Introduction to Spontaneous Generation

in this video, we're going to begin our introduction to spontaneous generation. Now today, it's pretty well known in the scientific world that new life is only produced by pre existing life. In other words, life only comes from life. But this idea here was not always well known throughout the scientific world. It was not always the case. And in fact, for thousands of years, many scientists actually incorrectly believed that life could spontaneously generate from non living materials. Now down below, we're showing you these three terms that are going to be important to distinguish as we move forward throughout are lessons in the first term is spontaneous generation itself. Now, the term spontaneous generation refers to the regular conversion on a normal basis of non living matter into complex living organisms, for example, soil and rocks, which are non living, converting into worms, which are complex living organisms. Now, the term HBO genesis is a term that is sometimes used synonymous lee with spontaneous generation, but technically they do not refer to the same thing. And so here we have these two terms aligned side by side, so that you can better understand the similarities, but also the differences between these two terms. Generally the term HBO genesis is referring to the theory of a rare, likely one time event of the origin of simple life from non living matter. And so, whereas spontaneous generation is referring to the regular conversion of non living things into living things on a normal basis, Avio genesis is not referring to the regular conversion, It's referring to a rare, likely one time event of just the origin of simple life, rather than complex living organisms from non living matter. And so we'll be able to better distinguish these two terms down below in our image. Now, the final term that you should note down here is biogenesis and biogenesis is referring to the theory that living organisms only arise from pre existing life, or life that already existed, essentially life comes from life. And so, if we take a look at our image down below, we can better understand the differences between these three terms and so over here, on the far left, we're showing you an image representing HBO genesis, which is the theory surrounding the origin of life going back 3.5 billion years ago on planet Earth, where the very first uh simple living organisms arose from non living materials. And so this would have generated life's first very first life's common ancestor. And so you can see this little guy here saying, I'm alive and he is the very first simple living organism that arose from non living material. And so that is what a biogenesis is referring to the origin of life, this rare one time likely one time event that occurred a very long time ago. Now, over here, what we're comparing is spontaneous generation to the term biogenesis down below. Now, spontaneous generation is referring to the regular conversion on a normal basis of non living material into complex living organisms. So over here notice that we're showing you just soil and rocks, which are not a life alive. So there's no life over here, on the left hand side of the image, uh and spontaneous generation would be the conversion of this non living matter into living matter life such as these worms and grasses and flies and things of that nature. Now, biogenesis down below is basically saying that life only comes from pre existing life, essentially that life comes from life. And so you can see that these little seeds and precursor cells are actually going to be uh the pre existing life that develops into these complex living organisms here. Now, as we move forward, we're going to talk a lot more about spontaneous generation and biogenesis. But for now, I can foreshadow that today it is well known that spontaneous generation is not correct and that biogenesis is more of the well known and commonly accepted theory of how life uh is produced. And so once again, we'll be able to talk about these ideas more as we move forward in our course. But for now, this here concludes our brief introduction to spontaneous generation and we'll be able to learn more as we move forward. So I'll see you all in our next video.

In this video, we're going to briefly introduce this timeline that we have right here, which is really just showing you some important scientists from the period of 1668-1881, that conducted many experiments to either prove or disprove the theories of biogenesis or spontaneous generation. And so these scientists that are important throughout this time period include Francesco Redi, john need him, Lazaro swollen zanni louis pasture and john Tyndall. And as we move forward, we'll talk more about each of these individual scientists and the experiments that they conducted Now way back in the early 1600s, the more popular theory was spontaneous generation. Most scientists believe that uh living matter could regularly arise from non living materials. However, through experiments conducted specifically by Francesco Redi Lazaro's Palin Zanni louis pasture and john Tyndall uh they showed experiments that supported the theory of biogenesis and contradicted the theory of spontaneous generation. And the only scientist that's on this timeline that actually tried to support spontaneous generation was john need him. But as we talk about his experiments later in our course, we'll see some flaws that were within his experiment. And so you can expect as we move forward to discuss each of these scientists and their experiments in chronological order uh in this timeline, starting with Francesco Redi. So this year concludes our brief introduction to this timeline of biogenesis versus spontaneous generation. And I'll see you all in our next video.