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Spontaneous generation is a superseded scientific theory that held that living creatures could arise from nonliving matter and that such processes were commonplace and regular.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.
John Turberville Needham FRS (10 September 1713 – 30 December 1781) was an English biologist and Roman Catholic priest.. He was first exposed to natural philosophy while in seminary school and later published a paper which, while the subject was mostly about geology, described the mechanics of pollen and won recognition in the botany community.
Spontaneous generation – a principle regarding the spontaneous generation of complex life from inanimate matter, which held that this process was a commonplace and everyday occurrence, as distinguished from univocal generation, or reproduction from parent(s).
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.
This led to Hooke suggesting that spontaneous generation, from either natural or artificial heat, was the cause. Since this was an old Aristotelian theory still accepted at the time, others did not reject it and was not disproved until Leeuwenhoek later discovered that generation was achieved otherwise. [4]
Spallanzani's first scientific work was in 1765 Saggio di osservazioni microscopiche concernenti il sistema della generazione de' signori di Needham, e Buffon (Essay on microscopic observations regarding the generation system of Messrs. Needham and Buffon) which was the first systematic rebuttal of the theory of the spontaneous generation. [3]
This method was developed on by Theodor Schwann, John Tyndall and others in the early debates on spontaneous generation. [3] [4] [5] Schulze married Charlotte, daughter of Sydow zu Charlottenburg, in Eldena in 1839 and they had two sons, the older Franz Eilhard Schulze (the middle name from his godfather Mitscherlich) became a zoologist. After ...
Félix-Archimède Pouchet (26 August 1800 – 6 December 1872) was a French naturalist and a leading proponent of spontaneous generation of life from non-living materials, and as such an opponent of Louis Pasteur's germ theory. [1]