Abstract
The philosophers of nature were exceedingly slow to recognize that organisms go through a series of changes in anatomical substance and structure during their embryonic development. The ancient aphorism that “hair cannot come from not-hair,” epitomizing the principle that no substance or structure can come from a substance or structure of a different nature, dominated human thought from the days of ancient Greece to nearly modern times. Over 2,000 years passed from the time of Aristotle’s first observations of some of the epigenetic changes that occur in chick embryos until Casper Friedrich Wolff (1759, 1768) detailed the transformations in the circulatory system and the intestine of chick embryos so clearly that he convinced at least those informed of biological matters, brought an end to the doctrine of preformationism, and established recognition of the epigenetic nature of embryonic development.
This paper was presented at the second annual symposium of the Jean Piaget Society in 1972. The work has had the support of grants (MH-K6-18567; MH-08468; MH-10226; and MH-16074) from the National Institute of Mental Health.
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© 1977 Plenum Press, New York
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Hunt, J.M. (1977). Sequential Order and Plasticity in Early Psychological Development. In: Appel, M.H., Goldberg, L.S. (eds) Topics in Cognitive Development. Topicsin Cognitive Development. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-4175-8_4
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