The worldview of Louis Pasteur

Louis Pasteur

Louis Pasteur was, without a doubt, one of the greatest scientists of the 19th century. His scientific work was immense. Among his most notable discoveries are the following:

1.      Optical isomerism. The fact that certain substances occur in two different forms, with the same chemical composition but different physical properties, for they rotate the plane of polarization of light in opposite directions.

2.      Alcoholic, acetic, lactic, and butyric fermentations, which he showed are due to the action of bacteria or yeast.

3.      Spontaneous generation, which in his time was only defended for microorganisms, and Pasteur demonstrated it’s impossible under current conditions.

Changes in the Scientific Paradigm

Thomas Kuhn

As Thomas Kuhn pointed out, from time to time there are shifts in the scientific paradigm that cause sharp deviations in the direction of research. These shifts can occur in any of the sciences. Here are some important historical examples:

Puerperal fever was for centuries the leading cause of death in women giving birth. In 1795, the Scottish obstetrician Alexander Gordon claimed that the disease was transmitted by doctors and midwives. In 1842, the English physician Thomas Watson, known for his description of the aortic pulse, recommended that doctors wash their hands with diluted lye before attending a birth. And in 1847, the Austrian physician Ignaz Semmelweis advised the same, based on data showing that the incidence of puerperal fever was higher in hospitals than in births taking place at home, and higher among women in labor attended by doctors than by midwives. Semmelweis' proposals were violently rejected by contemporary physicians, who were outraged by the idea of ​​being blamed for infections caused by themselves, to the point that Semmelweis was committed to an asylum where he only survived two weeks. His death is believed to have been the result of a beating by the asylum guards when Semmelweis, who was 47 years old, tried to escape. His proposals were confirmed by the discovery of the germ theory of infectious diseases by Louis Pasteur, according to which diseases are caused by microorganisms, and not by miasmas transmitted by air, as previously believed. This caused an abrupt change in the scientific paradigm applied to medicine.

Fads and fallacies in the name of science

Martin Gardner

As I pointed out in the previous post, Martin Gardner published in 1952 a book with the same title as this one. My edition, dated in 1957, contains an updating appendix and a new chapter, making a total of 26 chapters. Each chapter refers to one or more cases of pseudoscience. The book bears the following subtitle:

A study in human gullibility

I am sure that more than one of my readers will be outraged by at least one of Gardner’s selected pseudosciences, because they will not be considered pseudoscience. Like any human activity, the critique of pseudosciences is also debatable. I am not going to give my opinion. I will just summarize Gardner’s pseudosciences, although not all of them, for a few are no longer interesting. Nor will I mention those that have appeared after the publication of Gardner’s book, although I will dedicate other posts to some of these.

Why we have no great men today

G.K. Chesterton

First, a clarification: I won’t let myself be dragged by political correctness. I’m not going to change the title of this post to “great human beings.” For me, the word “man” (equivalent to the Latin homo) still has a main generic meaning, different from the meaning whose Latin antecedent is vir (male), opposed to woman or female.

The absence of great men is a common place today and affects almost all fields: