In 1828 the chemist Friedrich Woehler made a discovery that shocked him and overturned the reigning concept of how life relates to the rest of the world: he made the substance “urea” out of inorganic chemicals in a test tube.

Like most people of his time, Woehler believed that living things had a special mysterious “life force” that enabled them to make “living chemicals” like urea. This notion, which had developed from religious ideas, later came to be known and derided as “vitalism”. When Woehler made urea in a test tube, the life force theory was proven false and people began to realize that the structures and processes making up living things can be studied and manipulated in the same way that other material things can.