Pasteur in the Laboratory

Paper Summary:

In B. Latour's "Give Me a Laboratory and I Will Raise the World" and G. Geison's "The Private Science of Louis Pasteur" readers are given a glimpse into the laboratory practices of one of the icons of modern biological science. The two works share a vision of laboratory practice as central to the scientific method and, moreover, consider that the popular distinction between "inside" (the laboratory) and outside (the socio-political world) is both arbitrary and inaccurate. However, as this paper will argue, the two works differ radically when it comes to perspective. Geison's book is iconoclastic in that it interrogates the mythmaking process that he perceives as integral to Pasteur's laboratory work. Latour's chapter, on the other hand, may be seen as iconic for its militant defense of Pasteur's personality and practice as models of laboratory science to be adhered to in the present day.

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