A plausible arugment could be made that evolution is the control of development by ecology, oddly, nither area has figured importantly in evolutionary theory since Darwin.
Van Valen 1973
斯蒂芬•杰•古尔德在他的【ontogeny and pylogeny】里的一开首就回顾了从古希腊哲人到haekel的各种理论
古希腊阿那克西曼德认为,最初的生物是从湿气中产生的,人则是从动物,是从鱼演变而来的。His
hypothetical ancestors of man were supposed to be first encased in horny capsules, floating and feeding in water; as soon as these 'fish-men' were in a condition to emerge, they came on land, the capsule burst, and they took their human form"
In his Religio Medici of 1642, Sir Thomas Browne used Aristotle's argument to support the analogy of microcosm (man) and macrocosm (universe):
To call ourselves a Microcosm, or little World, I thought it only a pleasant trope of Rhetorick, till my neer judgment and second thoughts told me there was a real truth therein. For first we are a rude mass, in the rank of creatures which onely are, and have a dull kind of being, not yet priviledged with life . . . ; next we live the life of Plants, the life of Animals, the life of Men, and at last the life of Spirits, running on in one mysterious nature those five kinds of existences, which comprehend the creatures, not only of the World, but of the Universe
摘自 斯蒂芬•杰•古尔德【ontogeny and pylogeny】