Animal Forms and Patterns: A Study of the Appearance of Animals

by Adolf Portmann

Genres: Biology

254 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1967

About the author

Adolf Portmann was a zoologist. He studied zoology at the University of Basel and worked later in Geneva, Munich, Paris and Berlin, but mainly in marine biology laboratories in France and Helgoland. In 1931 he became professor of zoology in Basel. His main research areas covered marine biology and comparative morphology of vertebrates. His work was often interdisciplinary comprising sociological and philosophical aspects of life of animals and humans.

Reviews

[Pater Edmund · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly amazing book that opens one's eyes for the visible form of animals as an expression of the inward being and their place in the hierarchy of beings.

[Frank Bierbrauer · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the finest examples of scientific writing by a zooologist I have ever read and in fact one of the best books I've read. It should be on every shelf of every biologist. Far too many times is a scientists's shelf full of technical books which simply express the subject they work in. Then occasionally you see somebooks on philosophy such as Bertrand Russell, the standard scientists companion, nothing too unorthodox. Then, very rarely you come across a scientist with an orginal deep mind who is willing to learn from outseid the norm, outside the orthodoxy, way past what is considered kocher in scientific circles. This book is such a book, it contains discussion about Portmann's work with animals and how each animal possesses its own character, not as an individual but also as a member of its species. Absoltely fascinating.

[John Wojewoda · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I've ever read, a different way of looking a nature