The Beginnings of Scientific Modernity

Much of the history of science is written in the genre of success stories. In the early days these used to centre on the lives and genius of Great Men; later followed the intricate unfolding of Progress and Reason. By now we have entered the strategic era: success is described and explained in terms of strategies and decisions taken by actors in a complex play by their ability to exploit, if not manipulate, the visible and invisible hierarchies of those knowledge systems and social practices that constitute the social system of science. With so many clever actors abounding, the history of science is revealed as a theatre. But as Elkana has reminded us, theatre good theatre can be performed either in the vein of a Greek drama, focusing on the unfolding of that which is inevitable, or as an epic in which the only historically interesting question is: Why did it happen this way, when it could have happened in a very different way? The life and work of Louis Pasteur was bound to become the object of many historical studies written as success stories. The present book (whose conceptual layout and structure was set up by the philosopher and historian of science Claire Salomon-Bayet, and carried out by her and her five collaborators) also has as its conceptual object a success story but one that speaks of strategies, transformations of interests, alignments and alliances, as an accomplished revolution. It succeeds in avoiding the simplified and the shallow, by showing the complexities of configurations that arise from the intersection of several histories: the history of scientific concepts and of their applications; that of mentalities, professional identities, interests and politics, of daily practices and of shifts occurring inside and between institutions. And yet, in describing

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