Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book investigates how “Dutch precision” balanced with older notions and evince comparisons between Ran and Japan, and between Japanese interpretations of Europe and of the intellectual life of China. It considers glass bottles used for the storage of samples, and the glass window. Glass could set up a wall between the seer and the seen, ensuring distance and safety but without depriving visual access. The book also considers a special glass object: ground glass — that is, the lens. Though transparent, lenses adapted sight, bringing the infinitesimal close. The book discusses the importance of the epistemology of the downward gaze. Mathematics and calculation formed the defining grid in which the Western scientific gaze was said to be set, and the rhetoric of “precision” was its overriding base.