Bacteriology
BACTERIOLOGY
Spontaneous generation is the evolutionary idea that life could arise from nonliving materials, rather than exclusively from an already living and a like kind of parent organism. Many variations of this basic theme and speculative notion were imagined, such as frogs from mud, maggots from meat and moths from wool.
“The idea of spontaneous generation was no doubt first suggested by universally inaccurate observations of how certain lower types of life appeared in such environments as soil, water, and especially in decayings organic substances” (2).
This notion was held as fact until
people like S.Pallanzani, Redi, and finally Pasteur, proved once and for all that all life arise from pre-existing life (3). These scientists were abel to debunk the myth of spontaneous generation by good experimental design and accurate observation. It was Louis Pasteur who finally annihilated this long-held concept, as he demonstrated that even micro-organisms could not be spontaneously generated: …”the resultant recognition that micro-organisms, like all the ore visible forms of life, are reproduced only by their own kind, made possible the establishment of bacteriology as a precise science, and its revolutionary application in immunology and in the treatment of infectious disease (4).
Through Pasteur’s efforts in these fields, he did more for medical science and the health of the world than anyone before or since. Although he was a notably insightful scientist, any others would have had as much opportunity of doing what he did if they had started out with the Biblical presupposition that things reproduce only “after their kin” (Genesis 1:11, 21, 24, 25). It is very difficult to stop a pathogenic “bug” from spreading, if you think it could spontaneously pop up in your body.
But if one reasons, as the creation model suggests, that for every disease organism there is a parent and a grandparent, and so on, then disease pathways can be sought, traced, and blocked. This may all seem very simple and logical now, but for hundreds of years, much of the scientific community would not give up on the idea of spontaneous generation and, in effect, tragically delayed the onset of modern medical science.