"This is where evo-devo (evolutionary developmental biology) loves to flex. The field rose in the 1990s, when scientists discovered that the same Hox toolkit patterns fruit flies and humans alike.
But behind the new jargon lurks an old specter: Ernst Haeckel’s infamous claim that “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.”
That idea was discredited a century ago — embryos don’t literally replay their evolutionary history, and Haeckel’s own embryo sketches were exposed as doctored.
That idea was discredited a century ago — embryos don’t literally replay their evolutionary history, and Haeckel’s own embryo sketches were exposed as doctored.
Yet evo-devo revives the spirit of the claim: that embryonic development reveals evolutionary origins. Yesterday’s recapitulation theory is today’s co-option model. Same story, new label — the ghost of Haeckel walks again.
Evolution’s Recycling Plant:
Darwinism, it seems, runs a recycling plant for old theories:
Evolution’s Recycling Plant:
Darwinism, it seems, runs a recycling plant for old theories:
Lamarckism died under Weismann’s experiments and theory (late 19th c.), only to rise again in the 21st century as transgenerational inheritance.
Goldschmidt’s hopeful monsters were mocked, then reborn as evo-devo’s “large-effect mutations” and sudden regulatory shifts.
Orthogenesis (built-in direction) was dismissed as mystical, yet biologists now unapologetically speak of “developmental constraints” and “biased variation.”
Vitalism was pronounced dead, but “emergence” and “self-organization” in systems biology smell suspiciously similar.
Group selection was written off, then revived as “multi-level selection.”
And now: Haeckel’s embryo-as-phylogeny idea, once ridiculed, returns in evo-devo guise as “co-option.”
This isn’t scientific progress — it’s reincarnation. Evolution may be the only “science” where ideas are killed, buried, dug up again, relabeled, and paraded as new “discoveries.” Each resurrection is driven not by prediction, but by stubborn facts that refuse to fit the Darwinian script."
Vitalism was pronounced dead, but “emergence” and “self-organization” in systems biology smell suspiciously similar.
Group selection was written off, then revived as “multi-level selection.”
And now: Haeckel’s embryo-as-phylogeny idea, once ridiculed, returns in evo-devo guise as “co-option.”
This isn’t scientific progress — it’s reincarnation. Evolution may be the only “science” where ideas are killed, buried, dug up again, relabeled, and paraded as new “discoveries.” Each resurrection is driven not by prediction, but by stubborn facts that refuse to fit the Darwinian script."
CEH
