Ontogeny and Phylogeny

E-351: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. 1985. First Edition; First Printing. Hardcover. Hardcover. 8vo. Published by The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. 1978. 501 pgs. Illustrated with Black and White Plates. First Edition/First Printing. DJ has light shelf-wear present to the DJ extremities. Date present to the reverse of the front board. Previous owner's name present to the FFEP. Text is clean and free of marks, binding tight and solid, boards clean with no wear present. "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" was Haeckel's answer--the wrong one--to the most vexing question of nineteenth-century biology: what is the relationship between individual development (ontogeny) and the evolution of species and lineages (phylogeny) ? 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 appearance 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 contrary data, but because the rise of Mendelian genetics rendered it untenable. EB; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 520 pages .