Spontaneous Generation and Cell Theory

Spontaneous Generation and Cell Theory 1. Tradition thought is very hard to overcome- even with solid evidence to support new ideas * Social pressure has effect on acceptance of scientific ideas and technological advancements * Science is a social/political enterprise * New ideas often met with resistance * Sometimes ostracisms, persecution, death * Microscope helped to overturn some strange ideas * Disease processes * "spontaneous generation" * Attitudes and skills of scientific inquiry (questioning, predicting, observing and recording) are required to provide unbiased and factual info * Investigations must follow ethical guidelines and results must be reproducible under controlled conditions * Example of way that science, technology and society are linked is found in development of the current understanding of the way living cells function * Microscope provided technology to explore the world of microscopic particles and organisms * Then possible to obtain evidence for or against generally accepted opinions or theories about living things Spontaneous Generation 2. Believed that life can emerge from non-living matter 3. A superstition- people unaware of microscopic forms of life * e.g. mice created from mixing wheat husks with sweaty undergarments * Maggots and flies emerge spontaneously from raw meat * Francesco Redi * Example of scientific method * Believed flies laid eggs on meat * Experiment to prove hypothesis * Limited access to meat (air, no fresh air, flies, no flies) 4. Idea that life could emerge spontaneously from non-living matter = widely accepted from time of the Romans through to the 19th century * Even in time of Robert Hooke and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek * Believed that to produce mice, you put a sweaty underwear and husks of wheat in an