MODULE #1: Biology: The Study of Life
Spontaneous Generation: The Faithful Still Cling to It!
After that long story, it might surprise you to learn that there are many scientists who still believe in spontaneous generation. Now of course, there is no way that they can argue with the conclusions of Pasteur's experiments, so they do not believe that microorganisms can spring from non-living substances. Nevertheless, they still do believe that life can spring from nonlife! These scientists believe in a theory known as abiogenesis
(aye' bye oh jen' uh sis).
Abiogenesis – The idea that long ago, very simple life forms spontaneously appeared through chemical reactions
Some scientists say that since all life is made up of chemicals, it is possible that long ago on the earth, there was no life; there were just chemicals. These chemicals began reacting and, through the reaction of these chemicals, a “simple” life form suddenly appeared.
As we go through this course, you'll see how such an idea is simply inconsistent with everything that we know about life. At this time, however, we want to make a simple point regarding abiogenesis. Back when scientists believed in spontaneous generation, they had experiments which allegedly backed up their claim. Even before Pasteur's authoritative refutation of spontaneous generation, these experiments were shown to be flawed. Rather than giving up on their law, however, those who fervently believed in spontaneous generation just said, “Well, okay, these experiments are wrong. However, look at these other experiments. Although we now know that life forms which we see with our own eyes cannot spontaneously generate, microorganisms can.”
Do you see what the proponents of spontaneous generation did? Because they wanted so badly to believe in their theory, they simply pushed it into an area in which they did not have much knowledge. The whole world of microorganisms was new to scientists back then. As a result, there was a lot of ignorance regarding how microorganisms lived and reproduced. Because of the ignorance surrounding microorganisms, it was relatively easy to say that spontaneous generation occurred in that world. After about 200 years of study, however, scientists began to understand microorganisms a little better, and that paved the way for Louis Pasteur's famous experiments.
Well, nowadays, scientists have pushed the theory of spontaneous generation back to another area that we are rather ignorant about. They say that although Pasteur's experiments show that microorganisms can't arise from nonliving substances, some (unknown) simple life form might have been able to spontaneously generate from some (unknown) mixture of chemicals at some (unknown) point way back in earth's history. Well, since we have very little knowledge about things that happened way back in earth's history, and since we have only partial knowledge about the chemicals that make up life, and since we have no knowledge of any kind of simple life form that could spring from nonliving chemicals, the proponents of abiogenesis are pretty safe. The fact that we are ignorant in these areas keeps us from showing the error in their theory.
Of course, there are a few experiments that lend some support to the theory of abiogenesis. A discussion of these experiments is beyond the scope of this module, but for right now we will just say that they are not nearly as convincing as the ones that van Helmont and Needham performed. In fact, they do not even produce anything close to a living organism, as van Helmont's and Needham's experiments seemed to. They just produce some of the simplest chemicals that are found in living organisms. Nevertheless, those who cling to the idea of spontaneous generation casually disregard the flaws that can be easily pointed out in these experiments and trumpet their results as data that support their theory. However, if you look at the track record of spontaneous generation throughout the course of human history, it is safe to conclude that at some point, the version of spontaneous generation known as abiogenesis will also be shown to be quite wrong.