In biology, it is another word for recapitulation – the largely discredited hypothesis which talks of the phase in the development of an organism in which its form and structure pass through the changes undergone in the evolution of the species.
The word palingenesis or rather palingenesia (Ancient Greek: παλιγγενεσία) may be traced back to the Stoics,[2][3][4][5] who used the term for the continual re-creation of the universe.
Similarly, Philo designated Noah and his sons as leaders of a renovation or rebirth of the earth, Plutarch spoke of the transmigration of souls, and Cicero focused on his own return from exile.
[7] In philosophy it denotes in its broadest sense the theory (e.g. of the Pythagoreans) that the human soul does not die with the body but is born again in new incarnations.
[9] Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet expressed his post-coup project in government as a national rebirth inspired in Diego Portales, a figure of the early republic:[10] ...[democracy] will be born again purified from the vices and bad habits that ended up destroying our institutions ... we are inspired in the Portalian spirit which has fused together the nation ...In modern biology (e.g., Ernst Haeckel and Fritz Müller), palingenesis has been used for the exact reproduction of ancestral features by inheritance, as opposed to kenogenesis, in which the inherited characteristics are modified by environment.