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However, one of van Helmont’s contemporaries, Italian physician Francesco Redi (1626–1697), performed an experiment in 1668 that was one of the first to refute the idea that maggots (the larvae of flies) spontaneously generate on meat left out in the open air.
Apr 3, 2024 · Francesco Redi (born Feb. 18, 1626, Arezzo, Italy—died March 1, 1697, Pisa) was an Italian physician and poet who demonstrated that the presence of maggots in putrefying meat does not result from spontaneous generation but from eggs laid on the meat by flies.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
A rationalist of his time, he was a critic of verifiable myths, such as spontaneous generation. His most famous experiments are described in his magnum opus Esperienze intorno alla generazione degl'insetti (Experiments on the Generation of Insects), published in 1668.
Spontaneous generation was taken as scientific fact for two millennia. Though challenged in the 17th and 18th centuries by the experiments of the Italian biologists Francesco Redi and Lazzaro Spallanzani, it was not discredited until the work of the French chemist Louis Pasteur and the Irish physicist John Tyndall in the mid-19th century.
Apr 21, 2024 · Experimentation by Francesco Redi in the 17th century presented the first significant evidence refuting spontaneous generation by showing that flies must have access to meat for maggots to develop on the meat.
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Francesco Redi. John Needham. Félix-Archimède Pouchet. (Show more) Related Topics: biopoiesis. origin of life. 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.
Jul 4, 2020 · The section “ Preexistent Seeds and the Denial of Spontaneous Generation ,” describes how, starting in the mid-1660s, the rise of microscopy and of mechanism, as well as the stress on the wonder of life and the impotence of nature, led to a widespread rejection of spontaneous generation.
