Does anyone have a source for the history related in the submitted article? I know routine aseptic precautions were opposed by quite a few doctors in the nineteenth century for quite a while, but I've never read anything about detailed reasons (other than convenience) given for not washing hands regularly or sterilizing instruments. How much of this is on the historical record, and how much of this is story-telling by Dijkstra, who was quite an able story-teller?
I would think that this is parable rather than history. Some of the giveaways are the dig at "operational research" and the mention of the DoD (which a meticulous writer like EWD would have known did not exist until much later).
I think the paraphrased quotes are satires over contemporary reaction towards the formal methods Dijkstra promoted, not actual quotes from the historic sterilization debate.
Semmelweis ideas were probably rejected because there were no theroretical framework which could explain how disease could be carried around by doctors or nurses who were not themselves infected (bacteria were not yet dicovered). It was not easy for the medical establishment to accept a theory that relied on the existence of a completly unknown and invisible substance.
Also, the post-napoleonic Austria-Hungary was an extremely conservative society. Revolutionary ideas and paradigm-changes were definitiely not the positive buzzwords they are today.
Here is a wonderful quote by the emperor: (http://www.archive.org/stream/austriahungary00legeiala/austr...):
Hold to that which is old, for that is good; if our ancestors were pleased with it to be so, why not we?
New ideas are to-day being advanced of which I do not nor ever shall approve. Hold them in suspicion and keep to that which is approved. I have no need of learned men; I want faithful subjects. Be such! that is your duty; he who would serve me must do what I command. He who cannot do this, or who comes with new ideas, may leave us; if not, I shall send him.
Not the best environment in which to promote radical new ideas!
In hindsight, Semmelweis opponents made a great error by rejecting a theory which had strong empirical evidence just because it didn't have a theoretical underpinning. However I fail to see the connection to Dijkstras formal methods. Is there really overwhelming empirical evidence for the superiority of formal methods in software design? No, it actually seems Dijkstras argument for formal methods is that it is a "time-honoured tradition", a line of reasoning akin to that of the the emperor and the opponents of sterialization.
I don't have a rigorous source, but there is a marvelous historical-fiction account of Ignatz Semmelweis's discovery of the importance of hygiene in 19th century Vienna, and the ridicule and professional scorn he was met with, called "The Cry and the Covenant." There's a fairly good synopsis at http://www.doyletics.com/arj/tcatcrvw.htm, including descriptions of the reasons the doctor's opposed his innovations.
James Burke discusses how wartime surgeons did an end-run around the unscientific medical establishment. Discussion starts at 7:30 in this clip, and continues in part 2 of the next clip.
