Recent Examples on the WebTake Haeckel’s pet theory, the biogenetic law, which stipulates that the development of each embryo in utero echoes the evolution of its remote ancestors. Christoph Irmscher, WSJ, 13 Apr. 2018
Word History
First Known Use
1874, in the meaning defined above
Medical Definition
biogenetic law
noun
: a theory of development much disputed in biology: an organism passes through successive stages resembling the series of ancestral types from which it has descended so that the ontogeny of the individual is a recapitulation of the phylogeny of the group