Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology

Spontaneous versus equivocal generation in early modern science
Thus can one also explain the difference between current and fossil forms of the
same species without equivocal generation.
Conclusion
In the Aristotelian tradition sexual generation was the rule and spontaneous or equivocal
generation the exception. There was no need to distinguish various forms of unusual or
exceptional generation that were not “for the sake of” the species form. But the connection
in this tradition between being parentless and being irregular was purely contingent.
The later mechanistic and materialistic approaches of the 17th century dissolved this
contingent connection by applying the traditional concepts in situations and to objects
for which they were not originally intended. In a Cartesian material world that is causally
closed, things that are not law governed do not occur. In a world that arises out of matter
in motion, the first parent-organisms also arise out of matter in motion. If generation
without parents is equivocal or non-lawlike, it doesn’t occur; and if it occurs it cannot be
equivocal. Even parentless generation must be law-governed and species specific.
Whether it actually occurs in the present is a genuinely empirical question. The first origin
of living creatures must, however, have been without parents, and if it was a natural
phenomenon, then it can also be explained by natural laws. Thus the view that at least
the first origin of life was spontaneous but not equivocal is a integral metaphysical and
methodological assumption of early modern mechanistic materialism.
References
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