Leonardo's mountain of clams and the Diet of Worms Book

I read this book before I did reviews. But I've been working on my PhD and part of that is thinking about how the images we are presented with of the world shape the way we see that world. And the best example I can think of about that is the third essay in this collection, Seeing Eye to Eye, Through a Glass Clearly . You see, there was a fad in the 1850s in England to have an aquarium in your house. A whole series of technologies had come together at the same time - we learnt about the importance of oxygen to going on living, glass making became industrialised and produced glass of consistent strength and clarity, we were able to transport sea water about the place - and all of this stuff was necessary before aquariums could possibly exist.

But what no one imagined before we started having aquariums was the change this might make to how we see the world. Prior to having aquariums - where one looks directly at fish in an eye to eye view - fish and sea life was always either shown after it had been dragged up onto the shore or as if looking down on it from above in a pool. It was only with aquariums that our view of the 'natural' way to see fish and sea life changed. Now, isn't that interesting? The perspective we now believe as being completely obvious and completely natural only came into existence relatively recently and was anything but natural or obvious prior to that.

The other lovely idea in this is that the top of Mount Everest is sandstone - that is, the top of our tallest mountain was once at the bottom of the ocean. If that doesn't do strange things to your mind, you really aren't trying.