Yuriko Tanaka's Science and Representation: A History of "Bacteria consists of four case studies, each of which is devoted to a specific person: Girolamo Fracastoro, Antone van Leeuwenhoek, Louis Pasteur, and Robert Koch. This structure might strike some readers, particularly those who are familiar with the history of science, as rather an old-fashioned approach. Glancing at its table of contents, I wondered whether the book intended to explore the history of its given discipline by focusing on selected prominent (male) scientists whose contributions are deemed decisive from a present-day perspective. Such old-fashioned historiography often starts by identifying the "fathers" of the discipline and then chooses some later figures to be those who finally gave it its "modern contours." In the history of microbiology, Fracastoro and Leeuwenhoek tend to play the former role, and Pasteur and Koch the latter. Though this type of progressive and positivistic narrative once flourished in the history of science, it has been subjected to severe criticism in the past few decades. Soon after I started reading her book, however, I was reassured that the author was well aware of that criticism.
