CELL THEORY

The cell theory is a theory developed in the XIX century. It is made up of 3 postulates:

1. All living things are made up of cells.

2. The cell is the basic unit of living things.

3. Living cells come from other living cells.

The history of this theory started when Robert Hooke, an English scientist, discovered the cell by looking at a cork through a microscope in 1665. After Hooke, in 1676 Anton Van Leeuwenhoek find out something he called “animacules”, that are living cells. Later, he discovered bacteria.

 Matthias Schleiden and Theodor Schwann discovered that plants (Schleiden) and animals (Schwann) were made up of cells, and with these discoveries, the first postulate was developed: All living animals are made up of cells. Later, they also said that cells are the basic unit of structure of every living thing. After those discoveries, Rudolph Virchow, discovered that all living things come from other living things; meaning that living cells come from other living cells (third postulate)

The development of the cell theory is a good example of scientific inquiry because throughout its history, all de discoveries were found out by scientific methods and scientific tools: the microscope.