page_title: Ontogeny and Phylogeny (book)
section_title: Retrospective
hierarchical_section_title: Ontogeny and Phylogeny (book) / Reception / Retrospective
context_page_description: Ontogeny and Phylogeny is a 1977 book on evolution by Stephen Jay Gould, in which the author explores the relationship between embryonic development and biological evolution. Unlike his many popular books of essays, it was a technical book, and over the following decades it was influential in stimulating research into heterochrony, changes in the timing of embryonic development, which had been neglected since Ernst Haeckel's theory that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny had been largely discredited.
context_section_description: The evolutionary biologists Kenneth McNamara and Michael McKinney stated in 2005 that of all the books that Gould wrote in his career, "the one with the most impact is probably Ontogeny and Phylogeny ... to say that this work is a hallmark in this area of evolutionary theory would be an understatement. It proved to be the catalyst for much of the future work in the field, and to a large degree was the inspiration for the modern field of evolutionary developmental biology. Gould's hope was to show that the relationship between ontogeny and phylogeny is fundamental to evolution, and at its heart is a simple premise—that variations in the timing and rate of development provide the raw material upon which natural selection can operate."
  M. Elizabeth Barnes, in The Embryo Project Encyclopedia, looking back at the book in 2014, writes that it became widely cited in evolutionary and developmental biology, encouraging research on acceleration and retardation of development (forms of heterochrony), and investigation of paedomorphosis in human evolution. Barnes notes that "along with other work by Gould, such as 'The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm' [the book] is often credited for influencing the rise of a biological approach called evolutionary developmental biology or evo-devo, which worked to integrate evolutionary and developmental biology."
caption: The book stimulated research into heterochrony, a change in the timing or rate of any process in embryonic development.[8]