Final answer:
Spontaneous generation refers to the theory that living organisms can arise from nonliving matter, a belief that was eventually disproven by scientific advancements like the experiments conducted by Louis Pasteur.
Step-by-step explanation:
Spontaneous Generation
Spontaneous generation is best described as c) A scientific theory stating that living organisms can emerge from nonliving matter. This concept was a long-held belief that dates back to Aristotle and the ancient Greeks, who observed the sudden appearance of living organisms in environments that were previously devoid of such life. For example, Aristotle cited instances like the sudden emergence of fish in new puddles of water. This theory was widely accepted until the advent of modern scientific methods and experimentation, notably by Louis Pasteur, which led to the current understanding that life does not spontaneously arise from nonliving material.
It's important to differentiate spontaneous generation from other concepts such as cellular cloning, where organisms like bacteria reproduce asexually, resulting in an identical genetic copy. Reproductive cloning in mammals and other multicellular organisms is a modern scientific development that involves artificially inducing asexual reproduction, not a natural occurrence from nonliving material.