Disproving Spontaneous Generation

             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...

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