#spontaneous generation

[injuries-in-dust]

[rhianna]

Spontaneous Generation

This parrot squawks “Spontaneous Generation”

[kahuna-burger]

Hello, and welcome to my hyperfixation of the day! 

The fantastic and vampire obsessed @lauralot89 has been posting from an annotated version of Dracula, and part of today's post not merely caught my eye, but harpooned my brain and wouldn't let go: 

The Order for the Burial of the Dead, which Jonathan reads aloud, comes from The Book of Common Prayer. … “And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another.”

Specifically, my brain hyperfixated on "my skinworms destroy this body" with a super fixation on MY. I knew about the theory of Spontaneous Generation (though I thought there was another name for it) where it was believed that “simpler” forms of life like worms and insects formed directly from dirt, dead flesh, etc, but did they think we carried the seeds of maggots in us all the time and they hatched when we died or something? Why do we have our own personal “skin worms”?

[lindahall]

John Turberville Needham – Scientist of the Day

John Turberville Needham, an English microscopist, experimental naturalist, and Catholic priest, was born Sep. 10, 1713.

read more...

[peachdoxie]

I know spontaneous generation was disproven like 300+ years ago, but damn, where do these fruit flies come from?

[the-ephemeral-ethereal]

Nothing comes into being from what is not.

from Letter to Herodotus by Epicurus

[er-cryptid]

Basics of Cells

Cell Theory -- cell is the basic unit of life -- all living things are made of cells -- cells only came from living cells

-- people used to believe in spontaneous generation, or life from nonlife

Types of Cells -- prokaryotic -- eukaryotic

Prokaryotic -- no nucleus -- no membrane-bound organelles

Eukaryotic -- nucleus present -- membrane-bound organelles

-- cell size is limited

-- two factors keep cell size limited      1. surface area increases at a slower rate than the volume for a sphere or cube      2. the larger the cell, the longer it takes for materials to diffuse to the center of the cell

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[artofthemindblog]

Previously, starting with the assumption of the infinite intelligence of a designer God, organisms—including those capable of flexible intelligent behavior—could be seen as progressive subtractions and simplifications from Godlike perfection. In the “Great Chain of Being,” mental phenomena were primary. The mind of God was the engine of creation, the designer of living forms, and the ultimate source of value. Mind was not in need of explanation. It was a given. The living world was derived from it and originally folded within it, preformed, as a definite potential. The evolutionary reconception proposed by the elder and younger Darwins, Lamarck, and others therefore posed a much more counterintuitive possibility. Mind and its teleological mode of interacting with the world could be described as an end product—not an initiating cause—of the history of life.

Terrence W. Deacon, Incomplete Nature