Earlier notions of abiogenesis, now more commonly known as spontaneous generation, held that complex, living organisms are generated by decaying organic substances, e.g. that mice spontaneously appear in stored grain or maggots spontaneously appear in meat.
According to Aristotle it was a readily observable truth that aphids arise from the dew which falls on plants, fleas from putrid matter, mice from dirty hay, and so forth. Such was the prestige of the ancient Greek philosophers in general, and of Aristotle in particular, that this was accepted without question until the 17th century. One of the first to question the theory was Sir Thomas Browne in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica, subtitled Enquiries into Very many Received Tenets, and Commonly Presumed Truths, of 1646, an attack on false beliefs and "vulgar errors." The indignation which greeted Browne can be judged from the reaction of his contemporary, Alexander Ross: "To question this (i.e., spontaneous generation) is to question reason, sense and experience. If he doubts of this let him go to Egypt, and there he will find the fields swarming with mice, begot of the mud of Nylus, to the great calamity of the inhabitants."
Nevertheless, experimental scientists continued to roll back the frontiers within which the spontaneous generation of complex organisms could be observed. The first step was taken by the Italian Francesco Redi, who, in 1668, proved that no maggots appeared in meat when flies were prevented from laying eggs. From the seventeenth century onwards it was gradually shown that, at least in the case of all the higher and readily visible organisms, spontaneous generation did not occur, but that omne vivum ex ovo - every living thing came from a pre-existing living thing.
Then in 1683 Antoni van Leeuwenhoek discovered bacteria, and it was soon found that however carefully organic matter might be protected by screens, or by being placed in stoppered receptacles, putrefaction set in, and was invariably accompanied by the appearance of myriad bacteria and other low organisms. As knowledge of microscopic forms of life increased, so the apparent realm of abiogenesis increased, and it became tempting to hypothesise that while abiogenesis might not take place for creatures visible to the naked eye, there existed a fount at the microscopic level from which living organisms continually arose from inorganic matter.
In 1768 Lazzaro Spallanzani proved that microbes came from the air, and could be killed by boiling. Yet it was not until 1862 that Louis Pasteur performed a series of careful experiments which conclusively proved that a truly sterile medium would remain sterile.
Abiogenesis - Wikipedia
Note that from between the time of Aristotle and the 17th century, the scientific perspective of the majority of educated men was to scoff at the idea that abiogenesis was wrong (for mice, fleas and such). It's not that men were stupid, and we should remember that in a 1000 years, we will probably seem even more primitive than the people of those times appear to us, but a myth was nonetheless created based on human observation, though imperfect, and I submit to the evcers here that the dogmatism frequently asserted on many issues is not a wise approach. Pride goes before a fall, and don't we all know that or should if we are paying attention.
If you genuinely know something, good. Stand by that. But insisting that universal common descent is true, or that ID is a corruption of science, etc,....is ignoring the fact that mainstream opinion will be overturned in many areas. Heck, just 500 years ago men thought it utter folly that a society could be united and functional and allow for freedom of religion.
Edited by randman, : No reason given.
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