Posted: 9/12/2016
Trigger
Recently, watched the excellent BBC documentary The Chemistry of Life on Youtube. Very recommendable!
As my blog can easily attest, I would argue any time that such current preoccupations like Global Warming or now called Climate Change are similar pseudo or junk scientific notions.
Relevance
Many people, I am afraid, are not aware of how many pseudo or junk science theories were developed over the centuries and defended by the preeminent scientists of the day. This is one of them.
Unfortunately, many people are perhaps familiar with the heliocentric versus geocentric controversy in which such famous scientists like Galileo or Kepler were involved, but this is just one of the many superceded or obsolete theories once developed and cherished by the scientific community. It should be taught to our children that this was not what appears to be an outlier!
Spontaneous Generation Theory
The British Encyclopedia defined this debunked theory as: “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. ” (emphasis added)
This hilarious theory was apparently developed as early and by none other than Aristotle (ca. 330 BC). And it was only finally dispelled by Louis Pasteur (ca. 1859 AD). Thus, this pseudoscience lived on for way over two thousand years.
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