Page 270 - The Microworld Miracle

rangement. According to the theory, inanimate matter must have pro-
duced a living cell as a result of coincidences. Such a claim, however,
is inconsistent with the most unassailable rules of biology.

Life Comes From Life

In his book, Darwin never referred to the origin of life. The prim-
itive understanding of science in his time rested on the assumption
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 insects came into being from food lefto-
vers, 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 later under-

stood 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 exis-
tence from non-living matter was widely ac-
cepted in the world of science.
THE MICROWORLD MIRACLE the Sorbonne in 1864, Pasteur said: "Never
However, five years after the publi-
cation of Darwin's book, Louis Pasteur
announced his results after long studies
and experiments, that disproved sponta-
neous generation, a cornerstone of
Darwin's theory. In his triumphal lecture at

268 Louis Pasteur,