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1 CE
Long ago until late 1800s
Some people thought that simple living things could just appear out of nowhere. Since there were no microscopes, folks believed they saw life happening by itself. This idea also went along with the religious beliefs of that time. -
Scorpion recipe
The instructions said you could create scorpions using basil and sunlight. It's possible the person wasn't telling the truth or secretly put scorpion eggs in the basil. -
Redi's Experiment
In 1668, a man named Redi wanted to prove that maggots didn't magically appear in decaying meat. He tried covering meat in various ways. What he found out was that maggots actually come from flies, not from the meat itself. -
Limitation of Redi's experiment
Redi's test only proved that maggots didn't come from meat, not from all living things. Therefore, it didn't completely reject the concept of spontaneous generation. -
Needham Try
In 1745, someone named Needham attempted to heat up broth, seal it, and discovered small living things. They believed this backed up the notion of spontaneous generation. However, there could have been issues like contamination, problems with sealing, or insufficient boiling that affected the results. -
Doubt of Spallanzani
Another individual named Spallanzani disagreed. He conducted similar experiments but was more careful. In his sealed broth, no life emerged, indicating that contamination might have been the problem. -
The solution of Pasteur
Later, Louis Pasteur created special bottles to trap germs and tested whether life could emerge in broth exposed to air. It turned out that life forms appeared only when exposed to air, demonstrating that contamination from the air was the cause, not spontaneous generation. -
What i have learned?
I have learned that a long time ago, things in science were not as easy as they are now. Things that seem very obvious and easy to all of us at that time were complicated to solve.