Can life arise from non-life? The question I have just asked was actually a belief of everyone from regular people to scientists in the 4th century. Those who lived in that time believed that rats were created by garbage in the street, frogs were given life from muddy banks along the riverside, and rotting meat produced flies. There were no studies, no experiments, no way of knowing otherwise. The term spontaneous generation, which was the idea that organisms originate directly from nonliving matter, was indeed law. .
Then some scientist became suspicious, they started to question if it was possible, could spontaneous generation truly occur? These scientist tried different experiments to answer their questionable thoughts. Among those was a man named Francesco Redi, In 1668 he formulated an experiment to test his theory that it was not possible for living things to arise from nothing. Redi believed that flies could only come from flies, not the rotting meat that everyone else believed.
In his experiment he took several jars and exposed them to three elements. The first set of jars he left open in easy access to the other living flies, the second set he covered with a netting so the adult flies could not enter, the third set of jars he covered with a lid eliminating any contact with the flies.
Redi observed these jars closely for several days and recorded his observations. Of the observations he recorded he noted flies in and out of the open jar, later he noted seeing maggots on the meat. In the jar with the netting covering the top he recorded no flies entering the jar but did see them on the netting. Later he saw maggots on the meat in that jar also. On the jars with the lid, where there was no exposure at all to the flies, he did not note any maggots in the jar with the meat. Thus coming to the conclusion that larger organisms did not arise from spontaneous generation. He knew that the only way for flies to become were from other flies laying eggs that produced maggots that turned into flies.
