A Brief History
On April 20, 1862, French scientists Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard proved that Aristotle was wrong!
Digging Deeper
The state of science thousands of years ago was somewhat more primitive than today.
Ancient people did not have microscopes, X-rays, CT Scans, gas chromatography, chemical tests, electron microscopes, centrifuges, and had not even developed the so called scientific method to test theories.
People believed the Brandt Goose came from barnacles by that name, and a common belief was that maggots came from dead flesh. They did not understand microbes, DNA, or the Atomic Theory.
Aristotle, the tutor of Alexander the Great, was considered one of the great thinkers of his day, but without all the modern advantages listed above he was bound to come to wrong conclusions.
Aristotle believed that organisms could arise spontaneously from favorable conditions, such as the maggots from dead flesh, fleas from dust, and that although many plants originated from seeds, some plants would just show up without seeds if the soil and moisture was right. There was no understanding that parasites laid eggs in the host animal or person. The ancients just thought they somehow sprang up just because of conditions. Incredibly, the prevailing thought that rats and mice just magically appeared where they could live and find food persisted until the Pasteur experiments! (Seriously, people did not notice small rodents giving birth just like people, dogs, etc.?)
During the 1600’s and 1700’s many scientists performed a variety of experiments to prove or disprove the spontaneous generation theory, but none was widely publicized and successful until Pasteur. Even then, doubts persisted! It seems the fact that some bacteria are not killed by boiling confused the experimenters.
Today we know all about microbes, spores, tiny seeds, and where parasites come from, but undoubtedly at some point in the future people will be reading an historical website (History and Headlines?) about how the primitive minds back in 2014 believed such ridiculous “facts!”
Question for students (and subscribers): What accepted facts today are going to be proven wrong? Can you name one? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Birch, Beverly and Christian Birmingham. Pasteur’s Fight Against Microbes (Science Stories). Barron’s Educational Series, 1996.
Denman, Michael L. and John Hudson Tiner. Louis Pasteur: Founder of Modern Medicine (Sowers.). Mott Media, 1999.
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="1798 http://www.crackedhistory.com/?p=1798">24 Comments
Crazy to think people believed things just appeared out of nowhere for such a long time
Amazing to see how far we have come scientifically. I never knew people believed maggots came from the dead bodies!
yes i could agree how people could not see rodents give birth just like other animals, but everything is scientifically proven. I have personally have had a class that had to do with bacteria and we grew them too pretty cool class also pretty hard
In Pasteur and Bernard’s day, people’s reasons for believing in spontaneous generation theory were wack. Maggots, really??? That idea is so depressingly absurd to me because of my own education in biology. Maybe spontaneous generation theory will be supported in the future based on new evidence (i.e., not maggots, fleas, seedless plants– but something we don’t know). Extraterrestrial life-forms, perhaps?
It is compelling to read about how primitive society used to be regarding what they believed in. How could organisms spontaneously arise out of random favorable conditions? As it makes no sense nowadays, it certainly could have made sense in the past considering they have nowhere near the technology and information that we have today. Science has come such a long way and still continues to improve to this very day. I wonder what will be discovered in the next 100 years!
What amazes me the most about science is that most of the theories we know and follow today were developed and proven in an era when scientists had less than half the machines and technology we have today. It seems like they would be able to make miracles happen if they could use today’s technology!
It makes me wonder how much we believe will be disproved in the next few centuries. Science has really come a long way from the days of Aristotle and I think it is only going to continue to become more and more innovative.
I was surprised so many people believed that organisms came out of nothing. If you take into account that they did not have as much technology as we have now, it is understandable that they would believe this because they had to make a reasoning for what they did not understand.
I can’t believe Aristotle believed organisms would just appear spontaneously when conditions were favorable for them. It sounds extremely outrageous that such a smart man would not realize how ridiculous a theory this was. Good thing Pasteur came along and put aristotles theories to the test.
It had to have been difficult for Aristotle and other thinkers of his time to propose theories without the equipment that was later created. His theory that if correct conditions were present organisms could simply appear seems outlandish, but at the time probably made complete sense. It is surprising that scientists discovered as much as they did throughout history without the use of modern equipment that we are lucky to have today.
Hearing that Aristotle is wrong makes me feel great because of all the times I have been wrong in philosophy class about Aristotle’s ideas. I can understand why he thought that organisms would appear when the conditions were right. Aristotle was basing his conclusions on what he had saw. If he was in todays world I could only imagine what kind of crazy ideas he would have.
Aristotle did the best he could with the tools he had during his life. However, he came to wrong conclusions about many different living things. The advances in technology have helped to improve our knowledge about the living things in the world.
Though Pasteur did phenomenal work, it is important to understand that our accepted Germ Theory of today comes from a synthesis of many scientists works. Without their contributions to science, our global population would be completely different from how we know it today.
Not everyone will be right and this was the case with Aristotle, then he again he did not have the necessary technology to make the type of conclusions we can make today. Pasteur on the other hand was able to take Aristotle’s ideas and further improve on them thankfully.
Because no one knew what microbes, spores, tiny seeds, and parasites were back then it was impossible for Aristotle to know where those things were actually coming from. For many of those back in Aristotle’s time it was probably to assume that plants and animals just appeared out of no where because of other certain conditions.
I feel that while learning about history in school there was never an overlap of scientific history and the history of the development of civilization. Therefore I am really surprised to know that up until the Civil War people still believed in spontaneous generation. It seems like that is something the scientific community should have answered long ago.
Learning about what people believed today, they sound crazy. How could something just magically appear out of nothing. I guess if you don’t have the technology to study things, you have to make your own guesses.
Even though some of Aristotle’s findings were wrong he was still a big player in advancement of science. Thanks to Pasteur, however, we got much closer to really understanding where things come from.
People need to make mistakes and wrong assumptions in order to move forward in science. Today, we have several theories based on observation that may one day be proven wrong or true, as Aristotle was by Pasteur.
Although Aristotle was wrong with some of the conclusions he made, you have to tip your hat to the man for some of the other contributions he made throughout his lifetime. It was interesting to read that he was proven wrong by both French scientists, I never knew that.
It is crazy to think Aristotle really thought organisms appeared out of thin air if the conditions were favorable for them. This seems bizarre to us, but back then this may have totally been a logical idea. Good thing Pasteur came about and helped to get us closer to understanding where these things really came from.
It is almost to far fetch to think that people actually believed that things would just magically appear and that is how they came on this earth. It is interesting that Aristotle thought this and told people.
We often associate Aristotle with being this very intelligent man, which he is, but the things he was telling people was not exactly the smartest. That’s how we learn though, even the most brilliant individuals.
It’s surprising that many people believed something can come out of nothing. It is especially surprising someone as smart as Aristotle advocated that.