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Aristotle Proposes the Idea
Aristotle stated in his book "The History of Animals" that animals came from nonliving material. This belief would soon become very popular and would be one of the key idealogies of Western science. -
Jan 1, 1470
Adopted into Christianity
Spontaneous generation becomes very popular with Christians due to the fact that it worked well with the religious idea that God created everything. Some even used passages of the Bible to support the theory, stating that the phrase “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life” (Genesis 1:20) proved the theory correct. Augustine of Hippo writes about spontanenous generation in his book "The City of God" and supports the idea. -
First Attempt to Disprove
Franceso Redi attempted to disprove spontaneous generation when he showed that maggots only grew on red meat when fruit flies were exposed to them. -
John Needham's Rebuttal
John Needham then showed that if broth was boiled to kill all signs of life and then was allowed to sit open in the environment, signs of life emerged soon after. In reality, Needham actually did not heat the broth long enough to kill the signs of life. -
Lazzaro Spallanzani's Attempt to Disprove Spontaneous Generation
Lazzaro Spallanzani, an Italian scientist, deduced that maybe the reason why Needham’s experiment varied was due to the fact that he did not heat the broth long enough to kill all the organisms that lived inside the broth. He recreated Needham’s experiment but this time, he boiled both of containers and sealed one of them. After a week passed, the sealed jar of broth showed no signs of life. Despite his experiments, other scientists claimed that spontaneous generation required air, and that Spal -
Pasteur Puts Theory to Rest
Louis Pasteur used a swan-neck fleck flask that allowed air to pass through, but not tiny dust particles. He thus proved that spontaneous generation was NOT true.
