Biogenesis
in biology, a word invented by Professor Huxley, and first used by him in his address, as President of the British Association, at Liverpool, 1870, to indicate the view that living matter can be produced only from that which is itself living. It is opposed to abiogenesis. The first who established the doctrine of biogenesis was Francesco Redi. He considered that there were two kinds of it; the first, and by far the most common, that in which the offspring passes through the same series of changes as the parent, and the second, that in which the offspring is altogether and permanently unlike the parent. The former is now called homogenesis and the latter xenogenesis.