The apparent displacement, or difference of position, of an object, as seen from two different stations, or points of view. In contemporary writing parallax can also be the same story, or a similar story from approximately the same time line, from one book told from a different perspective in another book.
In 1838, Theodor Schwann and Matthias Schleiden were enjoying after-dinner coffee and talking about their studies on cells. It has been suggested that when Schwann heard Schleiden describe plant cells with nuclei, he was struck by the similarity of these plant cells to cells he had observed in animal tissues.
Schleiden and Schwann are credited with proposing the idea that all plant life (Schleiden) and animal life (Schwann) are composed of cells, or are the product of cells, leading to the discovery of governing laws which are shared by cells from both forms of life.