On Growth and Form

Front Cover
Cambridge University Press, Jul 31, 1992 - Science - 345 pages
Why do living things and physical phenomena take the form they do? D'Arcy Thompson's classic On Growth and Form looks at the way things grow and the shapes they take. Analysing biological processes in their mathematical and physical aspects, this historic work, first published in 1917, has also become renowned for the sheer poetry of its descriptions. A great scientist sensitive to the fascinations and beauty of the natural world tells of jumping fleas and slipper limpets; of buds and seeds; of bees' cells and rain drops; of the potter's thumb and the spider's web; of a film of soap and a bubble of oil; of a splash of a pebble in a pond. D'Arcy Thompson's writing, hailed as 'good literature as well as good science; a discourse on science as though it were a humanity', is now made available for a wider readership, with a foreword by one of today's great populisers of science, explaining the importance of the work for a new generation of readers.
 

Selected pages

Contents

Introductory
1
On Magnitude
15
The Forms of Cells
49
The Forms of Tissues or Cellaggregates
88
On Spicules and Spicular Skeletons
132
The Equiangular
172
The Shapes of Horns and of Teeth or Tusks
202
On Form and Mechanical Efficiency
221
On the Theory of Transformations or the Comparison of Related Forms
268
Epilogue
326
Index
329
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