EVERYDAY SCIENCE

Detailed explanation-1: -The Greek philosopher Anaximenes, a pupil of Anaximander, thought that air was the element that imparted life and endowed creatures with motion and thought. He proposed that plants and animals, including human beings, arose from a primordial terrestrial slime, a mixture of earth and water, combined with the sun’s heat.

Detailed explanation-2: -The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC) was one of the earliest recorded scholars to articulate the theory of spontaneous generation, the notion that life can arise from nonliving matter. Aristotle proposed that life arose from nonliving material if the material contained pneuma (“vital heat”).

Detailed explanation-3: -spontaneous generation, the hypothetical process by which living organisms develop from nonliving matter; also, the archaic theory that utilized this process to explain the origin of life.

Detailed explanation-4: -Among these ideas, for centuries, since at least the time of Aristotle (4th Century BC), people (including scientists) believed that simple living organisms could come into being by spontaneous generation. This was the idea that non-living objects can give rise to living organisms.

Detailed explanation-5: -“Spontaneous generation” was the idea that living organisms can spring into existence from non-living matter. In the late 19th century, in a showdown between chemist Louis Pasteur and biologist Felix Pouchet put on by the French Academy of Sciences, Pasteur famously came up with an experiment that debunked the theory.