Generacion Espontanea

Origin of Life
Spontaneous Generation
It was once believed that life could come from nonliving things, such as mice from corn, flies from bovine manure, maggots from rotting meat, and fish from themud of previously dry lakes. Spontaneous generation is the hypothesis that nonliving things are capable to produce life (Infoplease, 2004).
Aristotle and Spontaneous Generation
Aristotle was one ofthe first to record his conclusions on the possible routes to life. He saw beings as arising in one of three ways, from sexual reproduction, asexual reproduction or nonliving matter (Port, T. 2007).This last idea was that non-living objects can give rise to living organisms. It was a common idea that worms, beetles, frogs and salamanders could come from dust or mud.
However, there have beenmade several experiments that have conducted to disprove spontaneous generation because it is considered an incorrect hypothesis.

Redi's Experiment
Francesco Redi, an Italian scientist, designed ascientific experiment to test the spontaneous generation theory.
There have been thoughts that maggots came from meat but he didn’t agree with this hypothesis. To disprove this he made anexperiment in which he placed meat in two jars.
One jar was left open; the other was covered with a cloth. Days later, the open jar contained maggots, whereas the covered jar contained no maggots. He didnote that maggots were found on the exterior surface of the cloth that covered the jar. Redi successfully demonstrated that the maggots came from fly eggs and thereby helped to disprove spontaneousgeneration (Infoplease, 2004).
Figure 1. - Francesco Redi’s Experiment

John Needham and Lazzaro Spallanzani’s experiments
John Needham made an experiment in which he placed a broth into a bottle,heated the bottle to kill anything inside, and then sealed it. Days later, he reported the presence of life in the broth and announced that life had been created from nonlife.
Lazzaro Spallanzani,...