Page 148 - A Chain of Miracles

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A A Chain of Miracles
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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 de-
veloping in rotting meat
was assumed to be evi-
dence of spontaneous
generation. However, it
was later understood that
Louis Pasteur
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 experi-
ments, that disproved spontaneous generation, a cornerstone of
Darwin's theory. In his triumphal lecture at the Sorbonne in 1864,
Pasteur said: "Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation
recover from the mortal blow struck by this simple experiment." 68
For a long time, advocates of the theory of evolution resisted
these findings. However, as the development of science unraveled
the complex structure of the cell of a living being, the idea that life
could come into being coincidentally faced an even greater im-
passe.

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