What does «generación espontánea» mean in Spanish?
- Spontaneous generation is the idea that complex life forms arise anew from non-living matter. This concept dates back to at least 330 BC when the philosopher Aristotle observed that when meat is allowed to decay, maggots will appear in the flesh within a few days. From this, he claimed that non-living matter, such as meat, could give rise to a life form, such as maggots. For many centuries, this theory was generally accepted, as most common observations seemed to support it. Many experiments were conducted on the subject; the most notable was that of biologist Jean Baptist van Helmont in the mid-17th century. In an attempt to test this concept, he placed a damp cloth and grains of wheat inside a closed wooden box. To his amazement, he found a mouse nibbling on the box within a few days. Even in the 1600s there were skeptics about spontaneous generation in the academic community, including Francesco Redi, who had had doubts about its truth. He protested that Helmont's experiment was flawed because he had no way of determining whether the mouse was nibbling inside or outside the box. Redi performed his own experiment in a controlled environment, placing the meat inside a sealed jar. Several days passed and no maggots appeared in the meat. Although this may seem like proof that spontaneous generation is false, his colleagues insisted that the non-life forms could have been created because he had cut off the meat from the air supply. Still stubbornly refusing to believe in the law of spontaneous generation, Redi performed his experiment once more, now with a very fine net. Thus, the air could still move freely in and out of the jar, but the flies could not. Once again, no maggots formed inside the jar, thus providing solid evidence that this "law," which had been accepted for almost 1900 years, was false.