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"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
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 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 ev-
idence 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 bacte-
ria could come into existence from non-living matter was widely accept-
ed 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 tri-
umphal lecture at the Sorbonne in 1864,
Pasteur said: "Never will the doctrine of
spontaneous generation recover from the
mortal blow struck by this simple experi-
ment." 26

Louis Pasteur destroyed the belief that life
could be created from inanimate sub-
stances.

Mary: An Exemplary Muslim Woman