Recapitulation theory

• abstract: The theory of recapitulation, also called the biogenetic law or embryological parallelism— often expressed in Ernst Haeckel's phrase as "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"—is a largely discredited biological hypothesis that in developing from embryo to adult, animals go through stages resembling or representing successive stages in the evolution of their remote ancestors. With different formulations, such ideas have been applied and extended to several fields and areas, including the origin of language, biology, cognition and mental activities,David G.

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