File:Meyer1931history fig01.jpg

Fig. 1. Francesco Redi (1626- 1698)

The commonest, though probably not the best, likeness of Redi.

In spite of Redi’s crucial experiments on the generation of some insects, the idea that animals could arise without parentage lived on long thereafter even among leaders in science such as Redi and Harvey. It was not rejected by “natural philosophers,” it seems, until 1715, in which year an English natural philosopher, G. Cheyne, wrote: “Nobody nowadays that understands anything of nature or philosophizing can so much as imagine that any animal, how object soever, can be produced by an equivocal generation or without of male and female parents in the same or in two different animals‘. . . I shall have occasion in the following chapter to make it evident that every generated animal is produced from a preéxistent animalcule of the same species, and that every vegetable arises from a small plant of the same kind, and it is impossible. it can be otherwise upon our adversary’s scheme of admitting nothing but matter motion; for if animals and vegetables cannot be produced from these (and I have clearly proved they cannot) they must of necessity have been from all Eternity.” Redihimself wrote: “Before returning to my argument, I cannot refrain from saying that I do not consider it a great sin against philosophy to maintain that the worms of plants are created by the same natural principle that produces the fruits of the plants. . . . " Redi could not learn how the eggs of insects could be introduced into fruit, and made the above comment in connection with fig. 2 here reproduced.

Reference

Meyer AW. Essays on the History of Embryology: Part I. Cal West Med. 1931 Dec;35(6):447-51. PMID 18741978

Cite this page: Hill, M.A. (2024, April 27) Embryology Meyer1931history fig01.jpg. Retrieved from https://embryology.med.unsw.edu.au/embryology/index.php/File:Meyer1931history_fig01.jpg

What Links Here?

© Dr Mark Hill 2024, UNSW Embryology ISBN: 978 0 7334 2609 4 - UNSW CRICOS Provider Code No. 00098G