Sparks of Life: Darwinism and the Victorian Debates over Spontaneous Generation (review)

James E. Strick. Sparks of Life: Darwinism and the Victorian Debates over Spontaneous Generation. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2000. xi, 283 pp., illus. $45.

As a theory, spontaneous generation stimulated scientific creativity and discourse for centuries. Scientists refined techniques of microscopy and experimentation in an attempt to explain the sudden appearance of worms, mice, insects, and lower organisms from organic or inorganic matter while considering the ultimate question: How did life originate? The traditional story of spontaneous generation details the eighteenth-century debates with Joseph Needham and Comte de Buffon defending the theory and Lazzaro Spallanzani and Charles Bonnet opposing it. This Whiggish narrative culminates in Louis Pasteur’s series of experiments conducted in response to Felix Pouchet’s doctrine of spontaneous generation. And there the traditional narrative ends, marking another victory for science, reason, and above all, experimentation.

In Sparks of Life James E. Strick constructs a thorough revision of the standard narrative of spontaneous generation in England during the two decades following the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) and Pasteur’s renowned experiments. Strick’s study revolves around Henry Charlton Bastian, who was a neurologist and “the last great supporter of spontaneous generation.” Strick reveals Bastian to have been an exceptional member of a group of promising young men of talent, i.e., science mentored by T.H. Huxley. Others included Ernst Haeckel, Anton Dohrn, Michael Foster, and St. George Mivart. To his considerable detriment, Bastian pursued his belief in spontaneous generation despite Huxley’s attempts to discourage him. When Bastian published a two-volume work, The Beginnings of Life, in 1872, Huxley initiated a systematic attack on Bastian’s reputation, fully utilizing the power and influence he wielded in English scientific circles.

Huxley’s authority stemmed in part from his participation in the X club, an informal organization of nine friends who began meeting in 1864 to discuss how to advance Darwinism and the professionalization of science, in addition to other topics. Other members were John Tyndall, who was a well-known professor of physics at the Royal Institution, botanist Joseph Hooker, and social scientist Herbert Spencer. What began as an informal club of the “young guard” of scientists consolidated considerable influence over the study and practice of science in England, particularly in the venue of the Royal Society of London.

Through meticulous analysis of archival sources, Strick shows how Huxley, as Secretary of the Royal Society, restricted Bastian’s ability to publish his research in the society’s Proceedings. In another episode, Strick reveals that reviews of Bastian’s submissions were delayed to the point of disregard while the opposing submissions of another X club member, John Tyndall, sailed through the review process. Tyndall’s attacks on Bastian’s reputation would become so vicious that Bastian retired from the spontaneous generation debate in order to improve his candidacy for a full professorship at University College (which he obtained in 1878).

Sparks of Life teases apart the close relationship between power and science. Not only did Huxley, his colleague Tyndall, and other associates nearly destroy Bastian’s reputation as a scientist, they expunged Bastian’s defense of spontaneous generation from the biology courses they taught and the textbooks they wrote. Nevertheless, Bastian’s stature in English medical circles continued to rise. Medical doctors, still grappling with the validity of germ theory, remained more receptive to theories of spontaneous generation. Moreover, Strick argues that a major theoretical realignment in biology came about as a result of changes in the understanding of the ontological status of molecules and atoms, Brownian movement, cell theory, the relationship of colloids to living cells, the nature of bacteria, and the role of the cell nucleus in inheritance and cell multiplication. Each of these theoretical constructs contributed to a scientific point of view that undermined theories of...