On growth and form. By D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson. A new edition. Cambridge and New York, University Press and Macmillan, 1942, 1116 pp., 554 illustrations, 21½ cm. Price, $12.50
✍ Scribed by Mayer, Edmund
- Book ID
- 101601702
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1943
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 378 KB
- Volume
- 85
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0003-276X
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
This unique book was first published in 1917. Now, after an interval of 25 years, the second edition, eagerly awaited by those familiar with the first, has appeared. The scope of the book and the general approach to the problems dealt with have remained unchanged, but considerable additions have been made and large parts have been recast. The new edition is conspicuously improved by a number of beautiful page-size pictures, for example, Edgerton's instantaneous photographs of a splash of milk (frontispiece), the paper-nautilus (p. 823), and the giant sun-flower (p. 913). On the other hand, many of the old pictures which had been perfeotly clear in the first edition are almost valueless now because of crude offset reproduction (see, e.g., pp. 416, 749 and 844). Indications of the scale of the pictures are missing throughout.
The extent to which the author has kept abreast of recent developments in the experimental sciences is remarkable. Viruses, giant molecules, monolayers, x-ray-diffraction patterns of fibers, growthcontrolling hormones, and the results of microdissection are mentioned in appropriate places in the new edition. On the other hand, it might have been wiser to avoid theoretical subjects like the theory of quanta (pp. 20 and 1094) and the uncertainty principle of Heisenberg (p. 123). Organic evolution and the second law of thermodynamics appear analogous to Thompson since both express a tendency toward the more probable states (pp. 11 and 358). One might as well consider both principles as opposite because organic evolution increases and entropy decreases organization. Entropy is, in any case, not the literal translation of evolution into Greek (p. 11).
A more elaborate presentation of mathematical procedures belongs with the assets of the new edition. Amplifications are found in Chapter 111 on "Rate of Growth," which is now twice as long as before. Rut here the new material has not been well organized. There is a subchapter "On variability, and on the curve of frequency or of error" (p. 118), and again another subchapter on "The curve of error " (p. 131). The factors on which the symmetry or skewness of