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D’Arcy Wenthworth Thompson, On Growth And Form, 1917
“The finest work of literature in all the annals of science that have been recorded in the English tongue” as described by the novelist Peter Medawar, is really just all preface from beginning to the end- a preface to allometry. The “On Growth and Form” shook the scientific explanation of morphogenesis despite the fact that it does not really include a single unifying thesis. Nor does the visual thinker- Sir D’arcy Thompson- attempt to establish a resulting relationship between the forms seen in biology and forms based on physics.
