My memory of schooling on the subject of biology began in about 3rd Grade when our teacher explained that it was once believed that burning a bail of hay produces lizards, snakes, mice, and other small animals as it appeared evident by their running out of the flaming mass. She outlined the superior understanding that later prevailed as science demonstrated that these organisms were only reproduced by the natural means: the propagation of the species. Even in my youth I doubted the likelihood that man ever believed the notion of snake birth by fire.
It was my great shock that only a few short years later the same educational system would attempt to tell me that the origin of all life was theorized to be in some event similar to the striking of lightning or some other natural spark that set off the first organic life from once non-living material.
I was also told of the folly of man in once believing in all sorts of myths that gave way to higher knowledge such as the four elements of earth, water, wind, and fire. To me, it made sense that man had made such estimations.
It would seem that with all the schooling man has advanced over all these years science is still trying to vindicate the old birth by fire story and it now tends to hide the fact that it once disbelieved in the four phases of matter as it teaches solid, liquid, gas, and plasma.
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