Page 460 - Pleasant Words from the Gospe

Pleasant Words from the Gospel

"Life Comes From Life"

In his book, Darwin never referred to the origin of life. The
primitive understanding of science in his time rested on the as-
sumption that living beings had a very simple structure. Since
medieval times, spontaneous generation, which asserts that
non-living materials came together to form living organisms,
had been widely accepted. It was commonly believed that in-
sects came into being from food leftovers, and mice from
wheat. Interesting experiments were conducted to prove this
theory. Some wheat was placed on a dirty piece of cloth, and it
was believed that mice would originate from it after a while.
Similarly, maggots developing in rotting meat was assumed
to be evidence of spontaneous generation. However, it was lat-
er understood that worms did not appear on meat sponta-

neously, but were carried there by flies in the form of larvae,
invisible to the naked eye.
Even when Darwin wrote The Origin of Species, the belief
that bacteria could come into existence
from non-living matter was widely
accepted in the world of science.
However, five years after the
publication of Darwin's book,
Louis Pasteur announced his
results after long studies and
experiments, that disproved
spontaneous generation, a cor-
nerstone of Darwin's theory. In
his triumphal lecture at the Sor-

bonne in 1864, Pasteur said: "Never
The French biologist
Louis Pasteur

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