Controversy Between Louis Pasteur And Pouuchet

One scientific controversy which played a major role throughout the history and sociology of science was the debate between Louis Pasteur and Félix Archimède Pouchet on the issue of spontaneous generation. Pasteur was a renowned French chemist and microbiologist, with heavy influence on vaccinations, fermentation and pasteurization. Pouchet was also a French scientist, focusing more on natural history. This controversy between Pasteur and Pouchet was a good example of one scientist, Pouchet, basing much of his evidence on his own beliefs, whereas Pasteur was never led astray by his own prejudices, but built his evidence on solid, methodical experimental work. By studying the effects of controversy in history, we can learn and improve our scientific method to get the very best results we can.

Controversies are integral to the collective effort in scientific development (Caplan & Engelhardt, 1987). Spontaneous generation is a now obsolete body of thought that life can spontaneously form from non-living matter with no input from outside sources (Farley & Geison, 1974), for example fleas from dust or maggots from dead flesh. Pasteur came upon spontaneous generation during his work on microbial fermentation, and had concluded that fermentation arose as a consequence of the presence of microorganisms, while the theory of spontaneous generation would have people believe it was the other way around. While the theory of spontaneous generation had suffered a strong setback by Pasteur’s early deductions, the discussion on whether spontaneous generation existed