Human Babies: What They Teach | Nature

ABSTRACT AN investigator anxious to obtain information as to the relationship of a particular species puts the question “What characters do the young stages exhibit?” and in order to answer

that question he makes a study of the developmental phases exhibited by those stages. He may argue that if he finds certain characters in the young stages indicative of, and adapted to,

habits of life which the adults do not possess, then there must have been a time in the ancestry of the species when such habits of life were of particular value, otherwise they would never

have been developed. Or he may simply give, as the reason for his method of research, the concise statement “ontogeny repeats phylogeny,” or he may hold to the theory of acceleration of

development—which is more than a theory, because it is an actual fact of palæontology—that the characters of adult ancestors tend to become the characters of youthful descendants, thus

producing specific diversity, without the necessity for a theory of natural, or any other form of selection, merely by inequality in the rates of developmental acceleration in different

stocks. Wherefore _vice versâ_ the characters of youth must at one time have been adult characters; and their differences from those of the adult indicate the degree of different environment

under which the adult ancestors lived. Access through your institution Buy or subscribe This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution ACCESS OPTIONS Access through

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Read our FAQs * Contact customer support Authors * S. S. BUCKMAN View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS Reprints and

permissions ABOUT THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE BUCKMAN, S. _Human Babies: What They Teach_ . _Nature_ 62, 226–228 (1900). https://doi.org/10.1038/062226a0 Download citation * Issue Date:

05 July 1900 * DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/062226a0 SHARE THIS ARTICLE Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: Get shareable link Sorry, a shareable link

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