ABSTRACT
It is worth remembering how the scientific study of children was twinned at its birth with the larger developmental principle that all life derives from its past and grows toward its future. For Spencer, as for all other evolutionists of his time, the only hope for ontogenetic change was in waiting for the tedious flow of phylogenetic change. The developmental revolution was to come in the recognition that Newton and Shakespeare were epigenetically available even in the savage Papuan. Development can be understood only as a continuous interplay of principles and conditions, the dance of ontogenetic adaptation. The ontogenetic principle—regularity of progression—and the more demanding epigenetic principle—continuous adaptation—have been adhered to, give a little, take a little, for the last 100 years of child study. The child as a reflection of the species is a static and, as it turned out, not a richly productive theoretical advance.
