How are diseases born? What is at the center of the Earth? What is fire? Throughout history, man has tried to explain the world to himself… and has often been wrong. Le Figaro tells you about some of the trials and errors that have created science.
Soon after the invention of the microscope, European naturalists took up the tool to observe living things and forged theories of reproduction that can make us smile today. “That doesn’t mean our predecessors were stupid.”, warns Matthew Cobb, a biologist at the University of Manchester. It is necessary “To place these discoveries in the context and theories of the time and not to judge them in retrospect.”argues Stéphane Tirard, professor of epistemology at the University of Nantes.
In 1677, the observation of spermatozoa that qualified as “animals” was first reported by Antony Van Leeuwenhoek, a family of Dutch drapers. Inspired by a medical student…
Source: Le Figaro
