Spontaneous generation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about historical theories on the ongoing emergence of life. For the origin of life,
see Abiogenesis.
Spontaneous generation or anomalous generation is an obsolete body of thought on the ordinary
formation of living organisms without descent from similar organisms. Typically, the idea was that
certain forms such as fleas could arise from inanimate matter such as dust, or that maggots could
arise from dead flesh.[1] A variant idea was that of equivocal generation, in which species such
as tapeworms arose from unrelated living organisms, now understood to be their hosts. Doctrines
supporting such processes of generation held that these processes are commonplace and
regular.[1] Such ideas are in contradiction to that of univocal generation: effectively exclusive
reproduction from genetically related parent(s), generally of the same species.
The doctrine of spontaneous generation was coherently synthesized by Aristotle,[2] who compiled
and expanded the work of prior natural philosophers and the various ancient explanations of the
appearance of organisms; it held sway for two millennia. Today it is generally accepted to have been
decisively dispelled during the 19th century by the experiments of Louis Pasteur. He expanded upon
the investigations of predecessors (such as Francesco Redi who, in the 17th century, had performed
experiments based on the same principles). However, some experimental difficulties were still there
and objections from persons holding the traditional views persisted. Many of these residual
objections were dealt with by the work of John Tyndall, succeeding the work of Pasteur.[3]

Pasteur invented the swan-necked flask to create an environment known not to grow microorganisms. After
sterilizing a nutrient broth in these flasks, he removed the swan necks of the controls. Microorganisms grew
only in the controls, refuting spontaneous generation.[1]

Pasteur's experiment is generally agreed to have decisively refuted the theory of spontaneous
generation in 1859.[4] Disproof of the traditional ideas of spontaneous generation is no longer
controversial among professional biologists. By the middle of the 19th century, the theory
of biogenesis had accumulated so much evidential support, due to the work of Louis Pasteur and
others, that the alternative theory of spontaneous generation had been effectively disproven. The
historian of science John Desmond Bernal suggests that earlier theories such as spontaneous
generation were based upon an explanation that life was continuously created as a result of chance
events.[5][6][7]

Contents
[hide]

1Description
2Pre-Aristotelian philosophers
3Aristotle
 4After Aristotle
5In Christianity
6Modern tests
o 6.1Pasteur and Tyndall
7See also
8References

Description[edit]
Spontaneous generation refers both to the supposed processes in which different types of life might
repeatedly emerge from specific sources other than seeds, eggs or parents, and also to the
theoretical principles which were presented in support of any such phenomena. Crucial to this
doctrine is the idea that life comes from non-life, with the conditions, and that no causal agent is
needed (i.e. Parent). Such hypothetical processes sometimes are referred to as abiogenesis, in
which life routinely emerges from non-living matter on a time scale of anything from minutes to
weeks, or perhaps a season or so. An example would be the supposed seasonal generation of mice
and other animals from the mud of the Nile.[8] Such ideas have no operative principles in common
with the modern hypothesis of abiogenesis, in which life emerged in the early ages of the planet,
over a time span of at least millions of years, and subsequently diversified without evidence that
there ever has been any subsequent repetition of the event.[citation needed]
Another version of spontaneous generation is variously termed univocal
generation, heterogenesis or xenogenesis, in which one form of life has been supposed to arise from
a different form, such as tapeworms from the bodies of their hosts.[9]
In the years following Louis Pasteur's experiment in 1862, the term "spontaneous generation" fell
into increasing disfavor. Experimentalists used a variety of terms for the study of the origin of life
from non-living materials. Heterogenesis was applied to once-living materials such as boiled broths,
and Henry Charlton Bastian proposed the term archebiosis for life originating from inorganic
materials. The two were lumped together as "spontaneous generation", but disliking the term as
sounding too random, Bastian proposed biogenesis. In an 1870 address titled, "Spontaneous
Generation", Thomas Henry Huxleydefined biogenesis as life originating from other life and coined
the negative of the term, abiogenesis, which was the term that became dominant.[10]

Pre-Aristotelian philosophers[edit]
As part of his overall attempt to give natural explanations of things that had previously been ascribed
to the agency of the gods, Anaximander believed that everything arose out of the elemental nature
of the universe, which he called the "apeiron" or "unbounded". According to Hippolytus of Rome in
the third century CE, Anaximander claimed that living creatures were first formed in the "wet" when
acted on by the Sun, and that they were different then than they are now. For example, he claimed
humans, in a different form, must have earlier been born mature like other animals, or they would not
have survived. Anaximander also claimed that spontaneous generation continued to this day, with
aquatic forms being produced directly from lifeless matter.[11]
Anaximenes, a pupil of Anaximander, thought that air was the element that imparted life, motion and
thought, and speculated that there was a primordial terrestrial slime, a mixture of earth and water,
which when combined with the sun's heat formed plants, animals and human beings directly.[11]
Xenophanes traced the origin of man back to the transitional period between the fluid stage of the
earth and the formation of land. He too held to a spontaneous generation of fully formed plants and
animals under the influence of the sun.[11]
Empedocles accepted the spontaneous generation of life, but held that there had to be trials of
combinations of parts of animals that spontaneously arose. Successful combinations formed the
species we now see, unsuccessful forms failed to reproduce.[11]
Anaxagoras also adopted a terrestrial slime account, although he thought that the seeds of plants
existed in the air from the beginning, and of animals in the aether.[11]

Aristotle[edit]
Main article: Aristotle's biology
Aristotle laid the foundations of Western natural philosophy. In his book, The History of Animals, he
stated in no uncertain terms:
Now there is one property that animals are found to have in common with plants. For some plants
are generated from the seed of plants, whilst other plants are self-generated through the formation of
some elemental principle similar to a seed; and of these latter plants some derive their nutriment
from the ground, whilst others grow inside other plants, as is mentioned, by the way, in my treatise
on Botany. So with animals, some spring from parent animals according to their kind, whilst others
grow spontaneously and not from kindred stock; and of these instances of spontaneous generation
some come from putrefying earth or vegetable matter, as is the case with a number of insects, while
others are spontaneously generated in the inside of animals out of the secretions of their several
organs.[12]

Aristotle, History of Animals, Book V, Part 1

According to this theory, living things came forth from nonliving things because the nonliving material
contained pneuma, or "vital heat". The creature generated was dependent on the proportions of this
pneuma and the five elements he believed comprised all matter.[11] While Aristotle recognized that
many living things emerged from putrefying matter, he pointed out that the putrefaction was not the
source of life, but the byproduct of the action of the "sweet" element of water.[13]
Animals and plants come into being in earth and in liquid because there is water in earth, and air in
water, and in all air is vital heat so that in a sense all things are full of soul. Therefore living things
form quickly whenever this air and vital heat are enclosed in anything. When they are so enclosed,
the corporeal liquids being heated, there arises as it were a frothy bubble.

Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals, Book III, Part 11

Aristotle stated that scallops form spontaneously in sand.[12]

Numerous forms were attributed to various sources. The testaceans (shelled molluscs) are
characterized by forming by spontaneous generation in mud, but differ based upon the material they
grow in for example, clams and scallops in sand, oysters in slime, and the barnacle and
the limpet in the hollows of rocks. Some reddish worms form from long-standing snow which has
turned reddish. Another grub was said to grow out of fire.[12]
Concerning sexual reproduction, Aristotle argued that the male parent provided the "form," or soul,
that guided development through semen, and the female parent contributed unorganized matter,
allowing the embryo to grow.[14]

After Aristotle[edit]
Vitruvius, a Roman architect and writer of the 1st century BCE, advised that libraries be placed
facing eastwards to benefit from morning light, but not towards the south or the west as those winds
generate bookworms.[15]
Aristotle claimed that eels were lacking in sex and lacking milt, spawn and the passages for
either.[16] Rather, he asserted eels emerged from earthworms.[17] Later authors dissented. Pliny the
Elder did not argue against the anatomic limits of eels, but stated that eels reproduce by budding,
scraping themselves against rocks, liberating particles that become eels.[18] Athenaeus described
eels as entwining and discharging a fluid which would settle on mud and generate life. On the other
hand, Athenaeus also dissented towards spontaneous generation, claiming that a variety
of anchovy did not generate from roe, as Aristotle stated, but rather, from sea foam.[19]

In Christianity[edit]

The goose barnacle:

Pollicipes cornucopia

The barnacle goose:

Branta leucopsis

As the dominant view of philosophers and thinkers continued to be in favour of spontaneous

generation, some Christian theologians accepted the view. Augustine of Hippo discussed
spontaneous generation in The City of God and The Literal Meaning of Genesis, citing Biblical
passages such as "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life" (Genesis
1:20) as decrees that would enable ongoing creation.[20]
From the fall of the Roman Empire in 5th century to the East-West Schism in 1054, the influence of
Greek science declined, although spontaneous generation generally went unchallenged. New
descriptions were made. Of the numerous beliefs, some had doctrinal implications outside of
the Book of Genesis. For example, the idea that a variety of bird known as the barnacle
goose emerged from a crustacean known as the goose barnacle, had implications on the practice of
fasting during Lent. In 1188, Gerald of Wales, after having traveled in Ireland, argued that the
"unnatural" generation of barnacle geese was evidence for the virgin birth.[21] Where the practice of
fasting during Lent allowed fish, but prohibited fowl, the idea that the goose was in fact a fish
suggested that its consumption be permitted during Lent. The practice was eventually prohibited by
decree of Pope Innocent III in 1215.[22]