Dissolution of the theory of Spontaneous Generation :: essays research papers

Spontaneous genesis is the belief that some life forms be created from non-living things. It was an accepted theory to explain the creation of living things since the times of the antediluvian Romans to the early nineteenth century, when people began to become more skeptical of this idea. By the 20th century, spontaneous generation was known to be an incorrect theory. The causality it was known to be incorrect, primarily, was because of four scientists Francesco Redi, prank Needham, Lazzaro Sp every(prenominal)anzani, and Louis Pasteur. Francesco Redi, in 1668, started the chain of try outs that would all add up to dissolve the theory of spontaneous generation. Redi was able to do this by doing a famous experiment involving meat and move. He cover a jar of meat so no flies could visualize it and, after a few days, in that respect were no flies. This experiment showed that flies were not created from meat. This, in turn, showed to other(a) scientists that larger organisms were not created spontaneously. Redis experiment was monumental because it was the first time spontaneous generation had been confuted by concrete evidence. Along with that, the experiments result was a step for other scientists to build on in the future. Without Redis findings, the process of proving spontaneous generation was a false theory could have been delayed drastically. The next dickens scientists to make significant impacts on the theory of spontaneous generation were John Needham and Lazzaro Spallanzani.John Needham was a Scottish clergyman who, from 1745 to 1748, attempted to show that there was a life force in the molecules of all inorganic enumerate that caused spontaneous generation to occur. He went about doing by doing experiments which showed bacterium would form in dope ups. Seventeen years later, Italian biologist Lazzaro Spallanzani tried to disprove Needhams belief. Spallanzani went about this by doing three experiments. The first experiment was through w ith(p) by boiling soup for an hour, putting it in a flask, and so sealing off the flask. The second experiment involved boiling soup for a few minutes, putting it in a flask, and sealing it of. The tertiary experiment was done by boiling soup for an hour, putting it in a flask, and sealing the flask with a cork that let disseminate in. Out of the three experiments, the first experiment was the only one which light-emitting diode to no bacteria forming. From these experiments, Spallanzani figured that an hour of boiling could kill the bacteria and bacteria came to substances through the air.