Reenactment in 1999 of Louis Pasteur's lecture in 1864 on spontaneous generation
In 1999 Bruno Latour organized for Hans Ulrich Obrist a series of reenactment of public lectures famous in science. BL did the 1864 Pasteur's lecture (abridged) on spontaneous generation where Pasteur demonstrated in a beautiful series of experiments that Pouchet, his adversary, had actually contaminated his vessels by neglecting what will become the rules of aseptic culture.
Gentlemen!
A number of imposing problems now have our best minds in thrall. These include questions regarding the unity or plurality of the races of Man, whether his creation ought to be dated thousands of years or thousands of centuries past, whether species are fixed, or rather undergo a slow, progressive transformation into new species, how supposedly eternal matter relates to the nothingness outside of it, and whether the idea of God is useless. These are just a few of the issues now subject to learned debate.
You need, however, have no fear that my address tonight has any pretensions toward resolving any one of these earnest questions. But in the neighborhood of such mysteries lies another question, more or less closely related, to which I may, perhaps, venture to direct your attention; for its complexities, which I have made the object of concerted and conscientious study, are accessible to experiment.
