Word: leeuwenhoek
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...something else is going on, and I think Malthus may have sensed it coming. As long ago as 1679, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (the Dutch inventor of the microscope) speculated that the limit to the human population would be on the order of 13 billion--remarkably close to many current estimates. For our position in the natural world is once again undergoing a sea change. We are not the first nor are we the only species to spread around the globe, but we are the first to do so as an integrated economic entity. Other species maintain tenuous genetic connections...
...Kepler and Tycho Brahe that the sun, not the earth, was the center of our universe. The specific origins of the microscope are equally obscure. In the 17th century, Robert Hooke used it to describe accurately the anatomy of a flea and the design of a feather; Antonie de Leeuwenhoek discovered a world of wriggling organisms in a drop of water. The invention of logarithms and calculus led to more accurate clocks and optical instruments...