Abiogenesis n. (Biol.) The supposed origination of living organisms from lifeless matter; such genesis as does not involve the action of living parents; spontaneous generation; called also abiogeny, and opposed to biogenesis. "I shall call the... doctrine that living matter may be produced by not living matter, the hypothesis of abiogenesis."
... in abiogenesis, or the so-called 'spontaneous' generation of the lower forms of life, which was accepted by all the philosophers of antiquity, held its ground down to the middle of the seventeenth century. Notwithstanding the frequent citation of ... — The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley