one of its most famous usages is in the phrase "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/ontogeny.htm
this is the idea that if you watched the human embryo you can see an accumulation of pieces of the growth stages of all our ancestors: tails, gills, n' all.
Haeckle, the guy who formulated this concept 100 years ago and gave it a bad rep by saying that the recapitulation is exact.
this is not true, instead we see bits and pieces of our ancestors scattered all throughout embryosis.
anyways, what's neat is this idea of recapitulation, how the history of how something came to be is embedded within the final product.
you see that with evolution as I just mentioned.
but it also appears in the cultural-history also recapitulates in a certain way
a child emerges like the empty slate of the neadenthal
it gains language just like, maybe neandertal or homo habilis
so in the initial acquisition, you can probably compare it to the behavioral acquisition of monkeys and our hominid ancestors.
but then it gets interesting as you start to understand culture
you initally know no history, just like our ancients 40,000 years ago.
and then you start learning about JFK, the Moon Landing, World War II, Ancient Rome, the Inquisiton.
and in a way, this recapitulates the way in which man went through these events.
it's not precisely in order, but there is some.
for example you learn that the Earth is round before you learn about relativity
and so you start learning the older history, the stuff of that the ancient greeks or the renaissance kids figured out, before you learn the new age stuff.
as a result, it takes longer to educate kids and we are in school up to the whopping age of 18! (or ancestors were having kids at 12!)
this requires more neoteny on our part. we need to be in school, impressionable and the like, longer in order for our minds to be adequately filled in order to handle the world. *neotey btw, means "aged but still retaining childlike characteristics"
I like to pretend I observe neoteny in action on the college campus with geeks who still believe in koodies, but I think there's something to it delayed maturity.
plus if you look at our built-in sexual selection: we seek younger looking people.
this could be because we generally seek healthier mates
but, so it's been said, that asian females are at the top of the sexual hiearchy.
I wouldn't say it's because they are healthier (are they?) but because of their baby-like features.
also, you have to question why we say things like, "oh baby" or "aye pappy" there is an appeal to some aspect of the psyche that I won't explore here because it's not PC to talk about.
