This is the sort of mistake that can lead modern readers to regard Aristotle with amused condescension. But in a way, I think we should congratulate him on his intellectual honesty. Within his system, spontaneous generation is clearly a problem. It is a major exception to his theory that form is passed on to offspring by parents. So it’s to his credit that he gave serious thought to an apparently unavoidable fact of observation, especially given the lowliness of many apparent products of spontaneous generation.
