On Growth and Form: The Complete Revised Edition (Paperback)

by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
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 McNamee

Product Description
Classic of biology and modern science sets forth seminal "theory of transformation"—that one species evolves into another not by successive minor changes in individual body parts but by large-scale transformations involving the body as a whole. Rich literary style. Over 500 photographs and drawings. Index.


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Product Details

• Paperback: 1116 pages
• Publisher: Dover Publications; Revised edition (June 23, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0486671356
• ISBN-13: 978-0486671352
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 2.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #142,382 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

104 of 104 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Canto: An unfortunate redaction of a timeless classic, June 21, 2005

By	Golan Levin (Pittsburgh) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: On Growth and Form (Paperback)

Don't get me wrong -- "On Growth and Form" is one of my absolute top favorite books of all time. Possibly my favorite book, in fact. This review is a warning to make sure you get the right imprint.

Unfortunately some publishers think that they know better than D'Arcy Thompson, and cut out more than half of the original material. After all, nobody these days actually looks at equations, right? Well I do, and the pathetic edition by Canto (368 pages) weighs with less than 33% of the material in the modern unexpurgated reprint by Dover (1116 pages).

Amazingly enough, the redacted Canto version costs nearly the same as the Dover complete. If you care about this material, take care to get all of it.

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars simply a marvellous exposition of ideas, March 22, 2000

By	Frank Bierbrauer (Cardiff, Wales, UK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I heard about this marvellous book as I was reading in the typical popular science literature years ago now but its almost impossible to avoid contact with this tome of the archetypal polymath D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson. A remarkable man with a wonderful open view of science and the, what's now called, interdisciplinarian approach to the world. Refreshingly full of new ideas especially for his day and even now where conservatism as usual is the norm in scientific circles. I hope many scientists read this book and see not just a curiosity but a representation of a whole approach to the world of nature. I will never forget the first time I read the chapter on coordinate transformations in animal shapes, today's schools simply do not inspire in this way and its time this changed. The prescence of this book, well read, on any person's bookshelf is a must.

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Illuminates the essence of understanding - Classic Overview, January 16, 1998

By A Customer

It's about so much more than the limits our minds create from standard reviews & categorizations. Shows how to organize your thinking to tackle something new. On the surface, it's a turn of the century survey & application of physical scientific knowledge. On a higher level it communicates how to effectively organize knowledge as a tool & pathway to inner understanding as only the CLASSICS can do. I was required to read it for my Brandeis Ph.D. in Biophysics, but have recommended it to home schoolers as the best single book to inform a teenager about physics, chemistry, biology, & practical thinking. The Latin roots of the title words, Form & Function, are utilized, rather than specialized contemporary jargon.