Book Blurbs » Louis Pasteur by Patrice Debre

Pasteur First Brought Together Science and Medicine (Translational Science)

admin — Tue, 05 May 2009 15:06:30 +0000

“Pasteur thus has the stature as the principal architect of a medical revolution that matches the political and industrial revolutions that had shaken Europe since the end of the eighteenth century. Others, like Claude Bernard, had prepared the ground, but without question it was Pasteur who redesigned the medical landscape in which we have been living and moving for more than century.

“Beyond discovering and mastering germs, he created the field of medical research and immediately gave it its full dimension. ‘The object of scientific research,’ he said, ‘is the improvement of human health.’ On the basis of this conviction, he sought to unify teaching and research in the pursuit of healing. And indeed, Pasteurian science revealed the medical effectiveness of disciplines that had developed outside the hospital. Medicine as healing and prevention thus entered a new era and became a scientific endeavor. This encounter between the scientist and disease was not fortuitous; it had occurred in the context of specific problems. From the culture broth to the vaccines, from the toxins to serotherapy, the achievements of Pasteur and his disciples led to the patients’ bedside.” (p. 499)

Motivations for Young People to Be Scientists

admin — Mon, 04 May 2009 15:02:32 +0000

“‘Young people, young people, have faith in those sure and powerful methods whose first secrets we are just beginning to understand. All of you, whatever your future career, do not allow yourselves to be touched by denigrating and sterile skepticism, and do not become discouraged by the sadness of certain hours that a nation has to experience. Live in the serene peace of laboratories and libraries. Ask yourselves first: What have I done to acquire knowledge? And as you advance, ask: What have I done for my country? And this you will do until the moment when you may experience the supreme happiness of thinking that you have in some way contributed to progress and the good of humanity. But to whatever degree life will have favored your efforts, when you approach the great goal, you must be able to say to yourself: I have done my best.’” (p. 493)

The Deep Rewards of Successful, Rigorous Science

admin — Mon, 04 May 2009 14:56:32 +0000

“‘Always cultivate the spirit of criticism. Once it has been allowed to fail, there is nothing to awaken an idea, nothing to stimulate great things. Without it, nothing will hold up. It will always have the last word. What I am here asking of you, and what you in turn will ask of those whom you will train, is the most difficult thing the inventor has to learn. To believe that one has found an important scientific fact and to be consumed by the desire to announce it, and yet to be constrained to combat this impulse for days, weeks, sometimes years, to endeavor to ruin one’s own experiments, and to announce one’s discovery only after one has laid to rest all the contrary hypotheses, yes, that is indeed an arduous task. But when after all these efforts one finally achieves certainty, one feels one of the deepest joys it is given to the human soul to experience.” (p. 472)

The Pasteurian Doctrine

admin — Sun, 03 May 2009 14:47:53 +0000

“Pasteur’s experiments were not so much a matter of inventing anything ex nihilo as of assembling and connecting scattered notions in ways that had not been tried or even envisaged before him. His discoveries were due to this uncompromising experimental rigor.

“It stands to reason that this amounted to a full-fledged method. Pasteur’s philosophy of experimentation can be summarized as a procedure judged a priori logical and then carried out by means and for the purpose of testing and verification. The Pasteurian doctrine primarily came into being as a logical sequence. This is true for each individual experiment, but the same observation can be made if one examines the entire set of research programs developed by Pasteur. In every research adventure, one finds the same attitude in the choice of themes to be pursued, the development of hypotheses, and the stating of conclusions. This is so striking that some may say that Pasteurianism is an eternal series of beginnings…

“Pasteur chose to work on the intangible. He had prepared himself to understand, interpret, and discern that which cannot be seized. He began by revolutionizing chemistry when he discovered the differing spatial orientation of molecules that were rigorously identical in every other respect; but he did not stop there and immediately foresaw the significance of his discovery for the study of the biosphere. In the same manner, his approach to the role of microbes and their reproduction shows the truly phenomenal rigor of his thinking, for although his experiments confronted Pasteur with tremendously complex phenomena, he knew how to divide them in very imaginative ways in order to interpret them….” (pp. 358-359)

Traditional Practices Can Guide Scientific Hypotheses

admin — Sun, 03 May 2009 14:28:55 +0000

“‘Many times in the past I have had occasion to recognize the truth inherent in the practice of the old crafts,’ wrote Pasteur. ‘It does happen, of course, that these are truths of legend, tinged with the miraculous; but if you don’t mind a bit of the supernatural, and if you look at the facts themselves, you will almost invariably recognize that any practice, provided that it is generally followed, is the fruit of reasoned experience.’ And he continued: ‘The oldest writings on wine recommend the month of March for the first racking, and a day when the north wind blows, not the south wind, which brings rain, at least in the Jura. Do not think that this is a prejudice or a blind routine. This is a very old custom. To me, it is rational; wine, especially young wine, is oversaturated with carbonic-acid gas. If the barometric pressure has been very low for several days, the wine must discharge this gas. This will bring up tiny bubbles from the bottom of the barrel and these will be able to bring up with them the smallest solid particles of the deposits. The wine will therefore be less limpid than if it racked on a breezy day, when the atmospheric pressure tends to increase the solubility of gases in liquids. This, I believe, is the reason for the practice of which I am speaking.”

True Science: Rigorous Observation of Facts

admin — Sat, 02 May 2009 14:27:35 +0000

A certain research idea “could have led to the solution at which Pasteur arrived several years later, but because it was purely speculative, it was simply written up and never used for serious experimentation. In view of this shortcoming, Pasteur once again stated one of the articles of his scientific credo: ‘In the experimental sciences, truth cannot be distinguished from error as long as firm principles have not been established through rigorous observation of facts.” (p. 186)

Pasteur: Applied Science Does Not Exist

admin — Sat, 02 May 2009 14:21:38 +0000

“Pasteur held a revolutionary definition of applied science: ‘There is no such thing as a special category of science called applied science; there is science and there are its applications, which are related to one another as the fruit is related to the tree that has borne it.’ This position was at odds with the views held by the scientists of Pasteur’s time, when science for science’s sake was the prevailing ideology. did not Sainte-Claire Deville, one of the greatest chemists practicing at the time, define himself as working in the absurd? Pasteur was naturally attracted to technical realities by temperament and curiosity. And…he was above all interested in developing processes and research that would be economically useful. Acting upon these ideas, he was equally enthusiastic about the teaching of science and about its industrial applications.” (p. 84)