Did you add a word to the title? Like a subliminal message,
"recapitulates" will come reflexively to the mind of readers
exposed to a biology course at one time or another. And indeed it
is the point of this grand tome, a tour de force, to resurrect and
revitalize - albeit with altered meaning - a concept that sent
19th-century scientists to the battlements. The argument that the
German anatomist Ernst Haeckel formulated as a biogenetic law was
that in embryological growth (ontogeny) organisms repeat the forms
achieved by adult species which appeared earlier in evolution
(phylogeny). Thus, the human embryo shows the gill slits of an
adult fish at a certain stage. Developments in Mendelian genetics
and biology demolished the theory. Yet the tantalizing analogy was
never far from the surface, as Gould amusingly notes: when queried,
colleagues would, figuratively, look both ways and whisper that
they did think there was something in it. Gould's "something" has
to do with the timing of development. He supports the neoteny
theory that species may retain juvenile traits in maturity.
Retardation in human evolution may account for the hypertrophy of
the brain, erect posture, frontal copulation, and a host of other
treats frequently adduced as quintessentially "us." These ideas are
presented in detail and scholarly length. There is a rich
historical development as well as the appeal to contemporary
geneticists and molecular biologists who have traced the
chromosomal similarities between apes and humans or who have
studied regulatory genes and the timing of gene expression. The
more sophisticated yearn for a skeleton key (for which Gould's
popular writings, above, may help enormously). Nevertheless the
ideas are beautifully worked out and elegantly expressed. It will
be exciting to see whether once again biologists rush to the
battlements. (Kirkus Reviews)
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. Turning to modern concepts, Gould
demonstrates 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 maturation, rather than in long-term changes of
form, as all previous theories proclaimed. Neoteny--the opposite of
recapitulation--is shown to be the most important determinant of
human evolution. We have evolved by retaining the juvenile
characters of our ancestors and have achieved both behavioral
flexibility and our characteristic morphology thereby (large brains
by prolonged retention of rapid fetal growth rates, for example).
Gould concludes that there may be nothing new under the sun, but
permutation of the old within complex systems can do wonders. As
biologists, we deal directly with the kind of material complexity
that confers an unbounded potential upon simple, continuous changes
in underlying processes. This is the chief joy of our science.
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