Spontaneous Generation

By jjakobi3
  • 547 BCE

    Anaximander's First Sign of Spontaneous Generation

    Anaximander was the first to say he believed in something that we now call Spontaneous Generation. He believed that fish or eels came to life by the sun shining onto water bodies. This was then further built upon at time went by.
  • 322 BCE

    Aristotle agreed

    Aristotle, one of the more sophistocated philosophers of ancient greece, agreed with the idea of Sponataneous Generation. He was one of the first to distinguish the four elements (earth, air, water, fire), but also believed there was a fifth, "quitessence". Aristotle was sure that there were a sort of souls (of animals) flowing around just waiting for a body. He wasn't convinced that all animals were created due to S.G, but he thought that any not 'spawned' were made that way.

  • First Microscopic Lens

    In this year, two dutch men, a father and son, discovered that when they had put lenses in a tube form, many objects seemed enlarged. This was the first stage in creating the microscopes we now use.

  • First Cell Discovered

    Robert Hooke discovered the first cell that year. The first cell theory though, was credited to a Theodor Swann and a Matthias Jacob Schleiden.

  • Van Leeuwenhoek

    Van Leeuwenhoek was a hobbyist when it came to biology, yet he made some of the biggest advancements in the field to this day. He made the best microscopes of the day and age, and nobody yet has been able to recreate them. He was the first to see many things due to the amazing quality of the microscopes, such as bacteria amongst other things.

  • Needham 'Proves' Spontaneous Generation

    John Needham thought that he had proved that Spontaneous Generation really did work and exist. In his experiment to 'prove' this, he boiled chicken broth, saying that since the boiling would kill all microorganisms, there wouldn't be any in there. After having boiled the chicken broth he waited a few days to check whether there were any microorganisms. To his delight there were. He was disproved soon after that this really meant the spontaneous generation was real.

  • Pasteur disproves Spontaneous Generation

    Louis Pasteur held an experiment to finally setlle the debate. He boiled beef broth in a flask, and heated the neck of the flask itself until he could bend it. Then he deformed it into an 's' shape so that air could enter the flask, but microorganisms could not, keeping them in the neck. When he checked the broth later there were none. When he twisted it back into regular shape, it filled with microorganisms. This not only disproved S.G, but also proved that microorganisms are everywhere.

  • First Serious Opposition

    In 1966, Francesco Redi, opposed the Theory of Spontaneous Generation. Francesco Redi was a biologist and poet amongst many other things. Redi was the first to make any claims against the theory, by showing that maggots came from the eggs of flies. He made many major advances in the field of Biology that now seem minor. He made his claims carefully to make sure that there would be no clashes made, and always used biblical passages to convince people and share what he had discovered.