D'Arcy Thompson and the Science of Form Author(s): Stephen Jay Gould Source: New Literary History, Vol. 2, No. 2, Form and Its Alternatives (Winter, 1971), pp. 229- 258 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/468601 Accessed: 22-04-2015 15:47 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/468601?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to New Literary History. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 134.84.3.112 on Wed, 22 Apr 2015 15:47:09 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions D'Arcy Thompsonand the Science of Form StephenJay Gould Our own studyof organicform, which we call by Goethe's name of Morphology,is but a portionof that wider Science of Form whichdeals withthe formsassumed by matterunder all aspectsand conditions,and, in a stillwider sense, with forms which are theoreticallyimaginable. Growthand Form,p. 1026 Preface JN1945, the Public Oratorof Oxfordlauded D'Arcy Thompson as unicumdisciplinae liberalioris exemplar1; in 1969, the Whole Earth Catalog called his major work"a paradigmclassic." Few men can listsuch diversedistinctions in theircompendium of honors. But then,few men have displayedso wide a rangeof talent. D'Arcy WentworthThompson (I86O-I948), Professorof Natural Historyat Dundee and St. Andrews,2translated Aristotle's Historia Animalium, wrote glossariesof Greek birds and fishes,compiled statisticsfor the i The outstandingexample of a man of liberal education-on the occasion of his admission to the honorarydegree of Civil Law. Quoted in Ruth D'Arcy Thompson, D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson: The Scholar-Naturalist (London, 1958), P. 238. 2 Of D'Arcy Thompson's life and personalityI shall say little in the limited space available here. See the biographywritten by his daughter (cited in footnote I) and the best three of many articles written to celebrate Growth and Form: J. T. Bonner, editor's introductionto abridgment of D'Arcy Thompson, On Growth and Form (Cambridge, 1966), pp. vii-xiv; G. Evelyn Hutchinson, "In Memoriam, D'Arcy WentworthThompson," American Scientist, xxxvi (1948), 577-606; P. B. Medawar, "D'Arcy Thompson and Growth and Form," postscriptto Ruth D'Arcy Thompson's biography of her father,pp. 219-33, and reprintedin The Art of the Soluble (London, 1967), pp. 21-35. As a furthersource of informationand tribute to the syntheticattraction of D'Arcy Thompson's ideas on form,see the books that arose from two recent art exhibitionson organic form: L. L. Whyte, ed., Aspects at the Institute of of Form (London, I951), for the I951 Exhibition Contemporary Art, London, designed as a tribute to D'Arcy Thompson; and P. C. Ritterbush, The Art of Organic Forms (Washington, 1968), for the 1968 Exhibition at the Museum of Natural Historyin Washington,D. C. This content downloaded from 134.84.3.112 on Wed, 22 Apr 2015 15:47:09 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 230 NEW LITERARY HISTORY FisheryBoard of Scotlandand contributedthe article on pycnogonids3 to the CambridgeNatural History.4He also wrotea book of one thousandpages, revered by artistsand architectsas wellas byengineers and biologists-the"paradigm classic," On Growthand Form (1917, 2nd edition,1942). To P. B. Medawar it is "beyond comparisonthe finestwork of literaturein all the annalsof sciencethat have been re- cordedin theEnglish tongue." 5 To G. EvelynHutchinson, it is "one of the veryfew books on a scientificmatter written in this century whichwill, one may be confident,last as longas ourtoo fragile culture." 6 In it D'ArcyThompson displayed his thoughts on organicform; these are curiousin places,almost visionary in othersand alwaysprofound. Almostthirty years after the secondedition, and morethan half a centuryafter the first, they have gainednew impactin a sciencethat onlynow has thetechnology to deal withhis insights. I. IneluctableModality of the Visible "Extension,figure, number, and motion.. .," wroteJohn Locke, "may be properlycalled real, original or primaryqualities, because they are in thethings themselves, whether they are perceivedor no."'7 Stephen Daedalus,walking along the Irishsea side,reviewed the dilemmasof epistemologyand evenperformed the crucial experiment: "Ineluctable modalityof thevisible... Then he was awareof thembodies before of themcoloured. How? By knockinghis sconceagainst them.... Open youreyes now. I will.One moment.Has all vanishedsince? ... See now. There all the timewithout you: and evershall be, world withoutend." 8 3 A small group of marine arthropods that would, I am sure, be considered obscure by all but the veryfew who love (and study) them. 4 D'Arcy Thompson's complete bibliography to I945 will be found in: G. H. Bushnell, "A list of the published writingsof D'Arcy WentworthThompson," in W. E. Le Gros Clark and P. B. Medawar, eds., Essays on Growth and Form presented to D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (Oxford, 1945), PP. 386-400. The list contains 279 items. This volume is a series of essays presented to D'Arcy Thompson on the occasion of his 6oth year as an active professor. 5 Medawar (see footnote2), p. 232. 6 Hutchinson (see footnote2), p. 579. 7 John Locke, "Some Farther Considerations Concerning our Simple Ideas of Sensation," from Book I of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). 8 James Joyce,Ulysses (New York, 196I), p. 37. This content downloaded from 134.84.3.112 on Wed, 22 Apr 2015 15:47:09 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions D'ARCY THOMPSON AND THE SCIENCE OF FORM 231 Formpervades the material world. Aristotlewas willingto consider formwithout matter for prime movers and demiurges,but notmatter withoutform.9 In studyingnature ever since,most biologists have agreedwith Needham that " thecentral problem of biology is theform problem."'10To anyonewho views form as an outdatedconcern, suited onlyfor the fewsurviving taxonomists of a worlddominated by the chemistryand energeticsof molecularbiology," I recommenda book thatstands second only to D'ArcyThompson's as a 20thcentury paean to form: J.D. Watson'sThe DoubleHelix. For thisbook describes the pursuitof a shape"too prettynot to be true,"12 a molecularshape that wouldunderlie and explainthe phenomena of heredity.Watson's suc- cess emergeddirectly from a concernwith form, from a methodology thatprescribed the construction ofmodels in preferenceto thesearch for a moresubtle chemistry. He describesa lessonimparted by Francis Crick: "I soonwas taughtthat ... thekey to Linus' [Pauling]success was hisreliance on thesimple laws ofstructural chemistry. .... The es- sentialtrick ... was to ask whichatoms like to sitnext to each other. In placeof pencil and paper,the main working tools were a setof mole- cularmodels superficially resembling the toys of preschoolchildren."13 All biologistsmust deal withform, but it does not followthat they treatit adequately.In myown fieldof evolutionarybiology, I detect threeapproaches that seem especially insufficient when compared with theinsights of D'Arcy Thompson: I. Theoriesthat attempt to renderform in suchnon-morphological termsas motion,flow, and energy: Darwin'ssuccess and Lamarck's failureis no simpleconsequence of theirdiffering positions on specific points;it alsoreflects their opposing approaches to form.For Lamarck, motionand becomingwere primary;organic matter, ever in flux, mountedthe scale of being,impelled by "the forcewhich tends in- 9 See J. Needham'sanalysis in "BiochemicalAspects of Form and Growth,"in L. L. Whyte(see footnote2), pp. 77-86. Io J.Needham, Order and Life (Cambridge,Mass., 1968), p. 23. I I fearthat the messageof molecularbiology has oftenbeen mistranslatedin thisway as it descended(or ascendedaccording to one's orientation)from technical journalsthrough Scientific American to theNew York Timesand intopopular con- sciousness.Just as Einsteinianrelativity does not preach that "everythingis rela- tive" (ratherthe opposite,in fact), neitherdoes molecularbiology replace the conceptof formand spatial structurewith the dynamicsof chemicalenergetics or the abstractionof "informationmodels"; the greatestachievement of molecular biology,after all, was the elucidationby Watsonand Crickof thephysical shape of DNA, theextraordinary molecule that transcribes this genetic information. I J.D. Watson,The Double Helix (New York,1968). 13 Ibid., p. 38. This content downloaded from 134.84.3.112 on Wed, 22 Apr 2015 15:47:09 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 232 NEW LITERARY HISTORY cessantlyto complicateorganization." As Gillispie14writes: "La- marck'stheory of evolutionwas thelast attempt to makea scienceout of theinstinct ... thatthe world is fluxand process,and thatscience is to study,not the configurations ofmatter, nor the categories of form, butthe manifestations ofthat activity which is ontologicallyfundamen- tal as bodiesin motionand speciesof beingare not." To Darwin,