ON GROWTH & FORM REV/E: The Complete Revised Edition (Dover Books on Biology) - Tapa blanda

Reseña del editor

In this classic of biology and modern science, Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860–1948), one of the most distinguished scientists of the modern era, sets forth his 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.
First written in 1917, the book was revised by Thompson in 1942 — the revision reprinted here. The esteem in which this monumental, lavishly illustrated work is universally held derives not only from its scholarship and creativity, but also from the rich literary style that exemplifies Thompson's great erudition in the physical and natural sciences, ancient and modern languages and the humanities.
The book begins with studies of organic magnitude, the rate of growth, cellular form and structure, adsorption, and the forms of tissues, then examines a vast spectrum of life forms, and concludes with a comparison of related forms that leads to the theory of transformations.

Reseña del editor

Sir D'Arcy W. Thompson CB FRS FRSE (1860-1948) was a Scottish biologist, mathematician, and classics scholar. A pioneering mathematical biologist, he is mainly remembered as the author of ON GROWTH AND FORM, an influential work of striking originality and elegance.

The central theme of ON GROWTH AND FORM is that biologists of its author's day overemphasized evolution as the fundamental determinant of the form and structure of living organisms, and under-emphasized the roles of physical laws and mechanics.

Peter Medawar who was the 1960 Nobel Laureate in Medicine called ON GROWTH AND FORM "the finest work of literature in all the annals of science that have been recorded in the English tongue."