Homeosis: the first 100 years

In 1894, William Bateson coined the word “homeosis” in his monumental work Materials for the Study of Variation, Treated with Especial Regard to Discontinuity in the Origin of Species. He gave a surprisingly broad definition of the term as a type of variation in which “something has been changed into the likeness of something else.” Goethe had already described the phenomenon some 104 years previously in his treatise The Metamorphosis of Plants, and indeed Masters made more extensive studies in plants and termed it “metamorphy”. However, as metamorphy had quite different meanings in other branches of biology, Bateson proposed “homeosis” as a more specific and useful term, and this name has certainly stood the test of time.