The theory of recapitulation, also called the biogenetic law or embryological parallelism—often expressed using
Ernst Haeckel
Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (; 16 February 1834 – 9 August 1919) was a German zoologist, naturalist, eugenicist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist and artist. He discovered, described and named thousands of new sp ...
's phrase "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"—is a historical hypothesis that the
development
Development or developing may refer to:
Arts
*Development hell, when a project is stuck in development
*Filmmaking, development phase, including finance and budgeting
*Development (music), the process thematic material is reshaped
* Photograph ...
of the
embryo
An embryo is an initial stage of development of a multicellular organism. In organisms that reproduce sexually, embryonic development is the part of the life cycle that begins just after fertilization of the female egg cell by the male spe ...
of an animal, from
fertilization
Fertilisation or fertilization (see spelling differences), also known as generative fertilisation, syngamy and impregnation, is the fusion of gametes to give rise to a new individual organism or offspring and initiate its development. Proce ...
to gestation or hatching (
ontogeny
Ontogeny (also ontogenesis) is the origination and development of an organism (both physical and psychological, e.g., moral development), usually from the time of fertilization of the egg to adult. The term can also be used to refer to the stu ...
), goes through stages resembling or representing successive adult stages in the evolution of the animal's remote ancestors (
phylogeny
A phylogenetic tree (also phylogeny or evolutionary tree Felsenstein J. (2004). ''Inferring Phylogenies'' Sinauer Associates: Sunderland, MA.) is a branching diagram or a tree showing the evolutionary relationships among various biological spec ...
). It was formulated in the 1820s by
Étienne Serres
Antoine Étienne Renaud Augustin Serres (12 September 1786, Clairac – 22 January 1868, Paris) was a French physician and embryologist. He was among the first to formulate the recapitulation theory.
Background
Étienne Serres was the son ...
based on the work of
Johann Friedrich Meckel
Johann Friedrich Meckel (17 October 1781 – 31 October 1833), often referred to as Johann Friedrich Meckel, the Younger, was a German anatomist born in Halle. He worked as a professor of anatomy, pathology and zoology at the University of Halle, ...
, after whom it is also known as Meckel–Serres law.
Since
embryos also evolve in different ways, the shortcomings of the theory had been recognized by the early 20th century, and it had been relegated to "biological mythology"
by the mid-20th century.
Analogies to recapitulation theory have been formulated in other fields, including
cognitive development
Cognitive development is a field of study in neuroscience and psychology focusing on a child's development in terms of information processing, conceptual resources, perceptual skill, language learning, and other aspects of the developed adult bra ...
and music criticism.
[Medicus (1992) p.2 quotation: "..many biologists accept the rule with respect to behavioral ontogeny in animal species."]
Embryology
Meckel, Serres, Geoffroy
The idea of recapitulation was first formulated in
biology
Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...
from the 1790s onwards by the German
natural philosopher
Natural philosophy or philosophy of nature (from Latin ''philosophia naturalis'') is the philosophical study of physics
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior throu ...
s
Johann Friedrich Meckel
Johann Friedrich Meckel (17 October 1781 – 31 October 1833), often referred to as Johann Friedrich Meckel, the Younger, was a German anatomist born in Halle. He worked as a professor of anatomy, pathology and zoology at the University of Halle, ...
and
Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer
Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer (22 October 1765 – 14 August 1844) was a German biologist and naturalist born in Bebenhausen, today part of the city of Tübingen. He was a pioneer of '' Naturphilosophie'', helped to establish organic chemistry (''Pfl ...
, and by
Étienne Serres
Antoine Étienne Renaud Augustin Serres (12 September 1786, Clairac – 22 January 1868, Paris) was a French physician and embryologist. He was among the first to formulate the recapitulation theory.
Background
Étienne Serres was the son ...
after which,
Marcel Danesi
Marcel Danesi (born 1946) is Professor of Semiotics and Linguistic Anthropology at the University of Toronto. He is known for his work in language, communications and semiotics and is Director of the program in semiotics and communication theory. H ...
states, it soon gained the status of a supposed
biogenetic
A biogenic substance is a product made by or of life forms. While the term originally was specific to metabolite compounds that had toxic effects on other organisms, it has developed to encompass any constituents, secretions, and metabolites of p ...
law.
The embryological theory was formalised by Serres in 1824–1826, based on Meckel's work, in what became known as the "Meckel-Serres Law". This attempted to link
comparative embryology with a "pattern of unification" in the organic world. It was supported by
Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (15 April 177219 June 1844) was a French naturalist who established the principle of "unity of composition". He was a colleague of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and expanded and defended Lamarck's evolutionary theories. ...
, and became a prominent part of his ideas. It suggested that past transformations of life could have been through environmental causes working on the embryo, rather than on the adult as in
Lamarckism
Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. It is also calle ...
. These
naturalistic ideas led to disagreements with
Georges Cuvier
Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, Baron Cuvier (; 23 August 1769 – 13 May 1832), known as Georges Cuvier, was a French natural history, naturalist and zoology, zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "founding father of paleontology". Cuvier ...
. The theory was widely supported in the Edinburgh and London schools of higher anatomy around 1830, notably by
Robert Edmond Grant
Robert Edmond Grant Doctor of Medicine, MD Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, FRCPEd Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS FRSE Zoological Society of London, FZS Geological Society of London, FGS (11 November 1793 – 23 August 1874) was a Br ...
, but was opposed by
Karl Ernst von Baer
Karl Ernst Ritter von Baer Edler von Huthorn ( – ) was a Baltic German scientist and explorer. Baer was a naturalist, biologist, geologist, meteorologist, geographer, and is considered a, or the, founding father of embryology. He was ...
's
ideas of divergence, and attacked by
Richard Owen
Sir Richard Owen (20 July 1804 – 18 December 1892) was an English biologist, comparative anatomist and paleontologist. Owen is generally considered to have been an outstanding naturalist with a remarkable gift for interpreting fossils.
Owe ...
in the 1830s.
Haeckel
Ernst Haeckel
Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (; 16 February 1834 – 9 August 1919) was a German zoologist, naturalist, eugenicist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist and artist. He discovered, described and named thousands of new sp ...
(1834–1919) attempted to synthesize the ideas of
Lamarckism
Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. It is also calle ...
and
Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as treat ...
's ''
Naturphilosophie
''Naturphilosophie'' (German for "nature-philosophy") is a term used in English-language philosophy to identify a current in the philosophical tradition of German idealism, as applied to the study of nature in the earlier 19th century. German sp ...
'' with
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...
's concepts. While often seen as rejecting Darwin's theory of branching evolution for a more linear Lamarckian view of progressive evolution, this is not accurate: Haeckel used the Lamarckian picture to describe the ontogenetic and phylogenetic history of individual species, but agreed with Darwin about the branching of all species from one, or a few, original ancestors. Since early in the twentieth century, Haeckel's "biogenetic law" has been refuted on many fronts.
Haeckel formulated his theory as "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny". The notion later became simply known as the recapitulation theory.
Ontogeny
Ontogeny (also ontogenesis) is the origination and development of an organism (both physical and psychological, e.g., moral development), usually from the time of fertilization of the egg to adult. The term can also be used to refer to the stu ...
is the growth (size change) and development (structure change) of an individual organism;
phylogeny
A phylogenetic tree (also phylogeny or evolutionary tree Felsenstein J. (2004). ''Inferring Phylogenies'' Sinauer Associates: Sunderland, MA.) is a branching diagram or a tree showing the evolutionary relationships among various biological spec ...
is the
evolution
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...
ary history of a species. Haeckel claimed that the development of advanced species passes through stages represented by adult organisms of more primitive species.
Otherwise put, each successive stage in the development of an individual represents one of the adult forms that appeared in its evolutionary history.
For example, Haeckel proposed that the pharyngeal grooves between the
pharyngeal arch
The pharyngeal arches, also known as visceral arches'','' are structures seen in the embryonic development of vertebrates that are recognisable precursors for many structures. In fish, the arches are known as the branchial arches, or gill arch ...
es in the neck of the human embryo not only roughly resembled gill slits of fish, but directly represented an adult "fishlike" developmental stage, signifying a fishlike ancestor. Embryonic pharyngeal slits, which form in many animals when the thin branchial plates separating pharyngeal pouches and pharyngeal grooves perforate, open the
pharynx
The pharynx (plural: pharynges) is the part of the throat behind the mouth and nasal cavity, and above the oesophagus and trachea (the tubes going down to the stomach and the lungs). It is found in vertebrates and invertebrates, though its struc ...
to the outside. Pharyngeal arches appear in all
tetrapod
Tetrapods (; ) are four-limbed vertebrate animals constituting the superclass Tetrapoda (). It includes extant and extinct amphibians, sauropsids ( reptiles, including dinosaurs and therefore birds) and synapsids (pelycosaurs, extinct theraps ...
embryos: in
mammal
Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fur or ...
s, the first pharyngeal arch develops into the lower
jaw
The jaw is any opposable articulated structure at the entrance of the mouth, typically used for grasping and manipulating food. The term ''jaws'' is also broadly applied to the whole of the structures constituting the vault of the mouth and serv ...
(
Meckel's cartilage
In humans, the cartilaginous bar of the mandibular arch is formed by what are known as Meckel's cartilages (right and left) also known as Meckelian cartilages; above this the incus and malleus are developed. Meckel's cartilage arises from the first ...
), the
malleus
The malleus, or hammer, is a hammer-shaped small bone or ossicle of the middle ear. It connects with the incus, and is attached to the inner surface of the eardrum. The word is Latin for 'hammer' or 'mallet'. It transmits the sound vibrations fro ...
and the
stapes
The ''stapes'' or stirrup is a bone in the middle ear of humans and other animals which is involved in the conduction of sound vibrations to the inner ear. This bone is connected to the oval window by its annular ligament, which allows the foot ...
.
Haeckel produced several
embryo drawing
Embryo drawing is the illustration of embryos in their developmental sequence. In plants and animals, an embryo develops from a zygote, the single cell that results when an egg and sperm fuse during fertilization. In animals, the zygote divides ...
s that often overemphasized similarities between embryos of related species. Modern biology rejects the literal and universal form of Haeckel's theory, such as its possible application to behavioural ontogeny, i.e. the psychomotor development of young animals and human children.
Contemporary criticism
![Wilhelm His chick brain compared to folded rubber tube](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Wilhelm_His_chick_brain_compared_to_folded_rubber_tube.jpg)
Haeckel's theory and drawings were criticised by his contemporary, the anatomist
Wilhelm His Sr. (1831–1904), who had developed a rival "causal-mechanical theory" of human embryonic development. His's work specifically criticised Haeckel's methodology, arguing that the shapes of embryos were caused most immediately by mechanical pressures resulting from local differences in growth. These differences were, in turn, caused by "heredity". His compared the shapes of embryonic structures to those of rubber tubes that could be slit and bent, illustrating these comparisons with accurate drawings.
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 sp ...
noted in his 1977 book ''Ontogeny and Phylogeny'' that His's attack on Haeckel's recapitulation theory was far more fundamental than that of any empirical critic, as it effectively stated that Haeckel's "biogenetic law" was irrelevant.
![Haeckel vs von Baer](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Haeckel_vs_von_Baer.svg)
Darwin proposed that embryos resembled each other since they shared a common ancestor, which presumably had a similar embryo, but that development did not necessarily recapitulate phylogeny: he saw no reason to suppose that an embryo at any stage resembled an adult of any ancestor. Darwin supposed further that embryos were subject to less intense selection pressure than adults, and had therefore changed less.
Modern status
Modern
evolutionary developmental biology
Evolutionary developmental biology (informally, evo-devo) is a field of biological research that compares the developmental processes of different organisms to infer how developmental processes evolved.
The field grew from 19th-century beginni ...
(evo-devo) follows von Baer, rather than Darwin, in pointing to active evolution of embryonic development as a significant means of changing the
morphology
Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to:
Disciplines
* Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts
* Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...
of adult bodies. Two of the key principles of evo-devo, namely that changes in the timing (
heterochrony
In evolutionary developmental biology, heterochrony is any genetically controlled difference in the timing, rate, or duration of a developmental process in an organism compared to its ancestors or other organisms. This leads to changes in the si ...
) and positioning (
heterotopy
Heterotopy is an evolutionary change in the spatial arrangement of an animal's embryonic development, complementary to heterochrony, a change to the rate or timing of a development process. It was first identified by Ernst Haeckel in 1866 and ha ...
) within the body of aspects of embryonic development would change the shape of a descendant's body compared to an ancestor's, were however first formulated by Haeckel in the 1870s. These elements of his thinking about development have thus survived, whereas his theory of recapitulation has not.
The Haeckelian form of recapitulation theory is considered defunct.
Embryos do undergo a period or
phylotypic stage
In Embryology a phylotypic stage or phylotypic period is a particular developmental stage or developmental period during mid-embryogenesis where embryos of related species within a phylum express the highest degree of morphological and molecular r ...
where their morphology is strongly shaped by their phylogenetic position, rather than selective pressures, but that means only that they resemble other embryos at that stage, not ancestral adults as Haeckel had claimed.
The modern view is summarised by the
University of California Museum of Paleontology
The University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP) is a paleontology museum located on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley.
The museum is within the Valley Life Sciences Building (VLSB), designed by George W. Kelham and ...
:
Applications to other areas
The idea that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny has been applied to some other areas.
Cognitive development
English philosopher
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English philosopher, psychologist, biologist, anthropologist, and sociologist famous for his hypothesis of social Darwinism. Spencer originated the expression "survival of the fittest" ...
was one of the most energetic proponents of evolutionary ideas to explain many phenomena. In 1861, five years before Haeckel first published on the subject, Spencer proposed a possible basis for a cultural recapitulation theory of
education
Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Va ...
with the following claim:
G. Stanley Hall
Granville Stanley Hall (February 1, 1846 – April 24, 1924) was a pioneering American psychologist and educator. His interests focused on human life span development and evolutionary theory. Hall was the first president of the American Psy ...
used Haeckel's theories as the basis for his theories of child development. His most influential work, "Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education" in 1904 suggested that each individual's life course recapitulated humanity's evolution from "savagery" to "civilization". Though he has influenced later childhood development theories, Hall's conception is now generally considered racist.
Developmental psychologist
Jean Piaget
Jean William Fritz Piaget (, , ; 9 August 1896 – 16 September 1980) was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget's theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called " genetic epistemolog ...
favored a weaker version of the formula, according to which ontogeny ''parallels'' phylogeny because the two are subject to similar external constraints.
The Austrian pioneer of
psychoanalysis
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...
,
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...
, also favored Haeckel's doctrine. He was trained as a biologist under the influence of recapitulation theory during its heyday, and retained a
Lamarckian
Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. It is also calle ...
outlook with justification from the recapitulation theory.
Freud also distinguished between physical and mental recapitulation, in which the differences would become an essential argument for his
theory of neuroses.
In the late 20th century, studies of symbolism and learning in the field of cultural anthropology suggested that "both biological evolution and the stages in the child's cognitive development follow much the same progression of evolutionary stages as that suggested in the archaeological record".
Music criticism
The musicologist
Richard Taruskin
Richard Filler Taruskin (April 2, 1945 – July 1, 2022) was an American musicologist and music critic who was among the leading and most prominent music historians of his generation. The breadth of his scrutiny into source material as well as ...
in 2005 applied the phrase "ontogeny becomes phylogeny" to the process of creating and recasting music history, often to assert a perspective or argument. For example, the peculiar development of the works by modernist composer
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (, ; ; 13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was as ...
(here an "ontogeny") is generalized in many histories into a "phylogeny" – a historical development ("evolution") of Western music toward
atonal
Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. ''Atonality'', in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on a s ...
styles of which Schoenberg is a representative. Such
historiographies
Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians hav ...
of the "collapse of traditional tonality" are faulted by music historians as asserting a rhetorical rather than historical point about tonality's "collapse".
Taruskin also developed a variation of the motto into the pun "ontogeny recapitulates ontology" to refute the concept of "absolute music" advancing the socio-artistic theories of the musicologist
Carl Dahlhaus
Carl Dahlhaus (10 June 1928 – 13 March 1989) was a German musicologist who was among the leading postwar musicologists of the mid to late 20th-century. A prolific scholar, he had broad interests though his research focused on 19th- and 20th- ...
.
Ontology
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exis ...
is the investigation of what exactly something is, and Taruskin asserts that an art object becomes that which society and succeeding generations made of it. For example,
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the '' Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard w ...
's ''
St. John Passion'', composed in the 1720s, was appropriated by the
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
regime in the 1930s for
propaganda
Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded ...
. Taruskin claims the historical development of the ''St John Passion'' (its ontogeny) as a work with an
anti-Semitic
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
message does, in fact, inform the work's identity (its ontology), even though that was an unlikely concern of the composer. Music or even an abstract visual artwork can not be truly autonomous ("absolute") because it is defined by its historical and social reception.
[
]
See also
* Glottogony
The origin of language (spoken and signed, as well as language-related technological systems such as writing), its relationship with human evolution, and its consequences have been subjects of study for centuries. Scholars wishing to study th ...
* Stage theory
* Psychomotor patterning
Psychomotor patterning, rarely referred to as the Doman-Delacato technique, is a pseudoscientific approach to the treatment of intellectual disabilities, brain injury, learning disabilities, and other cognitive diseases. The treatment is based on ...
Notes
References
Sources
*
*
*
*
Further reading
*
*
*
* Borchert. Catherine M. and Zihlman, Adrienne L. (1990) ''The ontogeny and phylogeny of symbolizing'', in Foster and Botscharow (eds
''The Life of Symbols''
* Bates, E., with L. Benigni, I. Bretherton, L. Camaioni, & V. Volterra. (1979). ''The emergence of symbols: Cognition and communication in infancy.'' New York: Academic Press
*
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Recapitulation Theory
Biology theories
Obsolete scientific theories
History of evolutionary biology
Evolutionary developmental biology