What Are Microbes?

This chapter reconstructs the social history of microbes and illustrates its partial synthesis thanks to the latest technologies. At first glance, defining microbes (tiny organisms invisible to the naked eye) might seem trivial, but the chapter shows how definitions and ways of understanding and ‘seeing’ microbes have varied in different places and historical periods, as a result of the interaction between ways of doing science and different socio-political and cultural contexts.

Biology · Microbial Community Ecology and Physiology