Editing Recapitulation theory (section)

===Cognitive development===
English philosopher [[Herbert Spencer]] was one of the most energetic proponents of evolutionary ideas to explain many phenomena. In 1861, five years before Haeckel first published on the subject, Spencer proposed a possible basis for a cultural recapitulation theory of [[education]] with the following claim:<ref name="EganEducatedMind">{{cite book |author-link=Kieran Egan (educationist) |author=Egan, Kieran |title=The Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape Our Understanding |title-link=The Educated Mind |page=27 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |date=1997 |isbn=0-226-19036-6}}</ref>{{quotation|If there be an order in which the human race has mastered its various kinds of knowledge, there will arise in every child an aptitude to acquire these kinds of knowledge in the same order... Education is a repetition of civilization in little.<ref name="Spencer">{{cite book|author=Herbert Spencer|author-link=Herbert Spencer|year=1861|title=Education|page=5|url=https://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=98953755}}</ref>|Herbert Spencer}}

[[G. Stanley Hall]] used Haeckel's theories as the basis for his theories of child development. His most influential work, "Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education" in 1904<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hall |first1=G. Stanley |title=Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education |date=1904 |publisher=D. Appleton and Company |location=New York |url=https://archive.org/details/adolescenceitsps01hall/page/n5}}</ref> suggested that each individual's life course recapitulated humanity's evolution from "savagery" to "civilization". Though he has influenced later childhood development theories, Hall's conception is now generally considered racist.<ref name="Lesko 1996">{{cite journal | last=Lesko | first=Nancy | title=Past, Present, and Future Conceptions of Adolescence | journal=Educational Theory | volume=46 | issue=4 | year=1996 | doi=10.1111/j.1741-5446.1996.00453.x | pages=453–472}}</ref> 
Developmental psychologist [[Jean Piaget]] favored a weaker version of the formula, according to which ontogeny ''parallels'' phylogeny because the two are subject to similar external constraints.<ref>{{harvnb|Gould|1977|pp=144}}</ref>
 
The Austrian pioneer of [[psychoanalysis]], [[Sigmund Freud]], also favored Haeckel's doctrine. He was trained as a biologist under the influence of recapitulation theory during its heyday, and retained a [[Lamarckian]] outlook with justification from the recapitulation theory.<ref name="Gould">{{harvnb|Gould|1977|pp=156–158}}</ref>  Freud also distinguished between physical and mental recapitulation, in which the differences would become an essential argument for his [[Defence mechanisms#Level 1: "Psychotic"|theory of neuroses]].<ref name="Gould"/>

In the late 20th century, studies of symbolism and learning in the field of cultural anthropology suggested that "both biological evolution and the stages in the child's cognitive development follow much the same progression of evolutionary stages as that suggested in the archaeological record".<ref name="Foster1994p387">{{cite encyclopedia | title=Symbolism: the foundation of culture | encyclopedia=Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology | author=Foster, Mary LeCron | editor=Tim Ingold | editor-link=Tim Ingold | year=1994 | pages=[https://books.google.com/books?id=j6Y2hNf35J4C&pg=PA387 pp. 386-387] |quote=While ontogeny does not generally recapitulate phylogeny in any direct sense (Gould 1977), both biological evolution and the stages in the child's cognitive development follow much the same progression of evolutionary stages as that suggested in the archaeological record (Borchert and Zihlman 1990, Bates 1979, Wynn 1979) ... Thus, one child, having been shown the moon, applied the word 'moon' to a variety of objects with similar shapes as well as to the moon itself (Bowerman 1980). This spatial globality of reference is consistent with the archaeological appearance of graphic abstraction before graphic realism.}}</ref>