The theory of spontaneous generation has been something that I have been pondering as of late. The theory goes as such: living creatures were thought to arise from nonliving matter, and that this was commonplace and regular. This theory arose in the early 6th century, and many well-known philosophers, such as Aristotle and Anaximander, held experiments to prove this theory correctly. We now know with modern science that this is impossible, because all living things must come from other living organisms. But, for a greater portion of our history many believed this to be factual science. With this I believe comes the element of human want and greed; since we don’t know how something is formed, we can assume it was formed in any way that we want it. I want to look at spontaneous generation within Percival Everett’s novel I am Not Sidney Poitier and his poetry book re: f(gesture), and look at the idea of human want within this scientific ideal.
In Percival Everett’s novel, I am Not Sidney Poitier, Not Sidney’s mother seems to have her own experience with the spontaneous generation theory. Not Sidney’s mother, Portia Poitier was so eager to conceive her own child that she had conjured up her very own “hysterical pregnancy”(Everett). Now, Spontaneous generation has to do with a living organism coming about from a non-living organism, but the term for what happened to Portia Poitier is called biogenesis: life coming from another living organism. Scientifically speaking, biogenesis is what Portia Poitier went through during the nine months that she was actually pregnant with Not Sidney, but I would personally associate her hysterical pregnancy with the idea of spontaneous generation. Since she had conjured up her own child, it is a living organism coming about without any other living organism (a man), which goes along with the whole idea of spontaneous generation. The idea of humans greed and their wants can also be acknowledged here, since Portia had wanted a child so incredibly bad she just created one without a partner in order to do so just shows how incredibly powerful a humans want for something can be.
The spontaneous generation theory can also be seen in Percival Everett’s poetry book re:f(gesture). In his set of poems titled Logic, the fifth poem goes as so: “From rags and dust-a rat is formed in the cellar. It was not there before. Only rags and dust.”(Everett). This poem can go along with the spontaneous generation theory, in that the rats seemed to have been created out of the rags and dust within the cellar. Another example of spontaneous generation would be that in the late 6th century many people believed that maggots would just protrude from rotting meat. They did not understand that flies would lay their eggs on the meat and that’s how the maggots came about, they just believed that they would appear whenever there was rotting meat. This also goes along with the ideal that since they didn’t understand where the maggots came from that they could just assume it was formed in anyway that they want it. This also can go to show that since these humans during this time didn’t quite understand where certain things were coming from, their extreme need and want to understand where they were coming from formed the spontaneous generation theory itself.
The whole idea of the spontaneous generation theory has clearly been debunked, but the idea of human greed and want being so strong that it conjures something completely out of something that is nonliving is an idea that we still see present today. We can see it present in literature, as seen in the novel and poetry book listed above, and we can also see it in many different forms. Even though it’s not physically possible for life to form from nonliving matter, we can still understand the roots and that the lack of education on the subject presented the theory in the first place. Although it’s not scientifically correct, this theory and all the ideas and experiments surrounding it still fascinates me, and clearly fascinates Everett as well.