Abstract
Ideas have consequences, and false ideas sometimes generate bitter consequences. One of the premier examples of this principle is the infamous "recapitulation theory," developed by such philosophers as Goette and Robert Chambers, and then popularized in Darwin's day by Ernst Haeckel, the German atheist. Called by Haeckel the "biogenetic law, this idea was spread widely by his euphonious slogan, "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," meaning that embryonic growth of the fetus in the womb rapidly recapitulates the entire evolutionary history of the species. This bizarre notion has been cited by evolutionists for over a hundred years as one of the main "proofs" of evolution. Darwin, himself, made great use of it in his Descent of Man.