Books for Prep | |
 List Price: $39.95 Amazon.com's Price: $26.37 You Save: $13.58 (34%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
This item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping.
Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 591.1 EAN: 9780486671352 Edition: Revised ISBN: 0486671356 Label: Dover Publications Manufacturer: Dover Publications Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 1116 Publication Date: June 23, 1992 Publisher: Dover Publications Studio: Dover Publications Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: 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. Book 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. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - A classic book, unlike any otherMost biologists have heard of D'Arcy Thompson's famous book, and have seen his drawings that show how apparently different animals -- fish, for example -- can be transformed into one another by distorting the coordinate system. Sometimes a simple skewing or stretching will suffice, but in other cases more complicated transformations are needed. Few, however, have read the book, and few realize that the famous drawings come right at the end of a long and detailed argument in which D'Arcy Thompson ... Read More Rating:  - How to ruin a classic book with an abridged edition When I ordered the book, I didn't even realize the edition was abridged. The book arrived suspiciously smaller than I expected it, almost half size. I thought maybe my memory deceived me, but apparently no. In the introduction of the editor, Mr. John Tyler Bonner, is so kind as to explain that he mistook a classic book on organism and form, for a scientific one. In order to make the book accessible to general public (who said it was not?) and to "correct" Mr. D'Arcy's writing, Mr. Bonner ... Read More Rating: - is Amazon Editorial review correct?I wonder if the Amazon editorial review is correct: it is stated that the book examines such matters as "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". I do not find these ... Read More Rating: - Mathematical-biological gemsThis is a delightful book. I shall give some sample highlights. First some things from the particularly enjoyable chapter 2, "On Magnitude". Raindrops come in the sizes 2^n (p. 59, Dover ed.). Proof: As they leave the cloud the rain drops are all of the same size. If two rain drops meet they make one raindrop of twice the mass, as so start falling faster than the singles. Thus it will never merge with a single to make a size 3 drop, but it may join another double to make a quadruple drop. Of course ... Read More Rating:  - a classic compilation of very neat gemsThis book is a *classic*; an adventure into abstract mathematical properties of nature. The author rambles on about many topics concerning natural manifestations as viewed from near human and cellular scales, with the tools of the early 20th century. It's that enigmatic space between Biology and Geometry, presented in a very accessible manner by an author whose love and knowledge of the subject shines through well. 
In association with Amazon.com | |