On Growth and Form

Abstract

THIS book, at once substantial and stately, is to the credit of British science and an achievement for its distinguished author to be proud of. It is like one of Darwin's books, well-considered, patiently wrought-out, learned, and cautious-a disclosure of the scientific spirit. It is an application of some of the concepts of physical science and sundry mathematical methods to the study of organic form. “My sole purpose is to correlate with mathematical statement and physical law certain of the simpler outward phenomena of organic growth and structure or form: while all the while regarding, ex hypothesi, for the purposes of this correlation, the fabric of the organism as a material and mechanical configuration.” “Of how it is that the soul informs the body, physical science teaches me nothing. … But of the construction and growth and working of the body, as of all that is of the earth earthy, physical science is, in my humble opinion, our only teacher and guide.” We think that it will be difficult to justify the word “only,” for in the working of the body the soul (to use the author's dualistic terminology) takes part, as when a strong emotion influences our suprarenals, and, willy-nilly, we are back in psycho-biology:

On Growth and Form.

By D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson. Pp. xv + 793. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1917.) Price 21s. net.