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Reconstructing the History of the Globule Hypothesis
Stephen R. Wilk tries to unearth the truth behind an old theory about the structure of living matter.
What is the globule hypothesis? According to some historians of science, it’s a mistaken belief from the early 19th century that all living matter was composed of spherical “globules” of the same size. But these visions of globules weren’t real; they were the result of optical aberrations of early microscopes. As soon as better microscopes were invented that eliminated these aberrations, researchers could see the true complex nature of biological tissue.
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