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Louis Pasteur and his achievement
Society influence on scientific development
The effect of science on society
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Recommended: Louis Pasteur and his achievement
Held as one of the most highly regarded facts of the scientific community, theories often change with the presentation of new evidence. However, the motivation behind obtaining this new evidence is often overlooked, wrought with political and personal motives guiding the work of scientists, as these scientists are able to make an impact on the rest of the world. Though separated by a century, Louis Pasteur and Rachel Carson offered evidence to solve some of the biggest questions of their time period, with Louis Pasteur effectively concluding the spontaneous generation debate and Rachel Carson promoting awareness of our careless use of DDT and the impact this had on future generations.
By the mid 1800’s, Louis Pasteur was caught up in the spontaneous generation debate after reviewing the contradictory experiments performed by Francesco Redi, John Needham, and Lazarro Spallanzani. Two centuries prior to Pasteur, Redi had argued that spontaneous generation could not occur, supported with experimental evidence. However, only one century prior to Pasteur, John Needham had shown that growth would occur in a flask of sterilized broth, which directly refuted Redi’s claim that spontaneous generation did not occur. Seeing a flaw in Needham’s experiment, Spallanzani repeated the experiment, this time sterilizing the broth and the air present in the flask. Without this source of contamination, the flask remained sterilized, while a similar flask of broth which he left open to the environment began to show signs of growth. In refute of Spallanzani, those who believed in spontaneous generation said that the air carried a necessary “life force” which life may directly come from. One hundred years later, Louis Pasteur joins the debate...
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...n with their work, the needs of society demanded their work be done, whether explicitly stated or not. Society had failed to recognize a potential threat in their time period and the work of these people changed the way people conducted their lives. Without people like Pasteur and Carson to correct the overlooked mistakes made by society, society may crumble under the weight of its own ignorance.
Works Cited
1-9 Spontaneous generation was an attractive theory to many people, but was ultimately disproven.. (2003, January 1). . Retrieved May 8, 2014, from http://www.microbiologytext.com/index.php?module=Book&func=displayarticle&art_id=27
Regis, E. (2008). What is life?: investigating the nature of life in the age of synthetic biology. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Carson, R., & Darling, L. (1962). Silent spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin ;.
The book draws its name from the first essay, "The Lives of a Cell," in which Thomas offers his observations on ecology and the role of cellular activity. He writes that the "uniformity of the earth's life, more astonishing then its diversity, is accountable by the high probability that we derived, originally, from some single cell, fertilized in a bolt of lightning as the earth cooled" (3).
Biosphere The Realm Of Life. Authors: Robert A. Wallace, Jack L.King , Gerald P.Sanders – 1998
Synthetic Biology is “the design and construction of new biological parts, devices, systems, and the re-designing of existing, natural biological systems for useful purpose” ("Synthetic Biology"). In the essay A Synthetic World by Seirian Sumner, he illustrates the possible outcomes of synthetic biology and how it specifically affects the “natural world.” Furthermore, he explains that by manipulating organisms goes completely
Diamond, J. (1987). The worst mistake in the history of the human race. Discover, 8(5), 64-66.
Darwin, Charles, and David Quammen. On the Origin of Species. New York: Sterling, 2008. 349. Print.
In 1962, the publication of Silent Spring Rachel Carson captivated the American public. Carson wrote about the harmful effects of chemical pesticides in the environment, and her writing was very reflective of the events occurring at the time. There is a strong connection between Carson’s writing and the Cold War. In fact, if it were not for the war, the American public may not have responded in the same way to Carson’s writing. Carson used tone and content as methods of getting her point across to the public. Silent Spring shined a light on the damage done to the environment as a result of the Cold War, and this issue was finally being recognized by American public.
Primordial Soup Theory claims that life began in a pond or a ocean because of a combination of chemicals from the atmosphere and some form of energy to make amino acids, the monomers of proteins, which would then evolve into all the species. In this theory, the basic building blocks of life came from simple molecules which form the atmosphere.This was then energized by lightning and rain.According to this theory the first organism’s would have to be simple heterotrophs.They would become autotrophs through mutation.However,evidence now suggests that the first organisms were autotrophs..The scientists involved in the hypothesis were A.I Oparin,J.B.S.Haldane, Stanley Miller,Harold Urey, Sidney Fox.Oparin and Haldane both
Another man that made discoveries that reinforced those of Pasteur was Robert Koch. Robert Koch isolated the germ that causes tuberculosis, identified the germ responsible for Asiatic cholera, and developed sanitary measures to prevent disease. (1) In the late 1880s, genes, white blood cells, and aspirin were discovered. An Augustinian monk from Austria, Johann Gregor Mendel, experimented in the crossplanting of pea plants.
Lynas, Mark. "We Must Stop Trying to Engineer Nature." Genetic Engineering, edited by Noël Merino, Greenhaven Press, 2013. Opposing Viewpoints. Opposing Viewpoints in Context,
2). As a result, this scientific experiment changed the relationship of humankind and nature by foreseeing the modification of DNA of bacteria, yeast, plants, and animals to discover new medicines and to provide solutions for inherited diseases (Le Vine, 1999, p. 2).
As time has progressed, a divide has been created between scientists and those who strongly...
“The greatest mystery of existence is existence itself” (Chopra). Chopra, a world-renowned author, perceives the existence of life as a truly mystifying cerebration. The pending question that many scientist, and even theists, attempt to answer is how life ultimately began. Currently, the mystery is left with two propositions, evolution and creation. While both approaches attempt to answer the origins of life, evolution and creation are two contrasting concepts. Evolution views life to be a process by which organisms diversified from earlier forms whereas creation illustrates that life was created by a supernatural being. Creation and evolution both agree on the existence of microevolution and the resemblance of apes and humans but vary in terms of interpreting the origins of the life through a historical standpoint. A concept known as Faith Vs Fact comprehensively summarizes the tone of this debate, which leads the question of how life began.
The primordial soup theory was proposed in 1924.They believed that with the gasses in the atmosphere and the compounds in the ocean, along with strikes of lightning, this could suddenly form amino acids to form the first life forms. Later, in 1953, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey tested the hypothesis with an experiment known as the Miller-Urey experiment, which included gases from a reducing atmosphere, a simulation of an ocean, and lightning strikes to cause the organic compounds to form. This experiment did show that the compounds formed in this environment. Scientists later found flaws with the experiment, such as they simulated constant strikes of lightning, but lightning strikes are not constant on Earth even though they are very frequent. Joan Oro also showed that adenine was formed by heating water-based ammonia and cyanide
The 1800’s was a time of development in science. New and what seemed like crazy ideas were surfacing. These ideas were more easily accepted than in past years. There were new theories such as the Cell Theory by Mathias Schleiden and Theodor Schwann in 1838 (Farah 626) and the Atomic Theory by John Dalton (Farah 628).A little over a decade after the Cell Theory was proposed, Louis Pasteur discovered bacteria in 1850 (Farah 627).
I remember when I first thought about the power one person could have to create change. I was a teenager growing up in the South when I read Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring”. This beautifully written book is a powerful indictment of the widespread use of pesticides. Rachel Carson criticized the chemical companies for claiming that pesticides were safe despite mounting evidence to the contrary. And she criticized public officials who accepted the chemical industry’s claims.