The interest of man towards the origin of life proved to be much more
profound. It is pointless to survey the fantastic myths and religious ideas
created in the course of the millennia by man since they would not
contribute in the least to the objective treatment of this problem. According
to most of them life is engendered by a certain Creator, God or Spirit, who
by exercising an impact on the non-living matter has created living
creatures from earth and mud.
Along with these purely religious concepts there exist in the annals of the
ancient people of China, India, Babylon and Egypt also traditional beliefs in the
self-generation of aphids and insects by the action of heat and humidity, and
of lice, flies and beetles from the sweat of the cattle and the manure in the
stables, of worms from the sewer waters, and of frogs, mice and crocodiles
from the humus of the Nile River when heated by the Sun, etc.
The notion of the self-generation of living organisms has been further
developed by a variety of philosophers and schools in ancient Greece.
Phales of Millet (624\u2014547 B. C.) as well as contemporaries of his have
believed that living organisms could be spontaneous engendered in the
alluvial soils and mud, i.e. the natural habitat where they have dwelt and
reproduced. This concept has received an especially broad presentation
in the works of Democritus (460\u2014370 B. C.) and the above-mentioned
Aristotle.
The materialistic views of Democritus though episodic allowed him to
accept that matter lies in the basis of Universe which consists of a variety of
small particles (atoms) that are engaged in an unceasing movement and
are divided by hollow spaces. According to him the initial emergence of
living entities or their self-generation from water and mud is possible due to
the random but perfectly logical combinations of the atoms in their
mechanical movement when small particles of the wet earth collide and join
with the atoms of fire.
Aristotle taught that except by birth from their likes living organisms
can also be spontaneous self-generated from non-living matter, in the
support of which he has very skillfully and entertainingly supplied
examples. Moreover, this brilliant thinker of the ancient times has
produced a certain theoretical argumentation of the phenomenon and
developed it into his theory of spontaneous generation, which has played
a decisive role in the further course of development of the method by
which man has tried to tackle the problem of the origin of life. Due to his
great renown his views have occupied people\u2019s minds for over two
millennia extending even to the time of the great French philosopher and
mathematician Rene Descartes (1596\u20141650) to whom humanity owes
the famous phrase: \u201cI think consequently I exist\u201d (Cogito ergo sum). The
Belgian chemist and physician van Helmont (1577\u20141644) has taken this
point of view so deep to his heart that he would even write prescriptions
for obtaining live mice from wheat grains.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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