In certain schools of philosophy the related concept of metempsychosis in its broadest sense denotes the theory that the human soul does not die with the body but is born again in new individuals or incarnations. In the sense of recapitulation, the word palingenesis or rather palingenesia can be traced back to the Stoics, who used the term to refer to the continual re-creation of the universe by a demiurge (creator) after its absorption into himself. Birds, for example, would carry phylogenetic markers of their ontogenetical descent from reptiles (their feet resemble those of some lizards). Sometimes expressed as Haeckl’s law that ontogeny (the growth or size change and the development or shape change of an individual organism) recapitulates phylogeny (the evolutionary history of a species), this theory has been extensively refuted by science but remains attractive to writers of science fiction, who have variously drawn on the idea that the development of advanced species passed through stages represented by adult organisms of more primitive species. (Ecclesiastes 1: 2-18)ġ The term palingenesis, also known as recapitulation theory or embryological parallelism, refers to that phase in the development of an individual plant or animal which theoretically repeats the evolutionary history of the taxonomic group to which it belongs. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered. There is no remembrance of former things neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities all is vanity.
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