Discuss the historical concept of spontaneous generation and the experiments that were performed to disprove this erroneous idea

Abiogenesis means life came from non-living material and it is called theory of abiogenesis. It was disproved by the theory of biogenesis.

Explanation:

The spontaneous generation is also known as the theory of abiogenesis. It was said the life come from non-living materials. People at old-time believed that maggots rose from the meat. The mouse came from the hey. It was not true. This spontaneous generation was disproved later by three scientists - Francisco Redi, Lazzaro Spallanzani, and Luis Pasture.  

Francisco Redi did the maggot experiment with raw meat. In his experiment, he showed that the raw meat of the uncovered jar show maggot while there was no maggot in the covered jar. He told there might some flies lay eggs and maggots born out of it. He concluded life came from pre-existing life forms.  

Lazzaro Spallanzani also disagreed with the theory of abiogenesis. He took two jars of broth and one was boiled. The boiled broth was tightly sealed. The uncovered broth got a dark color soon and after some days the boiled sealed broth rotten. In the microscopic test, it was proved bacterial growth occur in the broth. He concluded that life came from pre-existing lives, not non-living materials.

The Luis Pasture proved it by his germ theory or swan-neck theory.  

He took some broth like Spallanzani and boiled it. He sealed the swan-neck. There was no sign of life in it. Then he broke the seal and kept the broth for a few days as such. Then he noticed many living organisms were growing in it. He concluded that the air and light have this living organism which grows in the open broth. Thus he concluded the theory of abiogenesis was not true. Life comes from pre-existing life forms, and this is called biogenesis.