Categories: Alternative conceptions
An example of a historical scientific idea that is now considered an alternative conception,
"Zoologists declare that the embryonic development of an animal repeats in a very short period of time the whole history of its ancestors of the geological ages."
Henri Poincaré (1914) Science and Method (trans. Francis Maitland) Dover Publications, 1952.
This refers to a once common notion referred to as 'ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny'. While it the case that the embryo does resemble more 'primitive' forms, it is not the case that it passes through a series of successive stages resembling the different ancestral forms.
