On 9 April 2007 Louis Schmier wrote: > Allen, wouldn't you say that the likes of Hutton, Lyell, Buffon, > Lamarck, and Darwin challenged the prevailing view of Aristotelian > spontaneous generation? And the theological implications of that > challenge was that life, like the earth, evolved through natural > processes rather than through the then universally accepted biblical, > "history-less," miraculous, divine intervention of Genesis?
To which Paul Brandon responded: > Prevailing yes; universal no. > See: Erasmus Darwin. > The innovation of Darwin and his colleagues was the mechanism of > evolution (natural selection in the case of Darwin and Wallace (a > major omission)); not evolution itself. My response to Louis's question: I really don't know how the debate about spontaneous generation fits in to all this. Were I a student writing up coursework I would nevertheless be able to answer it (in a fashion) by copying and pasting from the internet. That's too much trouble, so I'll just give a webpage which seems to cover this whole issue pretty comprehensively: Spontaneous Generation and the Origin of Life http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/spontaneous-generation.html or http://tinyurl.com/ Incidentally, Louis mentions James Hutton, the geologist who led the way for Lyell. There's an interesting webpage on Hutton and Lyell on the Edinburgh Geological Society website. It quotes the inscription on the Memorial Tablet for James Hutton, which concludes: "Today we have come to know that living creatures evolve, that continental drift, the stars, and galaxies born, mature, grow old and die. We salute the memory of James Hutton, who opened our minds to these wondrous possibilities." http://www.edinburghgeolsoc.org/z_30_02.html Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London http://www.esterson.org/ --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
