Full Description
Scottish zoologist D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's visionary ideas in On Growth and Form continue to evolve a century after its publication, aligning it with current developments in art and science. Practitioners, theorists, and historians from art, science, and design reflect on his ongoing influence. Overall, the anthology links evolutionary theory to form generation in both scientific and cultural domains. It offers a close look at the ways cells, organisms, and rules become generative in fields often otherwise disconnected.
United by Thompson's original exploration of how physical forces propel and shape living and nonliving forms, essays range from art, art history, and neuroscience to architecture, design, and biology. Contributors explore how translations are made from the discipline of biology to the cultural arena. They reflect on how Thompson's study relates to the current sciences of epigenesis, self-organization, biological complex systems, and the expanded evolutionary synthesis. Cross-disciplinary contributors explore the wide-ranging aesthetic ramifications of these sciences. A timeline links the history of evolutionary theory with cultural achievements, providing the reader with a valuable resource.
Contents
List of Plates
List of Figures
List of Contributors
Preface
Acknowledgments
Timeline
Introduction, Ellen K. Levy (Artist and Independent Scholar, USA) and Charissa N. Terranova (University of Texas at Dallas, USA)
1. Are All Fish the Same if You Stretch Them? The Victorian Tale of On Growth and Form, Stephen Wolfram (Wolfram Research, USA)
2. Physics in Biology - Has D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson Been Vindicated? Evelyn Fox Keller (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)
3. On the Beauty of the Metacarpal, Hadas A. Steiner (State University of New York at Buffalo, USA)
4. "Drawn from structures living and dead" - Collections and Connections, Growing and Forming, Matthew Jarron (University of Dundee Museum Collections, Scotland)
5. D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson and Dorothy Wrinch: A Friendship, 1918-1948, Marjorie Senechal (Smith College, USA)
6. D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's Surrealism, Brandon Taylor (University of Southampton, UK and Oxford University, UK)
7. Structures of Light as 'An Ethnologist's Jewels': D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, The Independent Group and Montage, Assimina Kaniari (Athens School of Fine Arts, Greece)
8. Exhibition as Extended Organism: The Evolutionary Agency of Richard Hamilton's Growth and Form, Charissa N. Terranova (University of Texas at Dallas, USA)
9. The Invisible Motives of Growth and Form, Caroline O'Donnell (CODA, USA)
10. Diagrams of Entropic Forces: New Growth and Form, Philip Beesley (University of Waterloo, Canada)
11. Tracing Threads of the Living Organism, Ellen K. Levy (Artist and Independent Scholar, USA)
12. The Growth and Form of ArtNano Innovations: Inspirations from D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's On Growth and Form, Todd Siler (Artist, USA)
13. On Growth and Form and Lightweight Structures, Sarah Bonnemaison (Dalhousie University, Canada)
14. D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson Going Forward
Between Chance and Necessity, Philip Ball (Independent Scholar, UK)
Image as Argument: D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson and Contemporary Scientific Discourse, Justine Kupferman (Kallyope, Inc., USA)
Reflections on Influence, Carolee Schneemann (Artist, USA, d. 2019)
D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson and Polycrystalline Pattern Formation, Bart Kahr (New York University, USA)
Conversations with D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, Ellen K. Levy (Artist and Independent Scholar, USA)
The Vortex and D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, Meredith Tromble (Artist and Independent Scholar, USA)
Deployable and Other Structural Forms, Henry Petroski (Duke University, USA)
Index
