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Aristotle's Biology

In Our Time: Science

CHAPTER

Aristotle's Love for Spontaneous Generation

I think there's a real mystery behind Aristotle's love for spontaneous generation. When he can't actually observe something, copulating and giving birth to creatures laying eggs, he has a tendency to sort of say, yeah, I think it's spontaneously generated. And the reason that this is so odd is because it's so at variance with all the rest of his biology. He tries to fit it into his formula of the causes that should be here. And he says, but they're not here.

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