On Growth and Form: The Complete Revised Edition

The thing about this book is you need to be a full blown intellectual to read it I unfortunately am not. I yearn to be but the sad truth is I am a low brow kind of reader. Never the less, while I could not follow the depth of euriditin I did enjoy the scope and detail of Thompson's narrative. If you do find you can read this book you are a brilliant man or woman. This book affords the deep and sensitive mind an I depth romp far deeper and beyond the Ken of such brilliant minds as Von Humbolt or Darwim. But beware because D'arcy Wentworth Thimpson was not only the last of the great polymaths. He may have been the greatest. .

This is a classic. I am enjoying reading it. For fun watch the youtube video of John Milnor discussing this book.

This book was written in the 1st World War and revised in the 2nd World War by an author whose scholarship has not been excelled over all these years. This was the book that first brought my attention almost 70 years ago to Fibonacci series, logarithmic spiral, phi the golden ratio, and trasformative geometry applied to biological evolution of growth and forms. Profusely illustrated and annotated, this classic book is for keeps.

Very interesting read. But be warned that the book is huge and as a result quite heavy (at least for a petite person like me). I would have loved to take it on my commute/travels with me but it would be a burden to carry. I often wish they had left out the footnotes (which sometimes occupy half a page) or made them smaller to reduce the number of pages.

I been waiting since my 25 years old to buy this book. And my dream came true! thanks a lot to the editorial.

Excellent copy and shipped fast. This is one of the books that I have been waiting to read. clean book.

This book is completely unusable. This is an older book, so there were clearly no electronic files available. Instead, folks scanned paper pages to try to turn this into a Kindle edition. The pages are practically illegible due to the graininess of the images. The pages display sideways rather than the correct vertical orientation, and half the text scrolls off the visible page. Even worse, the pages are completely out of order in a way that makes no sense. The page number of the first page I see is 323, followed two pages later by page 368, and two pages later I see page 229. Every second page has no visible number because they appear to be rendering the bottom halves of pages. The book is also unsearchable. I try basic topics that the book deals with, like "flower" or "seashell", and I get zero hits. I don't think it would be possible to make a worse Kindle edition of a book.

This 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 the quadruples fall faster than the doubles and the singles, so they will only merge with other quadruples, and so on. Many results are derived from "dimension theory". A simple illustration is the following "paradox" of constant-temperature animals (pp. 33-34). "The heat lost must ... be proportional to the surface of the animal: and the gain must be equal to the loss, since the temperature of the body keeps constant. It would seem, therefore, that the heat lost by radiation and that gained by oxidation vary both alike, as the surface-area, or the square of the linear dimensions, of the animal. But this result is paradoxical; for whereas the heat lost may well vary as the surface-area [i.e., as l^2], that produced by oxidation ought rather to vary as the bulk of the animal [i.e., as l^3]". Thus one is "driven to the conclusion that the smaller animal does produce more heat (per unit mass) than the larger one, in order to keep pace with surface loss; and that this extra heat-production means more energy spent, more food consumed, more work done." Another illustration of dimension theory: the maximum jumping height of an animal is constant under scaling (p. 37), for "the work done in leaping is proportional to the mass and to the height to which it is raised, W proportional to mH. But the muscular power available for this work is proportional to the mass of muscle, ... W proportional to m. It follows that H is ... a constant. In other words, all animals, provided that they are similarly fashioned, with their various levers in like proportion, ought to jump not to the same relative but to the same actual height." It follows that "neither flea nor grasshopper is a better but rather a worse jumper than a horse or a man." Yet another illustration of dimension theory: the maximum velocity of a fish is proportional to sqrt(length), "For the velocity (V) which the fish attains depends on the work (W) it can do and the resistance (R) it must overcome. Now we have seen that the dimensions of W are l^3 [muscle volume], and of R are l^2 [surface area friction]; and by elementary mechanics W is proportional to RV^2, or V^2 proportional to W/R. Therefore V^2 is proportional to l^3/l^2=l, and V proportional to sqrt(l)" (p. 31). For land animals, however, velocity is constant under scaling (p. 38), as we se by considering "the momentum created ... by a given force acting for a given time: mv=Ft. We know that m is proportional to l^3 and t=l/v, so that l^3v=Fl/v, or v^2=F/l^2. But whatsoever force be available, the animal may only exert so much of it as is in proportion to the strength of his own limbs, that is to say to the cross-section of bone, sinew and muscle; and all of these cross-sections are proportional to l^2, the square of the linear dimensions. The maximal force, F_max, which the animal dare exert is proportional, then, to l^2; therefore F_max/l^2=contant. And the maximal speed which the animal can safely reach ... is also constant." Geodesics: "an instructive case is furnished by the arrangement of the muscular fibres on the surface of a hollow organ, such as the heart or the stomach. ... In fact we have a right to expect that the muscular fibres covering such organs will coincide with geodesic lines ... For if we imagine a contractible fibre ... to be fixed by its two ends upon a curved surface, it is obvious that its first effort of contraction will tend to expend itself in accommodating the band to the form of the surface, in 'stretching it tight,' ... and it is only then that further contraction will have the effect of constricting the tube and so exercising pressure on its contents. Thus the muscular fibres ... arrange themselves automatically in geodesic curves: in precisely the same manner as we also construct complex systems of geodesics whenever we wind a ball of wool or spindle a tow, or when the skilful surgeon bandages a limb" (pp. 742-744). Comparative anatomy of bridges. A parabolic arch bridge is designed to distribute stress uniformly. Its shape is determined by a "stress diagram": if we imagine the bridge as a beam on two pillars and plot the stress as a function of position on the bridge then we get precisely the arch needed to equi-distribute this stress. More generally, "Every diagram of moments represents the outline of a framed structure which will carry the given load with a uniform horizontal stress" (p. 996), and "to precisely those stress-lines has Nature kept in the building of the bone" (p. 995). So, for example, "whenever the head and neck represent a considerable fraction of the whole weight of the body, we tend to have large bending-moments over the fore-legs, and correspondingly high spines over the vertebrae of the withers ... The case is sufficiently exemplified by the horse, and still more notably by the stag, the ox, or the pig." (p. 1003).

Una obra magnífica, sin duda alguna !! La fecha de entrega estaba prevista entre el 26 de agosto y principio de septiembre, pero, me he encontrado con la grata sorpresa de recibirlo hace unos minutos. Muy cuidado, simplemente una esquina un pelin rozada, cosa normal del uso. Se puede decir que en excelente estado para un libro que fue impreso en 1992, o lo que es lo mismo, que tiene ya 32 años.

Beautiful reprint

C'è poco da dire: è un libro che ha fatto la storia della scienza e che viene citato ancora oggi centinaia di volte, dopo 100 anni dalla sua pubblicazione. Leggetelo.