Disproving Spontaneous Generation essays

Disproving Spontaneous Generation essays It was a commonly held belief in Ancient Rome, during the Middle Ages, and even until the late nineteenth century that spontaneous generation, or the sudden generation of complex life from nonliving matter, existed. (Evers, 1999) Scientists began to question this theory as early as the second half of the seventeenth century, but it was not until almost 200 years later that Louis Pasteur definitively disproved spontaneous generation and changed the course of scientific thought. While it is still debated whether any forms of Abiogenesis, or the generation of even simple or microscopic life from nonliving matter, could be possible (Wilkins, 2004), it is certain that spontaneous generation involving complex life The first recorded Westerner to suggest spontaneous generation was Anaximander, a philosopher from the BC 600's and 500's. His pupil, Anaximenes, wrote that air imparted life, motion, and thought. Xenophanes and Parmenides thought that plants and animals would spontaneously form under sunlight. Empedocles wrote in the BC 400's that spontaneous generation is possible if there are the correct combinations of parts of animals to rise. (Wilkins, 2004) Aristotle, in the times of Ancient Greece, believed that life was the result of the ether, a substance which existed only in the heavens, combining with the pneuma, or the animating force or soul, and that if the pneuma was present, it would be possible for life to come from nonliving material. (Wilkins, 2004) In 1668, Francesco Redi, a physician and poet, attacked the idea of spontaneous generation. In his famous experiment, he set out meat in a variety of flasks, some of which were completely open, others covered with a gauze or mesh material, and others were sealed off completely. When maggots appears only on the meat which was exposed to the air, and therefore to flies, his theory that maggots came fro...