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Feb 18, 1000
585 – 528 BC
Anaximenes, a disciple of Anaximander, believed that there was a primordial slime, a mixture of water and earth, which when combined with sunlight formed plants, animals and human beings respectively. -
Feb 18, 1000
610 – 546 BC
Anaximander, a Greek philosopher, in attempt to give explanations of things that had been previously credited to the agency of gods, created the concept of apeiron, the universal element that made up all things. -
Feb 18, 1000
384 – 322 BC
The Greek philosopher Aristotle compiled and synthesized the work of previous natural philosophers. According to his theory, living things came forth from nonliving things because they possessed “pneuma”, which in stoic philosophy is the concept of the “breath of life”. -
Period: Feb 18, 1000 to
Spontaneous Generation
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Feb 18, 1564
1564 – 1616 AD
William Shakespeare discusses the formation of snakes and crocodiles from the mud of the Nile river. -
1580 – 1644
The notes of Flemish chemist Jan Baptist van Helmont describe a recipe for mice (a piece of soiled cloth and wheat for 2 days) and scorpions (basil, placed between two bricks and left in sunlight). -
1665
Robert Hooke describes a cell for the very first time. -
1688
Francesco Redi challenged the idea that maggots arose from rotting meat. In his first experiment he placed meat in in a variety of sealed, open, and partially covered containers. He noticed flies appeared on top of the covered containers, inside the open containers, but not inside the closed containers. -
1590
Hans Jansen invents the first microscope. -
1745
John Needham performed several experiments on boiled broth. He noticed that even though he boiled the broth and sealed it after, clouds appeared on the broth after some time. This allowed the idea of spontaneous generation to persist. It would later be speculated that Needham did not boil the broth long enough to kill all of the organisms. -
1859
Louis Pasteur conducted a series of experiments that effectively ended spontaneous generation. He boiled broth in a flask with a long neck that curved downwards. This prevented falling particles to contaminate the broth while at the same time allowing airflow. The flask remained free of any growths for an extended period. When the flask was tilted so that particles could fall into the broth, the broth grew cloudy.
