uring
the eighteenth century, when the word [evolution] was used, it meant
the stages through which a living being passes in the course of its development
from egg to adult. That is, it gives an account of a single life span and remains
within the pale of individual development. The term for this in biology is ontogeny.
But evolutionary theory challenged the single life
span as a sufficient model for understanding experience. In the 1830s the word
evolution was used for the first time to describe the development of the species
rather than of the individual. For this the biological term is phylogeny. [15]
Bibliography
Beer, Gillian. Darwin's plots: evolutionary narrative in Darwin, George Eliot, and nineteenth-century fiction. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983, 15]
Created 1998
Last modified 14 January 2020