ABSTRACT
A presentation of the eye as detached from personality and bias alluded symbolically to the supposed independence and precision of Dutch ocular science. Such analogies were perhaps picked up from Western claims to objectivity in vision, whose core they formed. Medicine treated ailments of the eye with salves, and Rangaku doctors might go further by judicious application of their anatomically based surgery. The microscope was generally recognised as the symbol or hallmark of Rangaku scholarship. The microscope stands for an alternative epistemology, that of science with its claims to understand by opening up and seeing, and classifying the world into taxonomic plots. The terminology of lensed instruments was as vague as the products were new. The genuine vision-enhancing sort of lens could turn against sincerity, a state of affairs greatly abetted by this consciously flattering and corrupt gazing.
