Page 220 - Allah's Gentle Artistry

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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 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 be-
en 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 mi-
ce 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
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 publi-
cation of Darwin's book, Louis
Pasteur announced his results after
long studies and experiments, that
disproved spontaneous generati-
on, a cornerstone of Darwin's the-
ory. In his triumphal lecture at the
Sorbonne in 1864, Pasteur said:
"Never will the doctrine of sponta-
neous generation recover from the
mortal blow struck by this simple ex-
periment." 38 Louis Pasteur