Article ID: CBB624613411

Revisiting the Pouchet–Pasteur Controversy Over Spontaneous Generation: Understanding Experimental Method (2018)

unapi

Louis Pasteur’s defeat of belief in spontaneous generation has been a classical rationalist example of how the experimental approach of modern science can reveal superstition. Farley and Geison (Bull Hist Med 48:161–198, 1974) told a counter-story of how Pasteur’s success was due to political and ideological support rather than superior experimental science. They claimed that Pasteur violated proper norms of scientific method, and that the French Academy of Science did not see this, or did not want to. Farley and Geison argued that Pouchet’s experiments were as valid as those of Pasteur. In this paper I argue that the core of the scientific debate was not general theories for or against spontaneous generation but the outcome of specific experiments. It was on the conduct of these experiments that the Academy made judgements favorable to Pasteur. Claude Bernard was a colleague of Pasteur, supportive and sometimes critical. I argue that Bernard’s fact-oriented methodology of “experimental medicine” is a better guide to explaining the controversy than the hypothetic-deductive view of scientific method typical of logical empiricism.

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Authors & Contributors
Latour, Bruno
Yeang, Chen-Pang
Antonio Piccolomini d'Aragona
Barton, Jenifer
Harrington, Quinn
Stemeroff, Noah
Concepts
Controversies and disputes
Biogenesis; origin of life; spontaneous generation
Medicine
Experimental method
Science and society
Physics
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
18th century
17th century
Places
France
Americas
Germany
Berlin (Germany)
Paris (France)
Great Britain
Institutions
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory
Harvard University
European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)
Académie des Sciences, Paris
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