Spontaneous generation is a superseded scientific theory that held that living creatures could arise from nonliving matter and that such processes were commonplace and regular.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. The doctrine of spontaneous generation was coherently synthesized by the Greek philosopher and naturalist Aristotle, who compiled and expanded the work of earlier natural philosophers and the various ancient explanations for the appearance of organisms. Spontaneous generation was taken as scientific fact for two millennia. Though challenged in the 17th and 18th centuries by the experiments of the Italian biologists Francesco Redi and Lazzaro Spallanzani, it was not discredited until the work of the French chemist Louis Pasteur and the Irish physicist John Tyndall in the mid-19th century.
Rejection of spontaneous generation is no longer controversial among biologists. By the middle of the 19th century, experiments by Pasteur and others were considered to have disproven the traditional theory of spontaneous generation. Attention has turned instead to the origin of life, since all life seems to have evolved from a single form around four billion years ago.
"Spontaneous generation" means both the supposed processes by which different types of life might repeatedly emerge from specific sources other than seeds, eggs, or parents, and the theoretical principles presented in support of any such phenomena. Crucial to this doctrine are the ideas that life comes from non-life and that no causal agent, such as a parent, is needed. Supposed examples included the seasonal generation of mice and other animals from the mud of the Nile, the emergence of fleas from inanimate matter such as dust, or the appearance of maggots in dead flesh. Such ideas have something in common with the modern hypothesis of the origin of life, which asserts that life emerged some four billion years ago from non-living materials, over a time span of millions of years, and subsequently diversified into all the forms that now exist.
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Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary information encoded in genes, which can be transmitted to future generations. Another major theme is evolution, which explains the unity and diversity of life. Energy processing is also important to life as it allows organisms to move, grow, and reproduce.
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. The doctrine of spontaneous generation was coherently synthesized by the Greek philosopher and naturalist Aristotle, who compiled and expanded the work of earlier natural philosophers and the various ancient explanations for the appearance of organisms.
Bacteria (bækˈtɪəriə; : bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one biological cell. They constitute a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria were among the first life forms to appear on Earth, and are present in most of its habitats. Bacteria inhabit soil, water, acidic hot springs, radioactive waste, and the deep biosphere of Earth's crust. Bacteria play a vital role in many stages of the nutrient cycle by recycling nutrients and the fixation of nitrogen from the atmosphere.
Explores the transition of living organisms from religious to scientific explanations, focusing on essentialism, fixism, anthropocentrism, and Darwin's revolutionary ideas.
The objective of this thesis was to evaluate the feasibility for the production of fuel bioethanol from whey permeate. The identification of the limiting factors of the process revealed that the stabi