Ontogenesis, Ethnogenesis, Sociogenesis and Phylogenesis
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Ontogenesis, Ethnogenesis, Sociogenesis and Phylogenesis Andy Blunden 1 Received: 9 January 2020 / Revised: 18 February 2020 / Accepted: 21 February 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract
The interrelations between 4 different processes of development in the formation of the human individual are reviewed. While each unfolds over different time scales, they differ essentially by what evolves rather than over what timescale. Keywords Development . Ontogenesis . Sociogenesis . Phylogenesis . Cultural development . Ethnogenesis The aim of this article is to clarify the sources and substance of human development. Every human being is a product of at least four interconnected processes of development. These processes do not take place one after the other, and nor do they “interact” with one another, but mutually condition and realise each other. In his classic work, “The General Morphology of Organisms”, published in 1866, the biologist Ernst Haeckel coined the term phylogeny, by which is meant the evolutionary development of a species or other group of organisms through a succession of forms. Haeckel illustrated this idea with diagrams of evolutionary trees which became identified with Darwin’s theory of the evolution of species. The root phylon is ancient Greek for a race or tribe, but nowadays means an evolutionary lineage or major taxonomic group which share a basic body plan or pattern of structural organisation. The related distinction between genotype and phenotype is relevant as well. The genotype is the organism’s genetic make-up which is passed on to progeny by biological inheritance and phenotype which is those traits of the organism as they are actually realised in the life of an organism in its environment, not necessarily genetically heritable. In the same work, Haeckel also coined the term ontogenesis, which comes from the roots onto- meaning “being” and genesis meaning birth or descent. There is an implicit ontology in the etymology of the word “ontogeny”. Notwithstanding Aristotle and Hegel, the use of ontoto reference the individual organism rests on the questionable idea that only individual beings,
* Andy Blunden [email protected]
1
Brunswick, Australia
Blunden
or perhaps phenotypes, actually exist. All the rest—biological species and ethnic groups—are, in this ontology, merely sets of existing organisms, so grouped according to one’s metaphysical theories about origins and/or shared attributes of sets of beings. That is, the individual organism is designated a “being” because a species does not exist in the same sense that the individual organism exists—it is a construct of our theory of biology. “Ontogeny” means the whole life cycle of an individual human organism, taking account of all the processes of formation realised in the development of the individual person. Among these processes, we must count both their biological inheritance and their cultural inheritance. Their biological inheritance includes both their genetic inheritance and other biological inheritances resulting
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