The theory that organisms can arise from non-living matter or from parents very unlike themselves; a form of abiogenesis or spontaneous generation.
From Greek 'hetero-' (different) and 'genesis' (origin/creation), literally 'origin from something different.' A 19th-century biological theory later disproven.
Scientists in the 1800s genuinely believed in heterogenesis—that maggots arose spontaneously from meat—until Pasteur's experiments proved that life only comes from existing life!
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