Although the name "Lamarck" is now associated with a discredited view of evolution ... thought they must be continually created by spontaneous generation. According to Lamarck, organisms altered ...

The theory of spontaneous generation, for many years scorned by ... Wald predicted that the future development of the theory of evolution might center mainly around finding how simple chemicals ...

Charles Darwin's theory of evolution generated scientific debate ... Still others proposed that spontaneous, random mutations, or changes, in organisms accounted for the variety of species.