What is Spontaneous Generation?
Simply stated, the theory of Spontaneous generation is defined as life forms arising from non-living matter, but primarily in decaying matter. Spontaneous Generation was also known as Equivocal Generation. For example, it was theorized that maggots spontaneously appeared in rotting flesh.
There were two forms of spontaneous generation, also known as Equivocal Generation; Abiogenesis, the theory that life emerges from non-living matter and Heterogenesis or Xenogenesis, the theory that one form of life emerges from another.
Spontaneous Generation was the public view of how organisms came into being prior to the germ theory. Through experiments of varying kinds that were based off of each other and the ideas of experimenters preceding, John Needham, Francesco Redi, Lazzaro Spallanzani and finally Louis Pasteur, this theory was disproved.