Tercentenary of Nehemiah Grew (1641—1712)

Abstract

NEREMIAH GREW will always be held in honour by botanists as the co-founder with Marcello Malpighi of the science of plant anatomy. It is true that in his ideas about plant cells he did not advance much beyond Robert Hooke, who, in 1665, figured and named these units; but, as regards knowledge of vascular structure, the position is very different. Grew and Malpighi not only initiated the study of the bundle system of the flowering plant, but also carried it to a surprisingly high level, considering, that they had to start from the very foundations. Grew's first book, “The Anatomy of Vegetables Begun” (1672), contains the earliest printed illustration showing vascular bundles as seen in section under the microscope. He followed up this work in 1673 and 1675 by treatises on the detailed anatomy of roots and of stems. Finally he brought all his results together, in 1682, in a splendidly illustrated folio, “The Anatomy of Plants”, which included improved second editions of his first three books, as well as much additional matter. The excellence of Grew's botanical morphology and anatomy has been recognized fully; indeed his reputation in this line is deservedly so great that it has tended to overshadow the other facets of his output. It seems worth while, therefore, in this, his tercentenary year, to direct attention to certain less specialized aspects of his scientific work. Grew's general attitude towards biology cannot be understood unless one realizes how deeply he was committed to a mechanistic view of the universe. It seems likely that Hooke, and also Descartes, had to some extent turned his mind in this direction, though in the seventeenth century such ideas were so much in the air that it is scarcely necessary to look for specific sources. It was owing to the mechanistic viewpoint of that period, that the microscope, for example, was hailed as an instrument which was destined to clear away all inconvenient mysteries. Hooke hoped that by the help of glasses “we may perhaps be inabled to discern all the secret workings of Nature, almost in the same manner as we do those that are the productions of Art, and are manag'd by Wheels and Engines, and Springs, that were devised by humane Wit”. Grew enlarges upon this analogy between the world and a man-made machine, and seems to find it entirely satisfying. He says that “all Nature is as one Great Engine made by and held in” the hand of God. He regards this engine as having been set in motion by the Great First Cause, to which all subsequent effects can be traced back; he considers that the original causation was all that was necessary, and that, in the normal course of events, no subsequent interference has occurred. “And as it is the watchmaker's Art,” he says, “that the Hand moves regularly from hour to hour, although he put not his finger still to it: so it is the demonstration of Divine Wisdom, that the Parts of Nature are so harmoniously contrived and set together as to conspire to all kind of natural motions and effects without the extraordinary-immediate influence of the Author of it.”