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(24 reviews)
Author: Visit Amazon's D Arcy Wentworth Thompson Page
ISBN : 0486671356
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Download for free books Free On Growth and Form: The Complete Revised Edition – June 23, 1992
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First published in 1917,
On Growth and Form was at once revolutionary and conservative. Scottish embryologist D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860-1948) grew up in the newly cast shadow of Darwinism, and he took issue with some of the orthodoxies of the day--not because they were necessarily wrong, he said, but because they violated the spirit of Occam's razor, in which simple explanations are preferable to complex ones. In the case of such subjects as the growth of eggs, skeletons, and crystals, Thompson cited mathematical authority: these were matters of "economy and transformation," and they could be explained by laws governing surface tension and the like. (He doubtless would have enjoyed the study of fractals, which came after his time.) In
On Growth and Form, he examines such matters as the curve of frequency or bell curve (which explains variations in height among 10-year-old schoolboys, the florets of a daisy, the distribution of darts on a cork board, the thickness of stripes along a zebra's flanks, the shape of mountain ranges and sand dunes) and spirals (which turn up everywhere in nature you look: in the curve of a seashell, the swirl of water boiling in a saucepan, the sweep of faraway nebulae, the twist of a strand of DNA, the turns of the labyrinth in which the legendary Minotaur lived out its days). The result is an astonishingly varied book that repays skimming and close reading alike. English biologist Sir Peter Medawar called Thompson's tome "beyond comparison the finest work of literature in all the annals of science that have been recorded in the English tongue."
--Gregory McNameeBook Description
Why do living things and physical phenomena take the forms they do? Analyzing the mathematical and physical aspects of biological processes, this historic work, first published in 1917, has become renowned as well for the poetry of is descriptions.
--This text refers to an alternate
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Direct download links available for Free On Growth and Form: The Complete Revised Edition (Dover Books on Biology) Paperback – June 23, 1992
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- Series: Dover Books on Biology
- Paperback: 1116 pages
- Publisher: Dover Publications; Revised, Complete edition (June 23, 1992)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0486671356
- ISBN-13: 978-0486671352
- Product Dimensions: 2.1 x 5.3 x 8.3 inches
- Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Free On Growth and Form: The Complete Revised Edition – June 23, 1992
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I, too, am a longtime fan of D'Arcy Thompson's endearing (enduring) classic. I've read the discussion. I appreciate very much that Golan Levin, in "Canto: An unfortunate redaction of a timeless classic," and others as well, have made it clear to Amazon customers that the Canto (Cambridge University Press) version of this book is radically abridged, as compared to Dover's (apparently) unabridged edition. This kind of comparative information--about a book's being published under different editions, and what those editions contain--is the kind of crucial info which, as things stand, we customers have to contribute.
It's unfortunate, if understandable, that the bulk of the laudatory reviews here don't specify which edition these people read. Some of them appear to be from scientists and/or mathematicians: they are, perhaps, readers of the unabridged version. Viktor Blasjo's 5-star review *does* specify: he reports from the Dover unabridged, and a great report it is, too. He convinced me to pick up a copy.
Other reviewers seem to have come to D'Arcy Thompson from a more varied background, for their words remind me of my own experience: I first read this book at the age of 19, breathlessly turning the pages, filled to the brim with a sense of growing wonder about what science could do. In Thompson's hands, science opened up the secrets of Nature, right before my eyes. I'd read a fair amount of literature for my age, so from a more sophisticated angle, I relished the many passages of elegant writing--charmingly earnest, sometimes almost passionate. (Thompson's literary excellence comes in spurts, folks, so be patient.) "On Growth and Form" came, in time, to have a big influence on me: I'd been on the fence about science vs.
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