Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Biology The hypothesis, now largely discredited, that the evolution of species is linear and driven largely by internal factors rather than by natural selection.
  • noun Anthropology The hypothesis that all cultures evolve in a linear manner from primitivism to civilization.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The direct or immediate origin of species, according to the opinion that it takes place by the ‘organic growth’ of one species into another in a definite line which is predetermined by the constitution which outward circumstances have given to each organism.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun biology A series of similar mutations in successive generations, producing evolutionary change.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

ortho- + -genesis

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Examples

  • The use of “evolution” to describe a predictable progressive alteration of phenotype usually is classified under the idea of orthogenesis which I think has been discredited.

    Special Magazine Issues on Darwin, Evolution, ID Creationism - The Panda's Thumb 2005

  • We should thus arrive at a demonstration of what Eimer called orthogenesis, or evolution in definite directions.

    Hormones and Heredity J. T. Cunningham 1897

  • But could those early storytellers have actually been feeling their way around the idea of orthogenesis, i.e., spontaneous birth, where life has the innate ability to move linearly?

    ScreenTalk 2009

  • But could those early storytellers have actually been feeling their way around the idea of orthogenesis, i.e., spontaneous birth, where life has the innate ability to move linearly?

    ScreenTalk 2009

  • But could those early storytellers have actually been feeling their way around the idea of orthogenesis, i.e., spontaneous birth, where life has the innate ability to move linearly?

    ScreenTalk 2009

  • But could those early storytellers have actually been feeling their way around the idea of orthogenesis, i.e., spontaneous birth, where life has the innate ability to move linearly?

    ScreenTalk 2009

  • But could those early storytellers have actually been feeling their way around the idea of orthogenesis, i.e., spontaneous birth, where life has the innate ability to move linearly?

    ScreenTalk 2009

  • But could those early storytellers have actually been feeling their way around the idea of orthogenesis, i.e., spontaneous birth, where life has the innate ability to move linearly?

    ScreenTalk 2009

  • The quotes above seem to be not so much anti-evolution, but in favor of a kind of orthogenesis which can be entirely materialist.

    A critique of Himmelfarb's scientific views - The Panda's Thumb 2005

  • We have tried to prove, on the contrary, by the example of the eye, that if there is "orthogenesis" here, a psychological cause intervenes.

    Evolution créatrice. English Henri Bergson 1900

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