Ontogenetic recapitulation of phylogeny

1. A property of evolving systems whose descriptions are stored in a process language such that, for example, individual biological organisms, in their development, go through stages that resemble some of the forms of their evolutionary ancestors.

2. The prior history of a species or an organization (its epigenetic history) specifies not only physical characteristics but in addition its underlying epigenetic landscape (or conditional probability model) which is the summation of previous generations' success and failure in interacting with the environment, characterized by the epithet 'ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny'.