The term comes from the Greek ontos (“being”) and genesis (“origin”), and describes the development and change of an individual organism from conception through death. This is distinct from phylogenetic processes, which describe changes across generations and populations (the change of a group or an entire species).

In mainstream biology, evolution is understood as a phylogenetic process: random mutations arise in individuals, some are selected for by the environment, and over many generations these changes accumulate to produce new species and capabilities.

In the Germanische Heilkunde, we have a fundamentally different understanding that the environment (“selection pressure,” “natural selection,” etc) does not determine our biological responses.

Rather, the Fifth Biological Law (the Quintessence) explains that meaningful biological change occurs primarily through ontogenetic processes within the lifetime of the individual organism itself.

Ontogenetic processes include growth, differentiation, repair, neurological plasticity, and all SBS-driven tissue changes. When an organism completes a full special biological program – from the conflict-active phase through to the end of PCL B – the changes to its brain, nervous system, and tissue become permanent features of its new normotonia. These changes are encoded in the organism’s DNA as part of PCL B. The organism is not merely healed; it is biologically upgraded in relation to the specific conflict content it has resolved.

This understanding places biological evolution within the individual organism rather than in the statistical mechanics of population genetics. It also provides a GHK explanation for epigenetics – the heritable changes in gene expression that occur in response to processes in the psyche – and aligns with Lamarckian ideas about the inheritance of acquired characteristics, which GHK holds to be more accurate than the Neo-Darwinian synthesis.

In embryology, we also observe that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny: as an embryo develops, it passes through stages that resemble earlier evolutionary forms. We see earlier biological structures appear first (for example, the “ring-formed creature,” and increasingly-specialized structures develop afterward (for example, a central nervous system and circulatory system, musculoskeletal system, increasingly-detailed sensory and motor apparatus, and so on.

By recapitulating phyologeny, evolution of individual organisms carries forward as the evolution of the entire population, species, class, phylum, and kingdom.