Britannia Radio

A History of Beer - Part 5

From the desk of Fjordman on Mon, 2009-09-07 10:49

During the Industrial Revolution, the development of hydrometers and thermometers allowed the brewer more control over the process and greater theoretical understanding of it. This marks the beginning of brewing science. One of the questions faced by natural scientists was the Aristotelian doctrine of “spontaneous generation,” or abiogenesis, which propounded that “life” was continually being created out of inanimate matter. The Italian physician Franceso Redi (1626-1679) around 1665, in a fine example of the proper use of the experimental method, placed clean linen cloths over jars containing fresh samples of meat. Flies, attracted to the meat, laid eggs on the cloth. Maggots could later be seen on the cloth, but not on the meat, which proved that maggots grow from eggs and do not develop spontaneously. Unfortunately, Redi failed to convince all of his contemporaries.

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