Sparks of Life
Subtitle: Darwinism and the Victorian Debates over Spontaneous Generation
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: December 1, 2000
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 304
ISBN-13: 9780674002920
Subjects: Evolution; History of science; c 1800 to c 1900; Life Sciences - Evolution; Great Britain - History - 19th Century; Organic Evolution; Science; Spontaneous generation; Science/Mathematics; United Kingdom, Great Britain; Science / History; Evolution (Biology); Europe - Great Britain - General; 19th century; Great Britain; History; Victoria, 1837-1901
Description: "How, asks James Strick, could spontaneous generation - the idea that living things can suddenly arise from nonliving materials - come to take root for a time (even a brief one) in so thoroughly unsuitable a field as British natural theology? No less an authority than Aristotle claimed that cases of spontaneous generation were to be observed in nature, and the idea held sway for centuries.

Beginning around the time of the Scientific Revolution, however, the doctrine was increasingly challenged; attempts to prove or disprove it led to important breakthroughs in experimental design and laboratory techniques, most notably sterilization methods, that became the cornerstones of modern microbiology and sped the ascendancy of the germ theory of disease."--BOOK JACKET.