spontaneous generation

Spontaneous generation, the generation of living from nonliving matter, was an accepted explanation which explained that under the proper conditions of temperature, time, place, etc., decaying matter simply turns into organic life. This idea dominated scientific thinking until 1846 when Louis Pasteur completely shattered the theory by his experiments. Under controlled laboratory conditions, Pasteur proved that no organic life can emerge from decaying, nonliving mater. The previous notion has not been demonstrated in the test tube …

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