The Modes of Origin of Lowest Organisms: Including a Discussion of the Experiments of M. Pasteur

In 1871, a British physician and biologist waged war against the scientific establishment. H. Charlton Bastian believed he had evidence that life could arise spontaneously from non-living matter, and he published this polemical treatise to prove it. The book directly challenges Louis Pasteur's famous experiments proving that microorganisms did not generate spontaneously, instead arguing that Pasteur's methods were flawed and that something he called 'Archebiosis' was real. Bastian meticulously details his own experiments with bacteria and yeast, attempting to demonstrate that simple organisms emerge de novo under the right conditions. He also takes aim at Thomas Henry Huxley and John Tyndall, two of Victorian Britain's most prominent scientists, whose vitalistic interpretations he dismisses as dogmatic. The result is a thrilling snapshot of one of biology's greatest controversies, a moment when the origin of life was genuinely up for debate and the boundaries between life and non-life had not yet been settled. For readers interested in the history of science, this book reveals how scientific 'truth' gets made, contested, and sometimes overturned.