A concept dating back to the Ancient Greeks used to denote progressive change or betterment to some idealized end state. In this respect, it did not differ from evolution and up to 19th century the two terms were used interchangeably, as they still are in French today. Toward the end of that century a distinction was made between ontogenetic development (‘development of an individual member of species’) and biological evolution (‘development of a species’), perhaps largely due to change from descriptive to experimental embryology, and the impact of Darwin’s theory of descent with modification in which biological change was no longer considered to be just progressive.
See Developmental hypothesis, Differentiation (embryology), Direct (monogenesis) and indirect (metagenesis and metamorphosis) development, Epigenesis, Evolution, Growth, Metamorphosis (or indirect development), Morphogenesis, Ontogenetic development, Ontogeny, Phylogeny, Preformationism, Progress, Theory of descent with modification