Ontogeny and Phylogeny

528 Pages·1977·99.19 MB·English

by  Stephen Jay Gould

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Stephen Jay Gould
“Ontogeny recapitulates phytogeny” was
Haeckel’s answer—the wrong one—to the
most vexing question of nineteenth-century
biology: what is the relationship between indi¬
vidual development (ontogeny) and the evolu¬
tion of species and lineages (phytogeny)? In
this, the first major book on the subject in fifty
years, Stephen Gould documents the history
of the idea of recapitulation from its first ap¬
pearance among the pre-Socratics to its fall in
the early twentieth century.
Mr. Gould explores recapitulation as an idea
that intrigued politicians and theologians as
well as scientists. He shows that Haeckel’s
hypothesis—that human fetuses with gill slits
are, literally, tiny fish, exact replicas of their
water-breathing ancestors—had an influence
that extended beyond biology into education,
criminology, psychoanalysis (Freud and Jung
were devout recapitulationists), and racism.
The theory of recapitulation, Gould argues,
finally collapsed not from the weight of con¬
trary data, but because the rise of Mendelian
genetics rendered it untenable.
Turning to modern concepts, Gould demon¬
strates that, even though the whole subject of
parallels between ontogeny and phylogeny fell
into disrepute, it is still one of the great
themes of evolutionary biology. Heterochrony
—changes in developmental timing, producing
parallels between ontogeny and phylogeny—is
shown to be crucial to an understanding of
gene regulation, the key to any rapprochement
between molecular and evolutionary biology.
Gould argues that the primary evolutionary
value of heterochrony may lie in immediate
ecological advantages for slow or rapid matu¬
ration, rather than in long-term changes of
form, as all previous theories proclaimed.
Continued on back flap
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575-01
Gould, Stephen Jay
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Ontogeny and phytogeny. Harvard Univ. Pr.,
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501p., illus
1. Phytogeny 2. Ontogeny I. Title

ONTOGENY
AND
PHYLOGENY
© 1967 Saul Steinberg. From THE INSPECTOR
(Viking Press). Originally in The New Yorker.
v
ONTOGENY
AND
PHYLOGENY
Stephen Jay Gould
THE BELKNAP PRESS OF
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England • 1977
BURLINGAME PUBLIC JJBRARt
BURLINGAME, CA 94010
344-7107
Copyright © 1977 by the President and Fellows of Harvard Colleg
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Gould, Stephen Jay.
Ontogeny and phylogeny.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Phylogeny. 2. Ontogeny. I. Title.
QH371.G68 575.01 " 76-45765
ISBN 0-674-63940-5
328362
To the Philomorphs of Cambridge,
the world, and beyond,
where D’Arcy Thompson must lie
in the bosom of Abraham
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2017 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/details/ontogenyphylogenOOgoul