Page 295 - If Darwin Had Known about DNA

Adnan Oktar

293

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" "Life Comes From Life" "
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In his book, Darwin never referred to the origin of life. The primi-
tive 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 common-
ly believed that insects came into being
from food leftovers, and mice from
wheat. Interesting experiments were con-
ducted to prove this theory. Some wheat
was placed on a dirty piece of cloth, and it
was believed that mice would originate from
Charles Darwin
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 bac-
teria could come into existence from non-living matter was widely ac-
cepted 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 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." 246

For a long time, advocates of the theory of evolution resisted these
findings. However, as the development of science unraveled the com-