Tag: Ernst Haeckel
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Of Embryos and Transmutation IV – there and back again
By Robbert Striekwold Throughout the 19th century, ideas concerning embryonic and species development were joined together in a unification that many biologists took to be self-evident. Near the end of that century they split up, however, and embryology was largely left out of the Modern Synthesis of Darwin and Mendel. That is, until several spectacular…
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Of Embryos and Transmutation III – Darwinian recapitulations
By Robbert Striekwold The name that is most often associated with recapitulation is that of Ernst Haeckel, who believed that the study of embryos provided the best means of reconstructing evolutionary history. In this he took his cue from Darwin, who wrote in 1860 that embryology was the “strongest single class of facts in favour…