ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a centro-epigenetic hypothesis of development based on biological memory. The action to which the process of development is due irradiates from a special zone of the embryonic organism called the central zone of development, constituted by the germinal substance. The fundamental biogenetic law of the ontogenetic recapitulation of phylogenesis would be the immediate consequence of the process of the transmissibility of acquired characters. It was Ostwald, in his Vorlesungen, who was the first, to attempt to give a physico-chemical explanation of the mnemic phenomenon, and at the same time of the trophic action exercised by the repetition of the functional activity. He takes into consideration only "habit", which certainly does enter into the phenomena of memory. Ciamician, in a lecture delivered at Parma, in September 1907, to the Congress of the Italian Society for the Advancement of Science, propounded the hypothesis that in vital energy the potential factor must be represented by the "will".
