Wilson 1988

Bachelard argues that the microscope acted as an impediment to knowledge (86)

"My claim is taht the microscope was an instrument of enablement which permitted its devotees to maintain and extend a Baconian theory of the interpretation of nature. This theory was itself anti-occultists in its insistence on the replacement of the direct 'reading' of nature by a dispassionate form of visual inspection coupled with processing by the Baconian inductive 'machine.' Had the entrance of the lense into modern science been delayed, it is difficult in turn to imagine that philosophers of the late seventeenth century would have addressed themselves so energetically to the problems generated by this shift: the problems of visual perception, of the nature and existence of physical minima, and above all of the theological significance of natural forms." (89)