A biologist I spoke with this week happened to mention D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860-1948), the Scottish zoologist and author of On Growth and Form, one of the most beautifully written science books I know. In my experience, few scientists and engineers are schooled in the histories of their professions, and fewer still have read deeply in their classical texts. Many biologists have never read Darwin, let alone Thompson, though they may have a conceptual grasp of their fundamental ideas. I remember years ago interviewing an engineer on some aspect of radio theory. We spoke, naturally, of Marconi, and I asked if he knew Rudyard Kipling’s great story, “Wireless.” He had never heard of Kipling and dismissed the idea that a mere writer of fiction might understand and adapt for his own purposes the arcane realm of science.
A few hours after my talk with the biologist, while reading Nature’s Numbers, by Ian Stewart, I came upon Thompson’s name again:
“…[Thompson], whose classic but maverick book On Growth and Form set out, in 1917, an enormous variety of more or less plausible evidence for the role of mathematics in the generation of biological form and behavior. In an age when most biologists seem to think that the only interesting thing about an animal is its DNA sequence, it is a message that needs to be repeated, loudly and often.”
Amen. I first learned of Thompson more than 30 years ago in Hugh Kenner’s The Pound Era. As I recall, Kenner likened Pound’s sense of metamorphosis, of matter changing form under the influence of forces physical and aesthetic, to Thompson’s. It makes sense that Pound would be attracted to Thompson, who translated Aristotle’s works on biology into English. Thompson thought his work challenged Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, but given what we know of genetics, Thompson’s work elegantly complements Darwin’s. Physics and mechanics help determine form – that is, successful adaptation – and successful form is replicated by genetics. Today, Thompson is deemed a forerunner of biomathematics. As Stewart writes:
“The idea that mathematics is deeply implicated in natural form goes back to D’Arcy Thompson…”
And as Thompson writes:
"For the harmony of the world is made manifest in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied in the concept of mathematical beauty."
Beauty and function, art and science, remain complementary, not antagonistic.
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You blog contains very interesting insights into the depth of D'Arcy Thompson's pioneering work into mathematical biology. I wonder if you're familiar with a series of books by Phillip Ball. I'm reading the first now. It's called "Shapes" and the series is "Nature's Patterns: A Tapestry in Three Parts." These are an expansion on his earlier book, "The Self-Made Tapestry." I'm red faced to admit that I haven't actually read D'Arcy Thompson's sentential book, but it's on my summer reading list.
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