Humans have always wondered about the origin of life. in the past, people believed in spontaneous generation, or the theory that life could arise from non-living matter. this was partly because people did not understand why maggots seemed to emerge from rotting meat without any explanation. then, in 1668, an italian scientist named francisco redi disproved the theory of spontaneous generation by performing an experiment in which he covered a piece of meat, preventing flies from laying eggs there. consequently, no maggots emerged. this experiment shows that