Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Spontaneous generation is a superseded scientific theory that held that living creatures could arise from nonliving matter and that such processes were commonplace and regular. It was hypothesized that certain forms, such as fleas , could arise from inanimate matter such as dust, or that maggots could arise from dead flesh.
Spontaneous generation, the first naturalistic theory of abiogenesis, goes back to Aristotle and ancient Greek philosophy, and continued to have support in Western scholarship until the 19th century. [15] The theory held that "lower" animals are generated by decaying organic substances.
The founder of experimental biology and the first person to challenge the theory of spontaneous generation by demonstrating that maggots come from eggs of flies. [57] Population genetics: Ronald A. Fisher, Sewall Wright, J. B. S. Haldane [58] Protozoology: Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723) [9] First to produce precise, correct descriptions ...
One ancient view of the origin of life, from Aristotle until the 19th century, is of spontaneous generation. [19] This theory held that "lower" animals such as insects were generated by decaying organic substances, and that life arose by chance. [20] [21] This was questioned from the 17th century, in works like Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia ...
The theory of spontaneous generation was proposed by Aristotle, [52] who compiled and expanded the work of prior natural philosophers and the various ancient explanations of the appearance of organisms; it was considered the best explanation for two millennia.
Preformationism, especially ovism, was the dominant theory of generation during the 18th century. It competed with spontaneous generation and epigenesis, but those two theories were often rejected on the grounds that inert matter could not produce life without God's intervention.
The Generation of Animals (or On the Generation of Animals; Greek: Περὶ ζῴων γενέσεως (Peri Zoion Geneseos); Latin: De Generatione Animalium) is one of the biological works of the Corpus Aristotelicum, the collection of texts traditionally attributed to Aristotle (384–322 BC).
Aristotle first published the theory of epigenesis in his book On the Generation of Animals. Although epigenesis appears to be an obvious fact in today's genetic age, historically, creationist theories of life's origins hindered its acceptance. [2]