#Seed of life code#
#Seed of life series#

They also had sheer incredulity to overcome, though. Thankfully, European culture slowly outgrew such idiocy, but even so many of the scientists were very religious & that colored their thinking badly. What a grotesque worldview! Curiosity a sin?!!! To study nature or even the inanimate world, Augustine wrote, was to indulge вЂњthe lust of the eyes.вЂќ This was perversion. Curiosity was a sin, not a virtue, and in fact a deadly sin. The anatomistsвЂ™ вЂњcruel zeal for scienceвЂќ had led them astray. Since God had hidden the bodyвЂ™s secrets from prying eyes, Augustine argued, it was impious to try to subvert his intentions. вЂњIt is far more excellent to know that the flesh will rise again and will live for evermore,вЂќ wrote Saint Augustine, around the year 400 CE, вЂњthan anything that scientific men have been able to discover in it by careful examination.вЂќ HumankindвЂ™s task was to rise above the body, not to immerse itself in the contemplation of its muck and fluids. When Galen wrote that wounds were a window into the human body, The early church insisted that it was sinful to peep through any such window. Of course, the Catholic church stifled science. For instance, because of religion, they thought for a long time that all humans had been created, so babies were carried from generation to generation like a bunch of Russian dolls stacked one inside another. I was continually amazed by just how recent our understanding of cells was & the wild ideas that had reigned before. Dolnick did a great job explaining the thoughts of the day & how that influenced the conclusions scientists drew from their experiments & observations. For instance, because of religion, they thought for a long time that all humans had been created, so babies were carried from generation to generation This isn't just a look at how babies are created, but at the path biology took. This isn't just a look at how babies are created, but at the path biology took.

These strange searchers included an Italian surgeon using shark teeth to prove that female reproductive organs were not 'failed' male genitalia, and a Catholic priest who designed ingenious miniature pants to prove that frogs required semen to fertilize their eggs.ДЄ witty and rousing history of science, The Seeds of Life presents our greatest scientists struggling-against their perceptions, their religious beliefs, and their deep-seated prejudices-to uncover how and where we come from.more Taking a page from investigative thrillers, acclaimed science writer Edward Dolnick looks to these early scientists as if they were detectives hot on the trail of a bedeviling and urgent mystery.

#Seed of life series#

The Seeds of Life is the remarkable and rollicking story of how a series of blundering geniuses and brilliant amateurs struggled for two centuries to discover where, exactly, babies come from. But beyond that the origins of life were a colossal mystery. People knew the basics: men and women had sex, and sometimes babies followed. Throughout most of human history, babies were surprises.

#Seed of life code#

The Seeds of Life is the remarkable and rollicking story of Why cracking the code of human conception took centuries of wild theories, misogynist blunders, and ludicrous mistakes Why cracking the code of human conception took centuries of wild theories, misogynist blunders, and ludicrous mistakes Throughout most of human history, babies were surprises.