Editing Spontaneous generation (section)

== Description ==
"Spontaneous generation" means both the supposed processes by which different types of life might repeatedly emerge from specific sources other than seeds, eggs, or parents, and the theoretical principles presented in support of any such phenomena. Crucial to this [[doctrine]] are the ideas that life comes from non-life and that no causal agent, such as a parent, is needed. Supposed examples included the seasonal generation of mice and other animals from the mud of the [[Nile]], the emergence of [[flea]]s from inanimate matter such as dust, or the appearance of [[maggot]]s in dead flesh.<ref name="Ball">{{cite journal |last=Ball |first=Philip |title=Man Made: A History of Synthetic Life |journal=Distillations |date=2016 |volume=2 |issue=1 |pages=15–23 |url=https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/magazine/man-made-a-history-of-synthetic-life |access-date=22 March 2018 |archive-date=26 December 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171226003739/https://www.chemheritage.org/distillations/magazine/man-made-a-history-of-synthetic-life |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>Stillingfleet, Edward. ''Origines Sacrae''. Cambridge University Press, 1697. [https://archive.org/details/originessacraeor00stil]</ref> Such ideas have something in common with the modern [[hypothesis]] of the [[abiogenesis|origin of life]], which asserts that life emerged some four billion years ago from non-living materials, over a time span of millions of years, and subsequently diversified into all the forms that now exist.<ref name="Bernal 1967">{{cite book |last=Bernal |first=J. D. |year=1967 |orig-year=Reprinted work by [[Alexander Oparin|A. I. Oparin]] originally published 1924; Moscow: [[Publishing houses in the Soviet Union|The Moscow Worker]] |title=The Origin of Life |url=https://archive.org/details/originoflife0000bern |url-access=registration |series=The Weidenfeld and Nicolson Natural History |others=Translation of Oparin by Ann Synge |location=London |publisher=[[Weidenfeld & Nicolson]] |lccn=67098482 }}</ref><ref name="Woese Fox 1977">{{cite journal |last1=Woese |first1=Carl R. |author1-link=Carl Woese |last2=Fox |first2=G. E. |year=1977 |title=Phylogenetic structure of the prokaryotic domain: the primary kingdoms. |journal=[[PNAS]] |volume=7 |issue=11 |pages=5088–5090 |bibcode=1977PNAS...74.5088W |doi=10.1073/pnas.74.11.5088 |pmc=432104 |pmid=270744 |doi-access=free}}</ref>

The term ''equivocal generation'', sometimes known as ''heterogenesis'' or ''xenogenesis'', describes the supposed process by which one form of life arises from a different, unrelated form, such as [[Eucestoda|tapeworm]]s from the bodies of their hosts.<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Wiener |editor-first=Philip P. |title=Dictionary of the History of Ideas |year=1973 |publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons |location=New York |chapter=Spontaneous Generation |chapter-url=http://ftp.mpdl.mpg.de/mpiwg-berlin/data/datastreams-single/escidoc_643819+content+content.0 |volume=4 |pages=307–311 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210706192951/http://ftp.mpdl.mpg.de/mpiwg-berlin/data/datastreams-single/escidoc_643819+content+content.0 |archive-date=6 July 2021 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=McLaughlin |first=Peter |title=Spontaneous versus equivocal generation in early modern science |journal=Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology |date=2006 |volume=10 |pages=79–88 |url=http://ftp.mpdl.mpg.de/mpiwg-berlin/data/datastreams-single/escidoc_643819+content+content.0 |access-date=6 February 2021 |archive-date=20 November 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211120094628/http://ftp.mpdl.mpg.de/mpiwg-berlin/data/datastreams-single/escidoc_643819+content+content.0 |url-status=dead }}</ref>