Religious Interpretations of His Discoveries
Van Leeuwenhoek was a Dutch Reformed Calvinist. He often referred with reverence to the wonders God designed in making creatures great and small. He believed that his amazing discoveries were merely further proof of the great wonder of God's creation.
Van Leeuwenhoek's discovery that smaller organisms procreate similarly to larger organisms challenged the contemporary belief, generally held by the 17th-century scientific community, that such organisms generated spontaneously. The position of the Church on the exact nature of the spontaneous generation of smaller organisms was ambivalent.
Read more about this topic: Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek
Famous quotes containing the words religious and/or discoveries:
“The destiny of the whole race is comprised in four things: Religion, education, morals, politics. Woman is a religious being; she is becoming educated; she has a high code of morals; she will yet purify politics.”
—Zerelda G. Wallace (1817–1901)
“One of the most horrible, yet most important, discoveries of our age has been that, if you really wish to destroy a person and turn him into an automaton, the surest method is not physical torture, in the strict sense, but simply to keep him awake, i.e., in an existential relation to life without intermission.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)