Among the literature of the 1970s which enthusiastically emphasized the externalist approach to the history of science was an article by John Farley and Gerald L. Geison which has often been referred to. It gave an interpretation of the spontaneous generation debate of 1859–64 between Louis Pasteur and Félix A. Pouchet, which suggests that Pasteur's victory was largely due to religious and political factors which favoured him rather than to experimental evidence. Although this view has been challenged by Nils Roll-Hansen, (...) no historian has yet appreciated the full context of the debate which involves the French Academy of Sciences. The Academy had fostered research through prize-questions on spontanteous generation and related issues for nearly twenty years. This new evidence radically alters the feasibility of Pouchet's support for spontaneous generation.A closer examination of Pouchet's writings shows that his religious beliefs influenced his work at least as much as in the case of Pasteur. Pouchet's deeply held commitment to spontaneous generation was not open to modification in the light of new experimental evidence. It was therefore a clear case of a research programme which was not ‘progressive’ and did not deserve to succeed. (shrink)

In 1880, Charles Darwin publishedThe Power of Movement in Plants, a heavy volume of nearly six hundred pages in which he presented the results of many years of experiments conducted with his son Francis on the reaction of plants to the influence of light and gravity. His results contradicted the observations and explanations of the same phenomena offered by the German plant physiologist Julius Sachs in his influentialLehrbuch der Botanik(1868, English translation 1875). Darwin wished rather to ‘convert him than any (...) other half-dozen botanies put together’. Sachs, however, regarded Darwin's work with contempt. Taking up the topic in hisVorlesungen über Pflanzenphysiologiein 1882 and taking issue especially with Darwin's experiments on the movement of root radicles in reaction to gravity, he remarked sharply: In such experiments with roots not only is great precaution necessary, but also the experience of years and extensive knowledge of vegetable physiology, to avoid falling into errors, as did Charles Darwin and his son Francis, who, on the basis of experiments which were unskilfully made and improperly explained, came to the conclusion, as wonderful as it was sensational, that the growing point of the root, like the brain of an animal, dominates the various movements in the root. (shrink)