dahil naiinis ako.

1.    Differentiate Biogenesis from Spontaneous Generation.  What factors or conditions prevailed such that early scientists believed in spontaneous generation despite the experimentation that they were able to do? Suppose you lived in those times when the origin of life was still an issue. Propose an experiment that you can perform to prove biogenesis. Use the scientific method in proposing your experiment. (15 pts)

The process of biogenesis is nowadays universally accepted as the method by which organisms are created. The law of biogenesis states that all life forms originate from other life forms.

Early scientists believed that organisms emerged due to spontaneous generation- a process in which organisms could be created either from nonliving matter (abiogenesis) or from an entirely different type of organism (heterogenesis). This was probably because they didn’t have the technology we have today- autoclaves and microscopes come to mind- and had no way of confirming that no, there were indeed no microorganisms or eggs in the broth that could have been the source of whatever colony ended up growing there. They relied on observation, but they could only rely on the observations their own senses could make.

In order to propose an experiment to disprove spontaneous generation, one would first have to ensure that one could, indeed, create an environment which no microscopic eggs or organisms would be able to enter. One would have to fill a flask with a broth in which bacteria or fungi could survive, seal the flask well, and sterilize the sealed flask. (You can’t have an oxygen-less flask, because the proponents of spontaneous generation would say that life did not generate in the flask because of the lack of oxygen.) If you lived back in the nineteenth century, proper sterilization would be the most pressing problem.

This entire experimentation thing would be so much easier if it were actually specified what century we would be conducting this experiment in. If it were the eighteenth we’d have a microscope, and if it were the nineteenth we’d have Pasteur’s experiment with the goose-necked flask to base our own ideas on.

I will not submit this.

dahil naiinis ako.

1.    Differentiate Biogenesis from Spontaneous Generation.  What factors or conditions prevailed such that early scientists believed in spontaneous generation despite the experimentation that they were able to do? Suppose you lived in those times when the origin of life was still an issue. Propose an experiment that you can perform to prove biogenesis. Use the scientific method in proposing your experiment. (15 pts)

The process of biogenesis is nowadays universally accepted as the method by which organisms are created. The law of biogenesis states that all life forms originate from other life forms.

Early scientists believed that organisms emerged due to spontaneous generation- a process in which organisms could be created either from nonliving matter (abiogenesis) or from an entirely different type of organism (heterogenesis). This was probably because they didn’t have the technology we have today- autoclaves and microscopes come to mind- and had no way of confirming that no, there were indeed no microorganisms or eggs in the broth that could have been the source of whatever colony ended up growing there. They relied on observation, but they could only rely on the observations their own senses could make.

In order to propose an experiment to disprove spontaneous generation, one would first have to ensure that one could, indeed, create an environment which no microscopic eggs or organisms would be able to enter. One would have to fill a flask with a broth in which bacteria or fungi could survive, seal the flask well, and sterilize the sealed flask. (You can’t have an oxygen-less flask, because the proponents of spontaneous generation would say that life did not generate in the flask because of the lack of oxygen.) If you lived back in the nineteenth century, proper sterilization would be the most pressing problem.

This entire experimentation thing would be so much easier if it were actually specified what century we would be conducting this experiment in. If it were the eighteenth we’d have a microscope, and if it were the nineteenth we’d have Pasteur’s experiment with the goose-necked flask to base our own ideas on.

I will not submit this.