What is Biogenesis?
Biogenesis is the production of life. In Latin, bio means life, and genesis means the beginning or origin of. For most of history, mankind thought that biogenesis often occurred through spontaneous generation from earth or vegetable matter, alongside reproduction, which we now know is the only way that biogenesis ever happens. Anaximenes and Anaxagoras, pre-Aristotle Greek natural philosophers, believed that biogenesis could occur from the action of the Sun on primordial terrestrial slime, a combination of water and earth. A related idea is xenogenesis, which argues that one type of life form can arise from another, completely different life form. Around 343 BCE, Aristotle wrote the book History of Animals which laid out the spontaneous generation theory of biogenesis which would remain dominant for over 2000 years. Besides including lengthy descriptions of countless species of fish, shellfish, and other animals, the book also presented Aristotle’s theory of how animals come to be in t
