
motion, were necessary and essential. It is no coincidence that England and Holland were the
leading places for budding scientists: the craftsmen of these two countries were among the best
in the world, and their shops were supported by thriving economies.
The telescope was patented in The Hague in October 1608 as a device that aided "seeing
faraway things as though nearby." Hans Lippershey, a German living in Holland, is credited with
the invention, but at least three other individuals were also designing telescopes and had them
almost ready within weeks or months of this patent date.
By 1609, Galileo had received a description of the telescope’s prototype, had made his
own superb copy, and had proved Copernicus correct by looking at the phases of Venus. His ob-
servation proved that Venus went around the sun, and astronomy started changing our world.
With the telescope, astronomers probed the heavens and collected extremely accurate data;
closer to home, mariners had an instrument to help them avoid disasters at sea. National observa-
tories were funded lavishly in France and England for their potential help to navigation. At the
same time, merchants and speculators standing by the docks used the “spy” glass to earn trading
profits. The Medici family commissioned Galileo to make telescopes for them. Using the tele-
10
scope, they could see merchant ships coming into harbor before their competitors; this enabled
the Medicis to fix cargo prices, knowing that a ship was approaching.
The invention of the microscope soon followed. In 1619, the Dutchman Cornelis Dreb-
bel (1572-1633) was credited with the invention. His patent and proof of invention is a sketch he
made of the instrument in a letter he sent to King James, asking for a job in his court. By the
1660s, another Dutchman, Johannes Hudde (1628-1704) made improvements to the microscope
that made it suitable for use in serious research.
This was also the time when English and Dutch natural philosophers (the name by which
scientists were known) were enthusiastically exploring the laws of optics. Newton solved the
riddle of the rainbow with his classic experiment. Huygens, the Newton of Holland, established
the wave theory of light, which is standard optics learning in our modern textbooks. Huygens
was not just a physicist but also a great mathematician and astronomer. With excellent telescope
lenses, he observed the rings and moons of Saturn. His pendulum clock design (1656) had the
best precision known at the time. Christian Huygens and Baruch Spinoza collaborated fre-
quently. Spinoza was very much interested in the experimental side of science13; he was an ex-
pert lens maker, better than Huygens.
In London, lenses were the high-tech toys that the rich were buying. Wren was the first
to appreciate the entertainment potential of the world seen through a microscope. In 1661, Wren
showed the microscope to King Charles II along with a few fine drawings of insects under the
microscope made by Hooke. The King, greatly entertained, asked the Royal Society to produce
more of these drawings of “microscopic” things. Wren, claiming to be busy, passed the assign-
ment on to Hooke, convincing Hooke that there was a market for a book with such illustrations.
Three years later, Hooke published his Micrographia, and it was indeed a best seller; every re-
spectable rich Londoner wanted one for his drawing room coffee table. It is still being printed.
It contains drawings of plants and insects, powerfully magnified, and it displays fascinating de-
tails. Samuel Pepys, the famous London diarist of the time, bought a copy of Hooke’s Micro-
graphia on the spot. “…Thence to my bookseller's and at his binder's saw Hooke's book of the
Microscope, which is so pretty that I presently bespoke it … a most excellent piece, of which I
am very proud.” (20 January 1665). Pepys could not put the book down to go to sleep. He sat

13 Spinoza admired and explored the implications of Descartes' mathematical modeling ideas, but he was a staunch
follower of Galileo's model, which demands experimental proof for theories.