Back to Featured Projects Seeing Cells Exhibit Overview Seeing Cells in Life Theory of Cells as Basic Units of Life Protoplasm as the Living Stuff Cell Specialization From Fertilization to Organisms Presenting and Representing "The" Cell Experimental Manipulations Resolving the Inside of Cells Inside Living Cells Seeing How Cell Parts Move Seeing Cell Aggregates Designing Synthetic Cells Imagining Cells Seeing Cells Videos Home Groundbreaking Research at the Research Centers Eugene Bell Center Featured Projects Seeing Cells Exhibit Presenting and Representing "The" Cell Cell theory helped unify study of organisms into the single field called "biology." The earliest biology textbooks presented cells as fundamental units of life but focused on specific types of cell: skin cells made up skin, blood cells make up blood, and so on. The earliest images presented particular cells from specific organs and organisms. Download Presenting and Representing "The" Cell HoverTouch to magnify Skin cells Huxley 18681 HoverTouch to magnify Specific cells showing a diversity of cell shapes Sedgwick and Wilson 18862 HoverTouch to magnify A "slightly" diagrammatic starfish ovum Sedgwick and Wilson 18862 In the United States, textbooks moved beyond particular cells to represent cells through a diagram of a generalized cell. The diagrams evolved over time, offering the best available theoretical interpretations of general features of all cells. HoverTouch to magnify A fully diagrammatic cell Wilson 18963 HoverTouch to magnify A fully diagrammatic cell Sharp 19215 These representations of “the” cell show abstract conceptions of a general cell, a thing with all the essential components a cell needs to be a cell, to do what cells do. HoverTouch to magnify Wilson's cell diagram, almost 2 decades later Wilson 19254 But what do cells do? And how do we know, since we can only see so much through the microscope? Previous Panel Next panel Download Presenting and Representing "The" Cell Huxley, Thomas Henry, and William Jay Youmans. The Elements of Physiology and Hygiene: A Text-book for Educational Institutions. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1868. Page 256, Figures 94-96. Sedgwick, William Thompson, and Edmund Beecher Wilson. An Introduction to General Biology. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1886. Page 49, Figure 20. Wilson, Edmund B. The Cell in Development and Heredity. New York: Macmillan Company, 1896. Page 53, Figure 24. Wilson, Edmund B. The Cell in Development and Heredity. New York: Macmillan Company, 1925. Page 14, Figure 5. Sharp, Lester W. An Introduction to Cytology. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1926. Page 24, Figure 1.