Blog 8
I
chose to read an obituary of the scientist Louis Pasteur, who died the 28th
of September in 1895. In the obituary, the cause of his death was described, a
short biography of his life was given, and a recount of the state wide funeral
held for him. Most notably though, the obituary discussed how Pasteur impacted
science, especially with the medical field by laying a scientific foundation
for it which moved it from the realm of pseudo-science to a factual branch of
science. He accomplished this by not only debunking the theory of spontaneous
generation but also by creating the first vaccines. One thing interesting with
the obituary is the fact that his virtues related to science were somewhat
directly described. Some of the characteristics mentioned were his passion and
savant hood in science, his desire to learn as well as teach, and his work
ethic. His characteristics are similar to others of high scientific standing to
the point that in the obituary, he and his contributions were compared to Darwin
and his theory of evolution. This shows that truly certain virtues do allow a
person to excel in the field of science. Even though it was not touched upon in
the obituary, I can surmise that based on his virtues and his described
demeanor, he also likely sought out the internal goods of science as well. The
only external good that I could imagine he strived for was the health benefits
that others gained from his research, and even then I do not think this would
be considered an external good since it likely helped fuel his passion for
science. If one truly wanted to learn and understand what kind of virtues make
one a substantial scientist, reading obituaries like this will be beneficial
since they usually give an accurate depiction of one’s actual virtues and
passions, just like this one about Pasteur does.
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