Although I never use the phrase, I sure do love it.
“Little did she know…”
It always cracks me up when I see this in a book, or hear it in some sort of a script. Because, as soon as you hear, “Little did he know….” YOU know something terrible is going to happen to the “little know” person.
Well, what if I told you that right now, you are a “Little did you know” person. What if I mentioned that right this very minute, there are trillions of little beings, all around you, crawling, moving, hiding, lurking? They are on you, under you, right in front of you. The only thing is, you can’t see them.
The neat thing is, you could see them if you wanted to.
Think about the first time this happened to someone. When they all of a sudden could see the world that is really, small-small, all around us. The guy was named Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. He was a pretty normal guy back in the early 1670s. He wasn’t a scientist, that is for sure. Or even a scholar. He ran a fabric shop in Holland. Sold buttons. Ribbons too.
But in his spare time, he got good at grinding lenses, and he made himself an “eyeglass” that could magnify 270 times. That’s not a hugely powerful magnification by any means, but back in his day, it was the best microscope in the world. It was ten times stronger than any other lens of that time.
I will give him this. He was curious. He wanted to see what life was like in the very small. When he looked through his microscope, things appeared to him that he never imagined. He called them “animalcules” and pronounced to anyone who would listen about the entire community of these creatures — which were everywhere.
He sent his descriptions to the Royal Society in London. It was the most prestigious scientific society of his day. He was just a button and ribbon guy, so he apologized for his “crude language” saying “pray take not amiss my poor pen.” He then proceeded to tell them what he’d seen. He wrote them one letter. And then another. And then a bunch more.
He said he had found “little eels, or worms, lying all huddled up together and wriggling … the whole water seemed to be alive with these multifarious animalcules.” Of course, we know now, he was viewing bacteria, in these little lifelike animals. He saw “little eels” and “horny horse-headed creatures.” And many, many more.
At first, the science snobs were skeptical, but eventually, they came around after he took his lens to them and began to show the world below. He made examples of everything, from the blood capillaries in an eel’s tail, to saliva, to plaque from the roof of his mouth.
The Czar of Russia came to see, as did many other notables, and before long, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek was becoming famous for his findings. It was quite the stir in the science world of yore.
But then something strange happened. Antoni van Leeuwenhoek’s discoveries were so exciting at first. But gradually, and eventually, they faded from public memory. It seems that even the scholars fell away from microscopic life. I mean completely. So by the 1730s, when a Swedish biologist named Carl Linnaeus decided to classify all life, he called all of van Leeuwenhoek’s very different “animalcules” into the phylum Vermes (for worms), genus Chaos (meaning formless).
It was as if everything he had discovered and seen, went back into being unnoticed, unseen, put away. As if there was a shift in the world and they weren’t seeing the science.
It sounds shockingly familiar. The disregard for what has been found, the ignoring of discovered knowledge. I see this today on many levels in our society though. Not just the intellectual facet of denying science, but perhaps more troubling is the spiritual aspect.
We know, with proof, that kindness and compassion work. Yet so many people are turning a blind eye to it, choosing instead to be smug, selfish, and mean-spirited.
I think were are in dire need of a spiritual microscope. To examine the origins of goodness. We might need a spiritual telescope as well. So everyone can see the big picture of kindness too.
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“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”
― Daniel J. Boorstin
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“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.”
― Isaac Asimov
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“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”
― Carl Sagan
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