Aristotle's Biology
In Our Time: Philosophy
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 because the larvae are too small or because of some other crook of biology, he has a tendency to sort of say, yeah, I think it's spontaneously generated. 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. And I'd say he's dissatisfied with his explanation.
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