Page 154 - The Dark Clan

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The Dark Clan

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¨ ¨Life Comes from Life¨
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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 organ-
isms, 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 evidence of spontaneous generation. However, it was
later 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 dis-

French biologist,
Louis Pasteur