(From
Noam Lahav’s Biogenesis, 1999, Oxford University Press; from
Martino Rizzotti’s Defining Life, 1996, University of Padua Press;
and from personal communications by Pietro Ramellini).
Jean
Baptiste LAMARCK (1802)
Life is an order or a state of things in the component parts of a
body that makes organic movement possible and that effectively succeeds,
as long as it persists, in opposing death.
Eduard BUCHNER (1855)
Spontaneous generation exists, and higher forms have gradually and
slowly developed from previously existing lower forms, always determined
by the state of the earth, but without immediate influence of a higher
power.
Rudolf
VIRCHOW (1855)
Life will always remain something apart, even if we should find out
that it is mechanically aroused and propagated down to the minutest
detail.
Ernst
HAECKEL (1866)
Any detailed hypothesis concerning the origin of life must, as yet,
be considered worthless, because up till now we have no satisfactory
information concerning the extremely peculiar conditions which prevailed
on the earth at the time when the first organisms developed.
Thomas
Henry HUXLEY (1868)
The vital forces are molecular forces.
Justus
von LIEBIG (1868)
We may only assume that life is just as old and just as eternal as
matter itself… Why should not organic life be thought of as present
from the very beginning just as carbon and its compounds, or as the
whole of uncreatable and indestructible matter in general.