Page 184 - The Creation Of The Universe

182 THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE

"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 assumption that living
beings had a very simple structure. Since medieval times, spontaneous gen-
eration, which asserts that non-living materials came together to form liv-
ing organisms, had been widely accepted. It was commonly believed that
insects 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 evi-
dence of spontaneous generation. However, it was later understood that
worms did not appear on meat spontaneously, 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
Sorbonne in 1864, Pasteur said:
"Never will the doctrine of
spontaneous generation recov-
er from the mortal blow struck
by this simple experiment." 106
For a long time, advocates of
the theory of evolution resisted
Charles Darwin