Editing Jan Swammerdam (section)

== Research into insects ==
While studying medicine Swammerdam had started to dissect insects and after qualifying as a doctor, he focused on them. His father pressured him to earn a living, but Swammerdam persevered and in late 1669 published ''Historia insectorum generalis ofte Algemeene verhandeling van de bloedeloose dierkens'' (''The General History of Insects, or General Treatise on little Bloodless Animals''). The treatise summarised his study of insects he had collected in France and around Amsterdam. He countered the prevailing [[Aristotelianism|Aristotelian]] notion that insects were imperfect animals that lacked internal anatomy.<ref name="BRILL"/> Following the publication his father withdrew all financial support.<ref name="ReferenceA">{{Cite book|title=The History of Science in the Netherlands: Survey, Themes and Reference|author1=Klaas Van Berkel |author2=Albert Van Helden |author3=L. C. Palm |publisher=BRILL|year=1999|isbn=9789004100060|pages=62}}</ref> As a result, Swammerdam was forced, at least occasionally, to practice medicine in order to finance his own research. He obtained leave at Amsterdam to dissect the bodies of those who died in the hospital.<ref name=ac>{{Cite AmCyc|wstitle=Swammerdam, Johannes}}</ref>

[[File:Illustration of a Mosquito from Historia Insectorum Generalis.jpg|thumb|right|250px|Illustration of a [[mosquito]] from ''Historia'']]

At university Swammerdam engaged deeply in the religious and philosophical ideas of his time. He categorically opposed the ideas behind [[spontaneous generation]], which held that God had created some creatures, but not insects. Swammerdam argued that this would blasphemously imply that parts of the universe were excluded from God's will. In his scientific study, Swammerdam tried to prove that God's creation happened time after time, and that it was uniform and stable. Swammerdam was much influenced by [[René Descartes]], whose natural philosophy had been widely adopted by Dutch intellectuals. In ''Discours de la Methode'' Descartes had argued that nature was orderly and obeyed fixed laws, thus nature could be explained rationally.<ref name="ReferenceB">{{Cite book|title=Early Modern Zoology: The Construction of Animals in Science, Literature and the Visual Arts|author1=Karl A. E. Enenkel |author2=Mark S. Smith |publisher=BRILL|year=2007|isbn=9789047422365|pages=160}}</ref>

Swammerdam was convinced that the creation, or generation, of all creatures obeyed the same laws. Having studied the reproductive organs of men and women at university he set out to study the generation of insects. He had devoted himself to studying insects after discovering that the {{em|king}} [[bee]] was indeed a [[queen bee]]. Swammerdam knew this because he had found eggs inside the creature. But he did not publish this finding. Swammerdam corresponded with [[Matthew Slade]] and [[Paolo Boccone]] and was visited by [[Willem Piso]], [[Nicolaas Tulp]] and [[Nicolaas Witsen]].<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/jori009boec01_01/jori009boec01_01_0005.php |title=Het 'Boeck der Natuere' (2006) by Eric Jorink |access-date=2023-05-20 |archive-date=2023-05-20 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230520062517/https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/jori009boec01_01/jori009boec01_01_0005.php |url-status=live }}</ref> He showed [[Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany|Cosimo III de' Medici]], accompanied by Thévenot, another revolutionary discovery. Inside a [[caterpillar]] the limbs and wings of the [[butterfly]] could be seen (now called the [[imaginal disc]]s).

When Swammerdam published ''The General History of Insects, or General Treatise on little Bloodless Animals'' later that year he not only did away with the idea that insects lacked internal anatomy but also attacked the Christian notion that insects originated from spontaneous generation and that their life cycle was a [[metamorphosis]].<ref>{{Cite book|title=Early Modern Zoology: The Construction of Animals in Science, Literature and the Visual Arts|author1=Karl A. E. Enenkel |author2=Mark S. Smith |publisher=BRILL|year=2007|isbn=9789047422365|pages=161}}</ref> Swammerdam maintained that all insects originated from eggs and their limbs grew and developed slowly. Thus there was no distinction between insects and so-called ''higher animals''. Swammerdam declared war on "vulgar errors" and the symbolic interpretation of insects was, in his mind, incompatible with the power of God, the almighty architect.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Early Modern Zoology: The Construction of Animals in Science, Literature and the Visual Arts|author1=Karl A. E. Enenkel |author2=Mark S. Smith |publisher=BRILL|year=2007|isbn=9789047422365|pages=162}}</ref>
Swammerdam, therefore, dispelled the seventeenth-century notion of metamorphosis —the idea that different life stages of an insect (e.g. [[caterpillar]] and [[butterfly]]) represent different individuals<ref>"...whereas modern biologists speak of the grub, the pupa and the adult as stages in the life cycle of one individual butterfly, [[William Harvey|Harvey]] and his contemporaries always regarded the grub as one individual and the butterfly as another."{{cite book|author=Elizabeth B. Gasking|title=Investigations Into Generation 1651–1828|place=Baltimore|publisher=The Johns Hopkins University Press|year=1966}} page 30</ref> or a sudden change from one type of animal to another.<ref>{{Cite book| last= Cobb| first= Matthew| author-link=Matthew Cobb|url=https://archive.org/details/generationsevent0000cobb/page/132/mode/2up| title=Generation: The Seventeenth-Century Scientists Who Unraveled the Secrets of Sex, Life, and Growth|location=New York and London| publisher=Bloomsbury| year=2006| pages=132–141| isbn=1-59691-036-4}}</ref>
[[File:Miraculum naturae sive uteri muliebris fabrica V00115 00000006.tif|thumb|''Miraculum naturae sive uteri muliebris fabrica'']]