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Lodewijk 'Louis' Bolk (10 December 1866, Overschie – 17 June 1930, 
Lodewijk 'Louis' Bolk (10 December 1866, Overschie – 17 June 1930, Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...
) was a Dutch anatomist
Anatomy () is the branch of biology concerned with the study of the structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old science, having it ...
who created the fetalization theory about the human body. It states that when a human being is born, it is still a fetus
A fetus or foetus (; plural fetuses, feti, foetuses, or foeti) is the unborn offspring that develops from an animal embryo. Following embryonic development the fetal stage of development takes place. In human prenatal development, fetal develo ...
, as can be seen by its (proportionally) big head, lack of coordination, and helplessness. Furthermore, this " prematuration" is specifically human.
Gavin de Beer and Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould (; September 10, 1941 – May 20, 2002) was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was one of the most influential and widely read authors of popular science of his generation. Gould s ...
wrote about him and further developed this theory of neoteny
Neoteny (), also called juvenilization,Montagu, A. (1989). Growing Young. Bergin & Garvey: CT. is the delaying or slowing of the physiological, or somatic, development of an organism, typically an animal. Neoteny is found in modern humans compar ...
in humans.)
Also Jacques Lacan took Bolk's fetalization theory into account in order to introduce his own thesis on the mirror stage.
Bolk wrote in Origin of Racial Characteristics in Man, “White skin...started from an ancestor with a black skin, in whose offspring hair and iris color were suppressed more and more.”
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