Page 456 - Atlas of Creation Volume 3

that when burning material was smothered, it hindered the
expulsion of phlogiston, and so the fire went out. But in
time it was observed that metals did not shrink or
weaken as they burned, and so certain doubts grew

up about phlogiston's reality.
Towards the end of the 18th century, the at-
mosphere was found to be composed of several
different gasses. While some tried to explain the

different ways in which these gasses burned in
terms of the phlogiston theory, experiments per-
formed with oxygen showed the theory to be in-
valid. As a result of his observing metal burning in

oxygen, Antoine Lavoisier, a French scientist, dis-
covered that the weight of the burning metal in-
creased, while the amount of oxygen decreased. His
experiments demonstrated the source of fire. Objects burn

when they absorb oxygen. The hypothetical substance called
Copernicus demolished the Earth-centered phlogiston had never existed!
model of the universe proposed by Ptolemy
and adopted by the Catholic Church. The new Another example of an historic scientific error is the "expla-
model portrayed the Earth as merely a part of nation" for the origin of electricity. In the 1780s, Italian physi-
the Solar System.
cian Luigi Galvani performed experiments with animals and
suddenly came across a new source of electricity—or so he believed. In his experiments with frogs, he saw
the frog's leg muscles contract when in contact with metal. As a result, he concluded that metal extracts
electricity from the muscles and nerves of animals.

Galvani had performed this experiment on one single leg with one piece of metal. However, Alessandro
Volta, a colleague of his who suspected the real explanation behind this experiment, began his own work on
the subject. He attached two ends of a wire to a frog's leg and observed no muscular contraction. After this,
Volta went on to refute the proposal that electricity came from a frog or any other animal. Electricity is pro-

duced by a stream of electrons, and metal conducts the electrons more easily. The theory of "animal elec-
tricity" was simply an error of a particular moment in history.
These examples clearly show that in the past, some totally wrong claims have been made about
processes that are very well known today. Scientists have been caught up in various errors either because of

the unsophisticated research equipment of their time, their limited understanding, or because of their own
prejudices. Among such scientific errors, the greatest—and most enduring—historic example is one theory
put forward concerning the origins of life. This theory's illogical claims have exerted a much greater influ-
ence than any of the examples given above. This

error, called Darwinism, unites a materialist
world view with a belief in evolution.
Once upon a time, frogs were At one time, with insufficient evi-
also the subject of a scientific dence at hand, some people regarded
error that deceived evolutionists.
this theory as scientific. Charles
Darwin's book The Origin of Species was
known to be inconsistent, even at the
time of its publication in 1859, but it

awakened interest in some circles.
Darwin made his assumptions without
the benefit of genetics or biochemistry. But
Luigi Galvani the mistaken claims he made, based on the

then-insufficient fossil record, were avidly

454 Atlas of Creation Vol. 3