Microgeny Recapitulates Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny Recapitulates Kosmology

I was watching a show on the science channel tonight about the evolution of feathers.  I love how just about everything in this manifest world holds an entire universe of beauty, mystery, and intrigue, if you just zoom in closely enough.  Shows like this really fascinate me, it feels like i am observing Spirit's own anatomy—watching as matter becomes imprinted with living intelligence, feeling momentary sensations of the same set of fundamental self-organizing patterns being applied to deeper and deeper levels of reality.  Deep structures are cool.  So are feathers.

Anyway, i heard this quote, which sounded vaguely familiar. 

"Rick's theory proposed that feathers evolved in stages—stages similar to those each feather passes through as it grows from a simple tube to a complicated vein.  Rick realized that each stage is built upon the one preceding it.  This sequence of development stages would be used to predict the evolutionary stages that led to the modern feather."
 

Well, it was much more dramatic hearing it being carefully recited by an authoritative, Morgan Freeman style voice than it is to read it off the screen.  But i felt like posting it anyway.