What is the biological term for T H Huxley's theory that all living cells and organisms orginate from pre-existing living matter, not as the result of spontaneous generation?
Spontaneous generation life arises from a different, unrelated form, such as tapeworms from the bodies of their hosts. In the years following Louis Pasteur's 1859 experiment, the term "spontaneous generation" fell increasingly out of favor. Experimentalists used a variety of terms for the study of the origin of life from nonliving materials. "Heterogenesis" was applied to the generation of living things from once-living organic matter (such as boiled broths), and Henry Charlton Bastian proposed the term "archebiosis" for life originating from inorganic materials. Disliking the randomness and unpredictability implied by the term "'spontaneous' generation," in 1870 Bastian coined the term "biogenesis" to
Spontaneous generation and appointed a commission to judge the winner. Spontaneous generation Spontaneous generation refers to an obsolete body of thought on the ordinary formation of living organisms without descent from similar organisms. The theory of spontaneous generation held that living creatures could arise from nonliving matter and that such processes were commonplace and regular. For instance, it was hypothesized that certain forms such as fleas could arise from inanimate matter such as dust, or that maggots could arise from dead flesh. A variant idea was that of equivocal generation, in which species such as tapeworms arose from unrelated living organisms, now