to be called the biogenetic "law," even though it was nothing but a hypothesis. It was called the recapitulation theory, because it was imagined that the developing human embryo recapitulates or passes through successive stages of the more mature forms of some of the lower animals.
Concerning this theory Dr. A. Weber, University of Geneva, Switzerland, said in the "Scientific American Monthly" for February, 1921:
- The critical comments of such men as O. Hertwig, Kiebel, and Vialleton, indeed, have practically torn to shreds the aforesaid fundamental biogenetic law. Its almost universal abandonment has left considerably at a loss those investigators who sought in the structures of organisms the key to their remote origins or to their relationships.
So it would seem that if this form of the theory is utterly destitute of proof, the whole biological foundation of the theory is gone.
It is perfectly in harmony with scientific testimony, therefore, that Professor Price says concerning this phase of the theory:
- The science of twenty or thirty years ago was in high glee at the thought of having almost proved the theory of biological evolution. Today, for every careful, candid inquirer, these hopes are crushed; and with weary, reluctant sadness does modern biology now confess that the Church has probably been right all the time.
If these men have borne faithful testimony to the situation as it now exists in the biological realm, the only conclusion possible is that the borrowed portion of Darwin's theory has also utterly collapsed.
