Draft:

 

  

"Vide Ricardo's letter to Malthus of October 9, 1820: 'Political economy you think is an enquiry into the nature and causes of wealth - I think it should be called an enquiry into the laws which determine the division of the produce of industry amongst the classes who concur in its formation. No law can be laid down respecting quantity, but a tolerably correct one can be laid down respecting proportions.  Every day I am more satisfied that the former is vain and delusive, and the latter only the true objects of science.'" John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, 1936.(i)

"According to Babeuf, Robespierre expected the population to be greatly reduced by the Terror, the war and the internal uprisings.  He planned to achieve a redistribution of the land by the liquidation of the landowning class.  Its members would be, if not killed off, forced to 'execute themselves' in time, and in their own interest."  J.L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, 1952. (ii)

"We might conjecture that in the long run, if there is an upper bound on ability, we would eventually reach a society with the greatest equal liberty the members of which enjoy the greatest equal talent.  But I shall not pursue this thought here." John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 1972.  (iii)

"If radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human population back to sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS ... the possible benefits of this to the environment are staggering ... just as the Plague contributed to the demise of feudalism, AIDS has the potential to end industrialism." Christopher Manes, Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilization, 1991. (iv) 

"The most urgent message which biologists have to convey to the public is that if something is not done to arrest the present increase in world population, then that increase will be arrested by war, disease, and starvation.  Eugenics can wait, birth control cannot."  John Maynard Smith, Eugenics and Utopia, 1965, 1966. (v)

"In the first place, let me say this.  Anyone afraid of cancer - and fear of it is both common and understandable - will do well to read this book. For fear here, as in other walks of life, is often largely due to a complete misconception of its nature." R.J.C. Harris, Cancer, 1962 (vi)

 

  

To view a 'cell' on a microscope slide, high magnifications would be needed, for example, 10,000 times to view an HIV cell, so that in theory we would then be looking for abnormalities in a sample on a slide that had been magnified so that its image measured 600 metres by 200 metres. With more powerful microscopes, including those said to be reliant on beams of electrons rather than light, we can apparently obtain a clear image of parts of the cell, including the electron itself moving at 2,200 kilometres a second.  However, whether or not we would be able to view fast moving parts of the cell or a stationary object at high magnification when experience of using a camera suggests we would not,  observation when using magnifying glasses suggests that the limits to clear lens magnification, or enlargement, are in fact low, while observation of the microscope and what we see when different slides are placed on the microscope stage indicates that the microscope is not designed to view what is on the slide at the highest possible magnification. This suggests at least that the diagnosis of disease based on histopathology, the analysis of cells under a microscope, is mistaken if not always fraudulent. 

All enlargement is a distortion as we are stretching the image. There is therefore a theoretical limit to useful magnification because the point will be reached where the image becomes too dispersed to be identifiable.  Before that the image will coarsen rather than allow us to see below to any hypothetical underlying structure.  Dispersal and loss of visibility takes place when we use a slide projector and place the screen too far away from the projector, or, before this, if the light does not reach far enough. 

With lens magnification, the 'scope' for enlargement is lower, restricted by the fact that we are reflecting an image within an ellipsoid or other solid object, so that the increase in size is limited by the width of the lens and by the fact that at greater distances or with thicker or multiple lenses we get distortions or loss of visibility.  With both light and lens projection,  there will also be distortions because the angle of projection or reflection decreases as it approaches the centre, with enlargement greatest at the edges of the image. Also, the microscope itself is not constructed to maximise possible magnification: the slide is very close to the microscope, the final aperture is very small, as are the objective lens tubes, so that we would theoretically, with the more powerful of the two lenses in the microscope, only be able to obtain an image of what is on the slide beyond the microscope, if it were sufficiently, but not over, illuminated, enlarged by around 3.3 times.  In neither case will a speck be clearly magnified to the width of the lens because a larger area will normally be reflected, in the same we do not normally see a speck from a photographic slide projected onto a screen nor only a speck reflected in a mirror.   However, even if a much smaller area were the subject of the projection or reflection, clarity would be lost and, with lens magnification, the resulting image would be reflected at a smaller size than the width of the lens.   

Magnification - defined by Dorland's Medical Dictionary as "apparent increase in size under the microscope"(ii) - seems to occur to a limited extent when we bring an object closer or look into an empty cylinder because we focus on a smaller area than usual.   More significant enlargement is the result either of light projection, as with a slide projector, or reflection within a magnifying lens. The traditional microsocpe, upon which the diagnosis of disease was based, is said to contain two lenses, an ocular lens, below the eyepiece, and an objective lens, at the end of each of the three objective lens tubes lower down the microscope. It is therefore useful, in attempting to understand microscope magnification, to first observe what happens when we use an ordinary lens such as a magnifying glass, or when we look at objects beyond a glass of water, or use a camera.  

With a magnifying lens, if we hold it right up to the page we are reading, there seems to be no enlargement of the letters behind it.  However, as we raise the lens, the letters grow bigger as they are reflected within the lens.   That this is not simply light projection from the object is indicated by the fact that the size of the image varies according to which lens we use.  

Although the standard account of magnification is that we view the object directly through the lens, observation of what happens as we use a magnifying lens suggests that we are instead viewing a reflected image.   The standard explanation of enlargement would be that we see an image stretched in some way by the lens, or by light entering and leaving the lens, so that the object gets bigger the further from the lens, as a slide projected gets larger the further it is from the projector.  Yet, unlike with light projection,  there is no beam of light, its angle widened by the lens as it meets resistance, to project an image of the object beyond the object itself: instead we are apparently viewing the enlarged object at the same place it is situated.  Thus, if we hold a coin in a glass of water it appears to be enlarged, but if we drop it to the bottom of the glass it retains it retains its size.    

Instead, it seems likely that enlargement occurs as an object is reflected within the lens.   The increase in size is because the object is reflected within a convex lens that behaves as a two way mirror, in the sense that we are viewing a reflection of a reflection and therefore the image is not viewed back to front.   Then, for a given size of the image on one side of the lens, and observation at least indicates that it would be reflected onto the top of the lens, the side we are viewing it from, it will be reflected as a larger image onto the lower side of the lens. For this to happen, the image, or images if, as seems likely, there is a series of images within the lens, would seem to have to converge at the same angle at which it reached the lens (rather than because the lenses are asymmetrical since we get enlargement and distortions when looking through a symmetrical glass of water) so that the point of curvature, or where the image stops converging before it diverges, is closer to the bottom than the top of the lens, since otherwise the reflection would be the same size.  

With the magnifying lens, as we lift it further away, the image we see starts to become smaller, as objects viewed through a glass that may appear smaller than they are.  Before this happens, there will be some distortion as the edge of the object is more stretched and blurred than it is nearer to the centre of our vision, which in itself suggests that the relative difference in size between the object and the lens cannot be too great.  Before returning to normal size when the lens becomes so close that we view it as though completely translucent, the image becomes smaller.  This happens, I assume, because magnification takes places because, first, the object is projected onto the bottom of the lens, and then, second, it is reflected at the same angle onto the top of it, so that for a given angle and thickness the point of curvature will be before the centre of the lens so that the angle will first converge and then diverge to create a larger image.  However, as the angle of projection increases the point will be reached where, for a given thickness of lens, the image on the top of the lens will be smaller than the one on the top.  [Reduction would occur before this if we reached the point at which the projected image exceeded the diameter of the lens, at which point the angle of projection will become smaller, again, because the angle is greatest at the edge and is zero at the centre. The image we see would then become smaller because the angle at which it is reflected is smaller.  

If instead of converging to the point of curvature within the lens, the light or image instead diverges from the concave interior, the extent of magnification would still be limited by the width of the lens, while magnification of the smallest objects on the slide, a speck, would be limited not only by its distance from the lens but also by its size relative to our field of vision.  Lens magnification is relatively constant.  In other words, we are viewing a smaller area than we would without the glass or if the glass is held too near or far from the area.  Although some parts of the image will be magnified more than others, so that the image appears stretched and blurred at the edges, the extent of magnification is determined by the relative sizes of the whole area we are viewing to that of the lens, as well as by the character of the lens, so that we are never, for example, magnifying a speck within the area at a ratio of the size of the speck to the diameter of the lens.

Although it might be theoretically possible to expand a speck to the width of the lens with light projection if a light were placed under a translucent object, the actual limits of projection would be determined not only by the strength of the light but by the angle of convergence of the light, which if it is not encased, will not converge (or diverge) sufficiently to produce, say, a ratio of one to sixty (the usual magnification claimed for the objective lens of a traditional microscope), especially given that it is leaving a mirror placed at 45 degrees.   

Although a thicker lens potentially increases the size of the image for a given angle of reflection within the lens, with lens magnification we get distortions such as the tunnel effect, and loss of visibility of the object beyond it, as we focus increasingly on the lens or lenses rather than the object beyond them, while blurring and loss of visibility occur also as a result of over or under illumination.  Also, moving the lens further from the object leads to back to front or upside images, since as we raise the magnifying glass and focal length returns to normal, objects no longer in our direct vision are reflected at an angle. In other words, in the same way as an object to the right of our vision will appear on the left if we look through a lens (which is in itself relevant), so whole objects will be rotated if their edges are to the left and right of our direct vision.  Another distortion is multiple images, I assume because smaller displaced images are bounced, or reflected, onto other parts of the lens. Finally, as the thickness of the lens increases, whether or not there are distortions, the image will become less clear the greater the distance from one side of the lens to the other, especially if it not projected by a strong light onto the lens and especially for objects closer to the lens or lenses.   

However, whether or not high magnifications can be achieved or produce clear images in theory, the microscope is not constructed to view the slide at the highest magnification possible.   On my own microscope, a Prinz 2801 Microscope Outfit, the objective lens tube is approximately 1.0 cm in diameter, and 1.5 cm in height, and the aperture is around 3 mm in diameter and claims a magnification of 60.   The slide, placed on an aperture on a microscope stage of about 5 mm in diameter, is only about 5 mm below the lens aperture and the part of the mirror from which light would be projected about 30 mm below this.  This would mean that whether reflection is via direct projection or lens magnification, the limit would seem  to be 3 to 10, ie, the ratio of the aperture to the width of the objective lens tube, since a smaller object – ie, one of less than 3 mm in diameter – will be projected or reflected at a proportionally smaller angle, since the angle of light entering the aperture, which determines the enlargement, will remain the same whatever the size of the object to be magnified.   Although the microscope is not built to be taken apart, because there are no visible lenses between the eyepiece and the end of the objective lenses (and there are no distortions if objects are moved further or nearer) and because of the proximity of the microscope stage to the end of the lens tube, there might in fact be no magnification at all of anything on the slide.  

The limit imposed by the diameter of the aperture and lenses and its proximity to the slide is in addition to the problem of viewing material on the slide whether or not it is magnified, such as the fact that the aperture only views a small portion of the slide and that we are attempting to view a slide beyond two small apertures and a dimly lit lens tube.   At high magnification with a traditional microscope we would only view a portion of the sample on the slide at any one time even with a larger aperture.   However,  we would have difficulty seeing anything whatsoever on the slide directly when looking into a small eyepiece and ocular lens, if there is one, through a dimly lit tube - greater illumination leads to blurring on the screen - and then through a second lens, if there were one, and through a tiny aperture to a slide beyond it.  

A higher degree of magnification could be achieved in theory by projecting the image of the objects we wish to view forward, but setting aside  the fact that this is not said to be the mechanism of magnification as well as the question of what clarity we might expect if a slide were projected onto a screen of 200 x 600 metres (at a magnification of 10,000 times) the microscope is not constructed to optimise magnification by light projection since the slide and mirror are placed outside the microscope rather than inside it.

The limits of magnification are hinted at in this quote from a textbook with a 1931 publication date: "If well corrected lenses are used, the magnifying power of the microscope should be at least that necessary to reveal the finest details resolvable by the objective.  For the normal eye, this is equivalent to about 500 to 700 times the numerical aperture of the objective." (iii)

The fact that when we look into a microscope we do, however, see a relatively clear and detailed image indicates that we are likely to be viewing something contained in the slide.  In my own microscope, I see the same basic image whichever slide is present on the microscope stage. This is of relatively fixed shadowy and translucent objects on a circular screen at the end of a cylinder, as well as translucent and moving objects in layers further up the microscope. Both images include ribbon-like objects of a similar length and width and with similar knots in them, although there are dark spots present on the image on the screen. These images remain whether or not the slide is present.

The translucent and moving images higher up the microscope are the lenses of our own eye (ie, those of the microscopist).  We know this because the image is the same as we see when looking into bright light and because the image shifts as we shift our eyes.  However, the image on the screen further down the microscope, although resembling the lens of the eye, is fixed. 

In fact, if I turn the microscope upside down, I see just above two of the objective lenses, three if I take a photograph of it, what look like the small orange irises of a bird such as a pigeon, facing into the microscope.  If this sounds ridiculous, the hidden object may have been so chosen for this reason.  Because the image on the screen resembles the lenses of our own eye, it seems plausible that the object we are viewing is in fact the lens of an eye.  The fact that only the position of the image relative to fixed sides changes when the lenses are rotated suggests projection forward, rather than backwards from different objects, as does the opaque look to the screen (we seem to see nothing beyond it).  It therefore seems likely that a fourth object, the lens of an eye or an image of one (although parts of it appear shadowy, the ribbons and knots are translucent if there is sufficient illumination), is placed higher up the microscope, projected onto an opaque screen further down the microscope.

Magnification in the microscope occurs as a result of the reduction in focal length as one looks into the relatively short lens tube of the microscope, where the effect of the reduction in focal length is to make the cylinder appear longer than it is and the circular screen larger than the diameter of the lens tube. The cylindrical shape enables us to focus on the objects on the screen, which would otherwise be blurred because they are too close.  The focal adjustment may vary focus for different users but also according to the position of the microscope in different lights.  The objective lens aperture lets in light when the microscope is lit by the mirror as well as any vividly coloured material on the slide at limited magnification by projection.  Looking closely into the eyepiece also reveals that there are likely to be an inner and outer tube since rotation of the eyepiece results in rotation of the edges of the screen whereas rotation of the focal adjustment results in a rotation of the image on the screen.   This is implied rather than shown in drawings of the optical system of the microscope. Rotating the focal adjustment does not alter the size of the objects but does change their position and allow us to see more or less of them, indicating that more or less light is let in below the screen on which the visible objects spiral as the adjustment is turned.

One has to account for variations when viewing different slides under the microscope. When the microscope is lit from the mirror, an opaque object will block visibility so that nothing is seen on the circular microscope screen. A translucent sample will not alter the image on the screen.  However, when a stain is put on a slide, it will appear as an undifferentiated wash over the microscope screen.   Sometimes a slide may produce a complex image that might lead us to think that we are viewing something at a high magnification. Instead, we are viewing a pattern of light and shade from objects of varying opacities at relatively low magnifications: light will shine through some parts or objects on the slide but not others, and to a differing extent, so that there are shades of dark and light.   Occasional vividly coloured variations when viewing translucent samples are likely to be the result of the dispersal of bright light (and possibly gas streaks, although these would be paler), but images that completely block the fixed image are rare.  

Once one accepts the idea that diseases may be fictitious, one can think of other arguments and make other observations to support this, such as, for instance, the fact that the link between DNA and mutation seems to be asserted rather than explained and to have no foundation in the philosophy of science, since the incompatibility of the abstract and the physical is not resolved (there is not, nor can there be, a mechanism by which one influences the other).  

Diagnosed diseases make people fall ill or die, as well as restricting lives in other ways, not because they are real but because of fear and fatalism and other factors such as insufficient or poor nutrition or a restricted diet, extreme variations in temperature, the denial of food and water in hospitals, gassing in and out of hospitals, and perhaps even the premature pronouncement of death.  It may be that all politicians and all doctors know that microscopes, the basis of medical diagnosis, are fraudulent, or all pathologists, or it may be only those who design and make scientific instruments. 

[Draft: away from most of books in UK]

(i) John Maynard Keynes, General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, 1936, reprinted , p

(ii) J. L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, 

(ii) John Rawls, Theory of Justice.  Although he might sound like a eugenist, his well-known 'society needs surgeons' also suggests he is being ironic.  'In the long run' in the quote above might be a reference to John Maynard Keynes's 'in the long run we are all dead', and 'the greatest equal liberty' and 'the greatest equal talent' to Voltaire's 'best of all possible worlds', an attack on the ideas of Spinoza.   In the same paragraph, he notes that 'in general' we would not want to reduce the talents of others because they would be seen as a social asset.  But he thinks the parties in the original position (ie, those choosing a system of justice in a hypothetical veil of ignorance) would also want to ensure the 'best genetic endowment' for their descendants (assuming their own to be fixed). Although there is an explicit reference in Maynard Smith, below, to donor children, we cannot assume this is what is being implied by Rawls, or, in this discussion, its relevance to the diagnosis of disease, but it is a possibility.

(iv)Manes, Christopher, Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilization ( ), quoted in Andrew Dobson, Green Political Thought ( )

(v) John Maynard Smith, 'Eugenics and Utopia', in, Utopias and Utopian Thought, A Timely Appraisal, edited by Frank E. Manuel (Boston, Beacon Press, 1965, 1966), p. 166.

(vi) R.J.C. Harris, Cancer (1962).

(vii) Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary, Twenty Third Edition (Philadelphia and London, W. B. Saunders, 1957).

(viii) Emile Monnin and Clyde Walter Mason, Handbook of Chemical Microscopy, Volume I (New York, John Wiley and Sons, 1931).

 

Louisa Orrock, BSc (Econ): International Relations, 1981, MA (ILAS), 1986

 

Bibliography:

Britannica Concise Encyclopaedia (Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc, 2002)

Chamot, Emile Monnin, and Mason, Clyde, Walter, Handbook of Chemical Microscopy, Volume I (New York, John Wiley & Sons, 1931)

Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary, Twenty Third Edition (Philadelphia and London, W. B. Saunders, 1957)

Hecht, Eugene, Schaum's Outline of College Physics, Eleventh Edition (McGraw Hill, 2012)

The Hutchinson Encyclopaedia  (Oxford, Helicon Publishing, 1994)

Maynard Keynes, John,  

Maynard Smith, John, 'Eugenics and Utopia', in Frank E. Manuel, Utopias and Utopian Thought (Boston, Beacon Press, 1966)

O'Connor, Flannery, Everything That Rises Must Converge (short stories), New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, January 1965 

Orrock, Louise, On HIV and Aids, Taxila Institute (institute.iqmind.org/on-hiv-and-aids-by-louise-orrock), June 8, 2015

Orrock, Louise, On Cancer, Taxila Institute (institute.iqmind.org-on-cancer-by-louise-orrock), June 8, 2015

PubMed, US National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health, (www.ncbi.nim.nih.gov/pubmed)

Rawls, John N, A Theory of Justice (Oxford, OUP, 1971)

Trevor-Roper, Patrick D, Lecture Notes on Opthamology, Sixth Edition (Oxford, Blackwell, 1983)  

Whitehead, Alfred North, Science and the Modern World (New York, The Free Press, 1967)