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Period: 611 BCE to 547
The Apeiron
The very first Western thinker to believe and suggest that life arose spontaneously was named Anaximander, who was a philosopher in Milesian. He wrote 6th to 5th centuries before Christ. His theory was that every living matter arose out of the elemental nature of the universe, which he called the ‘Apeiron’. -
400
Aristotle's Theory
Although people believed that the talk about Spontaneous Generation has been spiked up way before the time of Aristotle; however, he was the first historian figure to have this concept stored in his book of theories. In Aristotle’s theory, he believed that the property of living organisms were a mixture of earth, air, fire, and water which each and one of these contain hot, cold wet, and dry. -
Redi’s Experiment
In the month and date of August 11, 1668, Francesco Redi, who was an Italian scientist, designed an experiment to test the spontaneous creation of maggots by replacing meat in each of two different jars to explore what made them. Redi successfully showed that the maggots came from fly eggs and thereby declared that spontaneous generation was disproved. -
Microscope
During the late 1600s, microscopes were invented as smaller microorganisms were discovered. These small microorganisms were never expected to be existing part of the planet. -
Needham Challenges
In England, another scientist named John Needham challenged Redi’s results from the experiment by conducting another experiment that he replaced with. He used a broth, otherwise known as ‘gravy’, into an empty bottle, and heated the bottle to kill anything inside, then sealed it with a cap. Afterwards, he reported that the presence of life in the broth and declared that life had been created from nonlife. -
Spallanzi’s Experiment
Lazarro Spallanzi, who were also an Italian scientist and priest, studies and reviewed both Needham’s and Redi’s data, who then designed and conducted and experiment himself. He also boiled broth in two empty bottles, then sealing one bottle and leaving the other open. Afterwards, the unsealed bottle was swarming with smaller living organisms that he observed more clearly with a microscope.