Spontaneous Generation - Classical Writers After Aristotle

Classical Writers After Aristotle

Vitruvius, a Roman architect and writer of the 1st century BCE, advised that libraries be placed facing eastwards to benefit from morning light, but not towards the south or the west as those winds generate bookworms.

Aristotle claimed that eels were lacking in sex and lacking milt, spawn and the passages for either. Rather, he asserted eels emerged from earthworms. Later philosophers dissented. Pliny the Elder did not argue against the anatomic limits of eels, but stated that eels reproduce by budding, scraping themselves against rocks, liberating particles that become eels. Athenaeus described eels as entwining and discharging a fluid which would settle on mud and generate life. On the other hand, Athenaeus also dissented towards spontaneous generation, claiming that a variety of anchovy did not generate from roe, as Aristotle stated, but rather, from sea foam.

Read more about this topic:  Spontaneous Generation

Famous quotes containing the words classical, writers and/or aristotle:

    Classical art, in a word, stands for form; romantic art for content. The romantic artist expects people to ask, What has he got to say? The classical artist expects them to ask, How does he say it?
    —R.G. (Robin George)

    Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.
    Gore Vidal (b. 1925)

    You have both said well,
    And on the cause and question now in hand
    Have glozed, but superficially—not much
    Unlike young men whom Aristotle thought
    Unfit to hear moral philosophy.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)