Holy Aqualung Batman!
These ancient ideas of stuff popping into existence were dug up in the beginning of the Enlightenment, propagated by many writers who hated the church and were desperate to find a way to destroy its hold on the masses. They found in this idea of Spontaneous Generation an alternative to Creation. Exploring the long forbidden old teachings of the early philosophers they held up this abstraction as though it were long lost golden Ark of the Covenant itself. The more they wrote about it the less they referred to it as an idea and the more they talked about it being fact (remind you of anything in our generation?) The sentiment was common when Alexander Ross wrote in response to some critics: “To question this (spontaneous generation) is to question reason, sense and experience. If anyone doubts of this let him go to Egypt, and there he will find the fields swarming with mice, begot of the mud of Nylus, to the great calamity of the inhabitants.” –Woe tap the breaks there Mr. Ross, your about to leave the road of stupidity and crash with a suicidal fireball into a forest of facts!
These theories, of course, were full of assumptions and in 1646 Thomas Browne, wrote a book called Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Enquiries into Very many Received Tenets, and Commonly Presumed Truths, which exposed this way of thinking to the light of reason. That obituary and the fact that scientists of the day continually reduced the conditions within which the spontaneous generation of complex organisms could be observed looked to completely obliterate SG as a workable alternative to Creation and logical resulting Creator. The amazing thing was however, it was never abandoned. Instead all the scholars moved into the Bates Motel and took turns staring up at the window to pretend that Mommy SG was watching her good children as they escorted any notion of a loving God into the shower.
In 1668 the Italian Francesco Redi, showed that no maggots appeared in meat when flies had not been permitted to lay eggs in it. Slowly it became accepted that all the higher and readily visible organisms had to come from other like organisms. (Amazing!) A theory developed (cause you had to have a theory to be taken seriously at the science bar-b-ques) called “omne vivum ex ovo” (that’s latin for “from an egg”) which stated that every living thing came from a pre-existing living thing. Isn’t it odd that we never hear about this theory these days… -hmm? The more scientists learned the more the sentiment toward the idea of “spontaneous generation” changed and began to be considered idiotic. Amazingly, however it was still not abandoned for the simple reason that it would have left a void that only Sacred Scripture seemed to be able to fill.
Then in 1683 Antoni van Leeuwenhoek discovered bacteria! It was a sickening job but someone had to do it. Well , “spontaneous generation” arose anew, refreshed, revitalized by actual science! The mummified corpse of Mommy SG moved! ITS ALIVE ITS ALIVE! –oh sorry I got carried away with my similes. Anyway, it seemed that no matter how carefully any organic matter might be protected or isolated or filtered that decay still happened, and not far behind was bacteria and other simple organisms. The study and knowledge of microscopic forms of life increased over years and some began to mention that Thales was right: Living organisms did continually spring up from inorganic matter that contained moisture, i.e. WATER is God!
to be continued…
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