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Revisiting the Pouchet–Pasteur controversy over spontaneous generation: understanding experimental method

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Abstract

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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Notes

  1. Among other tasks Conant, together with the physicist Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) and the engineer Vannevar Bush (1890–1974), made up the scientific troika at the head of the Manhattan Project producing the first atomic bombs.

  2. The content and background to Conant’s philosophy of science and his interaction with Quine and Kuhn has been described and analyzed e.g. by Cedarbaum (1983), Biddle (2011), Hamlin (2016), and Wray (2016).

  3. This argument was repeated literally by Geison (1995, p. 131).

  4. Pouchet referred to Heinrich Schröder and Theodor von Dusch who had refined an experiment by Theodor Schwann (Farley 1977: 50–51).

  5. Emphasis in the original. Where nothing else is indicated the translations from French have been made by the author, NR. As in all following quotations I have translated the French word “expériences” with “experiments.” The French word “expérience” includes a broader set of experiences than the English word “experiment.” But “experiment” seems to me most suitable in the context of the Pasteur–Pouchet controversy.

  6. See remarks by Milne Edwards, Quatrefages, Claude Bernard, Dumas (1858) in Comptes rendus des Séances de l’Academie des Sciences, 48: 23–36.

  7. A footnote informed readers that Pouchet was given more room for his reply than the ordinary rules allowed, to avoid suspicion that his argument had been weakened by being abridged.

  8. Pasteur was not yet a member and the paper was present by Jean-Baptiste Dumas.

  9. According to Diara (1984) Milne-Edwards and Flourens at first thought it “indigne d’occuper les esprits sérieux” (unworthy to occupy serious thinkers) with such a question and preferred silence, and Quatrefages said he had more pressing things to do (Diara 1984: 13).

  10. Comptes rendus des Séances de l’Academie des Sciences, 50: 248–249.

  11. The majority, zoologist Henri Milne-Edwards (1800–1885), the naturalist Armand de Quatrefages (1810–1892), and the physiologist Jean Pierre Flourens (1794–1867) were critical of heterogenesis, while two were more favourable or open, namely the naturalist Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1805–1861) and physician-embryologist Etienne Serres (1786–1868). Flourens was the perpetual secretary of the Academy.

  12. Comptes rendus des Séances de l’Academie des Sciences, 51: 675–678.

  13. The Dover 1957 publication does not tell whether the translation is based on the original 1865 version.

  14. «Ainsi PASTEUR suit ses idées et il veut y soumettre les faits, moi, je suis les faits et je cherche à en faire sortir des idées sans violence et d’elles-mêmes.»

  15. Italics in original.

  16. See e.g., Geison (1974: 416) and Farley (1977: 104).

  17. «Toute le progrés de mes recherches consiste á y avoir acculé les partisans de la doctrine de hétérogénie.».

  18. «… Pasteur et nous répéterions les principales expériences sur lesquelles s’appuient de part et d’autre des conclusions contradictoires.» Italics in the original.

  19. Soon after the death of Bernard in February 1878 this tension broke out in a unique posthumous debate. The chemist Marcellin Berthelot (1827–1907) published some notes by Bernard on experiments done the preceding summer. Bernard thought he was close to isolating a soluble alcoholic ferment and thus disproving Pasteur’s theory of fermentation. He even suggested that yeast might arise spontaneously from cell free juice of ripe grapes. Pasteur reacted with outrage at Berthelot’s action and effectively criticized Bernard’s tentative experiments (Oeuvres 2: 483–634). Two decades later, in 1897, the German chemist Eduard Buchner (1860–1917) announced the achievement of alcoholic fermentation by a cell free extract of yeast cells. His discovery was rewarded with a Nobel Prize in 1907.

  20. See also Comptes rendus des Séances de l’Académie des Sciences 58 (7 March 1864): 470–471.

  21. This description corresponds well to the «Note adressée par MM. Pouchet, Joly et Musset á la commission des expériences relatives á la génération spontanée.» Revue des cours scientifique, 2 July 1864. Paris: Imprimerie de E. Martinet, Rue Mignon, pp. 431–432.

  22. «En résumé, les faits observés par M. Pasteur, et contestés par MM. Pouchet, Joly et Musset, sont de la plus parfaite exactitude.»

  23. “Des liqueurs fermentescibles peuvent rester, soit au contact de l’air confiné, soit au contact de l’air souvent renouvelé. Sans s’altérer, et quand sous l’influence de ce fluide il s’y développe des organismes vivants, ce n’est pas ses éléments gazeux qu’il faut attribuer ce développement, mais á des particules solides dont on peut dépouiller par des moyens divers, ainsi que M. Pasteur l’avait affirmé.»

  24. “Sa mission n’a jamais consisté à adopter telle ou telle doctrine, mais à contrôler les faits sur lesquels s’appuient les opinions diverses …»

  25. On 25 July 1864 Coste claimed in a presentation to the Academy that he had found in macerations of hay encysted infusoria in a state of rest and capable of being reanimated when in contact with water. Milne-Edwards suggested that boiling water would only subject such encysted infusoria to 100° in a dry state which would be less destructive than 100° in wet state (Meunier 1865a).

  26. Le Verrier is famous for predicting accurately the position of the planet Neptune before its discovery in 1846.

  27. Emile Alglave (1842–1929) was then a young editor of Revue des Cours Scientifique. He played an important role as editor and popularizer of science, and became a professor at the Paris faculty of law in 1878.

  28. Meunier was not a member of the Academy and was dependent on a member to read his paper.

  29. See e.g., Barnes and Shapin (1979), Shapin (1982), and Engelhardt and Caplan (1987).

  30. Mendelsohn’s epistemic arguments refer to the views of Barry Barnes and other members of the Edinburgh school.

  31. The same argument was made by Raynaud (1999).

  32. Probably Pasteur had already privately conducted experiments along this line and was well prepared. And the second commission was presumably addressing this possibility when it started experiments with hay infusions (Rapport 1865).

  33. «…il y a là raisons de convenance et d’ordre supérieure devant lesquelles il faut s’arrêter.»

  34. For a thorough overall account see Strick (2000).

  35. Pasteur (1877a: 66) gave the chemical formula KO, OH for “pure potash.”

  36. Italics in the original.

  37. Nature 15 (March 1, 1877), 380. Nature published detailed reports on the debate between Bastian and Pasteur in 1876–1877. Boussingault was soon replaced by Philippe van Tieghem 1839–1914), a botanist who had worked on cultivation of mushrooms in Pasteur’s laboratory.

  38. This description is taken from Bastian’s account of the events (Bastian 1877c: 278).

  39. Biddle (2011) discusses the influence of Quine on Conant’s philosophical epistemology. Probably Conant, as a 15 years older statesman of science, was no less important for Quine’s views about the fundamental social nature of science.

  40. Italics in original.

  41. See fn. 19.

  42. See p. 3.

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Acknowledgements

I want in particular to thank editor Staffan Müller-Wille and anonymous referees of History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences for persistent and fruitful criticism of several earlier versions of this paper. Dagfinn Føllesdal and Alan Love have also given helpful comments.

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    Nils Roll-Hansen

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Roll-Hansen, N. Revisiting the Pouchet–Pasteur controversy over spontaneous generation: understanding experimental method. HPLS 40, 68 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-018-0229-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-018-0229-7

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