Microscope

“The microscope seemed to generate the creatures spontaneously, producing life where there had been none before,” Leigh observes (31). She gets her first microscope on her 11th birthday, initiating her into the world of science and unseen, tiny organisms. For the rest of her life, Leigh holds a special interest in the smallest lifeforms, showing how radically microscopes and other tools of science can change human perspective. “I got better at looking, expanding the world by diminishing it, peering down into the smallest crevices,” she says (31).

Ultimately the microscope gives Leigh a way of seeing the world that seems realer than what happens around her as a child. “A spoonful of seawater or a pinch of soil between your fingers held billions of living things. We were blind to this out of necessity, because if we saw what was really there we would never move,” she says...