From DNA to Beer

Mind in nature, or, The origin of life, and the mode of development of animals

This book is rooted in the theory of spontaneous generation, the idea that some life comes to be from dust, air, and other, dissimilar organisms, or without any prompting, at all. Spontaneous generation was a doctrine widely accepted by scientists and thinkers for many centuries and well into the mid-18th century. By the time this book was published, the scientific community had called it into question. It was dispelled definitively by Louis Pasteur’s experiments with fermentation that determined microbes as its agents.