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On Growth and Form
In this classic of biology and modern science, Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860–1948), one of the most distinguished scientists of the modern era, sets forth his seminal "theory of transformation" - that one species evolves into another not by successive minor changes in individual body parts but by large-scale transformations involving the body as a whole.
First written in 1917, the book was revised by Thompson in 1942 — the revision reprinted here. The esteem in which this monumental, lavishly illustrated work is universally held derives not only from its scholarship and creativity, but also from the rich literary style that exemplifies Thompson's great erudition in the physical and natural sciences, ancient and modern languages and the humanities.
The book begins with studies of organic magnitude, the rate of growth, cellular form and structure, adsorption, and the forms of tissues, then examines a vast spectrum of life forms, and concludes with a comparison of related forms that leads to the theory of transformations.
First written in 1917, the book was revised by Thompson in 1942 — the revision reprinted here. The esteem in which this monumental, lavishly illustrated work is universally held derives not only from its scholarship and creativity, but also from the rich literary style that exemplifies Thompson's great erudition in the physical and natural sciences, ancient and modern languages and the humanities.
The book begins with studies of organic magnitude, the rate of growth, cellular form and structure, adsorption, and the forms of tissues, then examines a vast spectrum of life forms, and concludes with a comparison of related forms that leads to the theory of transformations.
1116 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1917
179 people are currently reading
5463 people want to read
About the author
D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson
92 books27 followersD'Arcy Wentworth Thompson was appointed to the first Chair of Biology at University College, Dundee, taking up the appointment in January 1885 and remaining for 32 and a half years. In 1917 he moved to take up the Chair of Natural History at the University of St. Andrews, a post he held until his death 31 years later in June 1948. He had therefore, the distinction of being a professor for 64 years. The year of his move, 1917, marked a turning point in his life for another reason, since it saw the publication of the book for which he is best known today, On Growth and Form.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews
January 30, 2018
Foreword: This Was a Man, by Stephen Jay Gould
The Editor's Introduction, by John Tyler Bonner
--On Growth and Form [Abridged]
Index
The Editor's Introduction, by John Tyler Bonner
--On Growth and Form [Abridged]
Index
November 7, 2018
I tend to despise hard science and life science, I hold it in much less favor than social sciences. I'm rarely a reader of scientific tracts. The ones I have read, have usually proved edifying and informative but never electrifying or enthralling. Welcome to one of the rare exceptions to that rule. This book is one such; and you will find it so, as well. It more than lives up to its glowing reputation; in just the first chapter --and barely thirty pages in--I find my eyes wide as saucers and gooseflesh raising the hackles on my forearms.
In the current day we live in, we are so glutted with frenetic popular-science babble ...and all the chatter is always about the puniest latest toy-tech, the trifling, the superficial. It dulls our sense of true wonder. We hear about the latest gadgets and updates but none of this is ever transformative. What's the difference between a DVD and a CD? Nothing. It's just marketing. It's not pioneering at all. Yet our gaze is always fixed on all such man-made trinkets. But Men do not make the world we actually live in. Nature always does and always will.
This is one of those few books which reminds you about the extraordinary mechanics which underpin the reality which actually governs our lives. Everyone's lives. How do we walk? How do we lift a weight? Why are things sized and scaled and shaped the way they are? Why do pumpkins and melons grow only on ground; why are trees never any taller than three hundred feet; why are mice the smallest mammals? How can a dog carry three times its weight but a horse can hardly bear half?
All these observations and hundreds more fill these --sharpening your senses as you flip each page --and it makes you read slowly and with delight and savor. Afterward, you will learn why a pachyderm femur must assume the same profile as a cargo crane, and why both of which must curve like a feather from a hummingbird's wing. You will grasp why things look the way they do and cease merely noting that they do oddly, look the same. It doesn't happen by chance or whim. This book doesn't merely dwell on facts; it imparts long-lasting meaning and reason.
And, it's all written in beautiful, extraordinary turn-of-the-19th century elocution. Very fun (in-and-of-itself) to listen to with your 'inner ear'. The is kind of technical verbiage is poetry; and the commentary a swell--not just cold, matter-of-fact recitation but a fierce and passionate history of intellectual men of the 1800s and their individual ambitions for knowledge and mastery. The book is a dramatic history of one man's arguments defeating another man's arguments and the resulting progress.
This work is amazing in its power to reawaken curiosity. It clobbers the tyranny of the image and the snapshot. Too many answers has made us fat and complacent. We're content to look at pictures all day long; and skim lamebrain lowbrow encyclopedias, rather than question anything ourselves anymore. It's our duty to be curious about the world but lately we let ourselves be spoon-fed.
Forget the internet. Forget jpgs. Forget txts. Forget all this picayune, glam, insipid, man-made prestidigitation.
Keep THIS BOOK on your shelf as a remind on how to THINK.
In the current day we live in, we are so glutted with frenetic popular-science babble ...and all the chatter is always about the puniest latest toy-tech, the trifling, the superficial. It dulls our sense of true wonder. We hear about the latest gadgets and updates but none of this is ever transformative. What's the difference between a DVD and a CD? Nothing. It's just marketing. It's not pioneering at all. Yet our gaze is always fixed on all such man-made trinkets. But Men do not make the world we actually live in. Nature always does and always will.
This is one of those few books which reminds you about the extraordinary mechanics which underpin the reality which actually governs our lives. Everyone's lives. How do we walk? How do we lift a weight? Why are things sized and scaled and shaped the way they are? Why do pumpkins and melons grow only on ground; why are trees never any taller than three hundred feet; why are mice the smallest mammals? How can a dog carry three times its weight but a horse can hardly bear half?
All these observations and hundreds more fill these --sharpening your senses as you flip each page --and it makes you read slowly and with delight and savor. Afterward, you will learn why a pachyderm femur must assume the same profile as a cargo crane, and why both of which must curve like a feather from a hummingbird's wing. You will grasp why things look the way they do and cease merely noting that they do oddly, look the same. It doesn't happen by chance or whim. This book doesn't merely dwell on facts; it imparts long-lasting meaning and reason.
And, it's all written in beautiful, extraordinary turn-of-the-19th century elocution. Very fun (in-and-of-itself) to listen to with your 'inner ear'. The is kind of technical verbiage is poetry; and the commentary a swell--not just cold, matter-of-fact recitation but a fierce and passionate history of intellectual men of the 1800s and their individual ambitions for knowledge and mastery. The book is a dramatic history of one man's arguments defeating another man's arguments and the resulting progress.
This work is amazing in its power to reawaken curiosity. It clobbers the tyranny of the image and the snapshot. Too many answers has made us fat and complacent. We're content to look at pictures all day long; and skim lamebrain lowbrow encyclopedias, rather than question anything ourselves anymore. It's our duty to be curious about the world but lately we let ourselves be spoon-fed.
Forget the internet. Forget jpgs. Forget txts. Forget all this picayune, glam, insipid, man-made prestidigitation.
Keep THIS BOOK on your shelf as a remind on how to THINK.
July 13, 2010
This book is a meticulous work that's both thought provoking and inspiring in its scope. There are plenty of profound, even poetic, insights scattered throughout a density of seemingly sterile precision. An especially interesting holism can be found in the chapter titled 'On the Theory of Transformations, or the Comparison of Related Forms' : "With the 'characters' of Mendelian genetics there is no fault to be found; tall and short, rough and smooth, plain or coloured are opposite tendencies or contrasting qualities, in plain logical contradistinction. But when the morphologist compares one animal with another, point by point or character by character, these are too often the mere outcome of artificial dissection and analysis. Rather is the living body one integral and indivisible whole, in which we cannot find, when we come to look for it, any strict dividing line between the head and the body, the muscle and the tendon, the sinew and the bone. Characters which we have differentiated insist on integrating themselves again; and aspects of the organism are seen to be conjoined which only our mental analysis had put asunder." Thompson was the enlightened type of scientist, able to see both a whole for its parts and parts on the whole- I have yet to find a better work of scientific literature.
November 13, 2024
This is elegantly written book of scientific exploration. It is long, but the journey is compensated by sharing the thoughts of someone trying to work an idea out. The author had translated Aristotle, and this may be the last book of scientific philosophy in that style of speculation without experimentation.
March 8, 2021
Many of you consider yourselves readers, but no one can call himself/herself a reader if they have not thoroughly made their way through this ergodic text. Consider the following inviting attributions which one will find in the course of a leisurely afternoon lakeside:
1. Citation: The author's analysis of H. Dreisch's teaching on Entelechy to the Lutheran reformer Melanchthon, page 5, "the soul is not a substance but an entelecheia" (using the Greek). This is congruent with Claude Bernard's "force vitale."
2. Citation: A reference, all to rare for those who love learning, to Lotka's Elements of Physical Biology from 1925.
3. Citation: Please be alert to Bridgeman's Dimensional Analysis, 2nd edition from 1931 in addition to F. W. Lanchester's remarkable but all but forgotten The Theory of Dimensions, 1936.
4. Citation: Who has not be able to order a copy of Carl L. Hubb's classic, "...remarks on the evolution of the flight of fishes with special observations in the lakes of Northern Michigan," 1933?
5. Figures: A table of data from Quetelet's Belgian data published in Essai de Physique Sociale, an epoch making book for a biologist. Here you will find information unsurpassed in regard to growth and development. According to Thompson this is the first of the "great essays in which social statistics and organic variation are dealt with from the point of view of mathematical probabilities." (see page 89 for more details).
6. Figure 7: Of great interest to biologist is the chart found on page 99 which highlights the growth of a French boy from the eighteenth century normally produced in Scammon's article published in the Journal of American Physical Anthropology, 1927.
7. Citation: Please refer to the author's use of Margaret Merrill's work in her "The Relationship of Individual to Average Growth," the third chapter of her Human Biology, found on pages 37-70, 1931.
8. Figures: Please enjoy the chart on page 103 "Relative Weight of American boys and girls, from Simmons and Todd's study, very careful measurements published in Growth, Volume 2, pages 93-133, in 1938.
1. Citation: The author's analysis of H. Dreisch's teaching on Entelechy to the Lutheran reformer Melanchthon, page 5, "the soul is not a substance but an entelecheia" (using the Greek). This is congruent with Claude Bernard's "force vitale."
2. Citation: A reference, all to rare for those who love learning, to Lotka's Elements of Physical Biology from 1925.
3. Citation: Please be alert to Bridgeman's Dimensional Analysis, 2nd edition from 1931 in addition to F. W. Lanchester's remarkable but all but forgotten The Theory of Dimensions, 1936.
4. Citation: Who has not be able to order a copy of Carl L. Hubb's classic, "...remarks on the evolution of the flight of fishes with special observations in the lakes of Northern Michigan," 1933?
5. Figures: A table of data from Quetelet's Belgian data published in Essai de Physique Sociale, an epoch making book for a biologist. Here you will find information unsurpassed in regard to growth and development. According to Thompson this is the first of the "great essays in which social statistics and organic variation are dealt with from the point of view of mathematical probabilities." (see page 89 for more details).
6. Figure 7: Of great interest to biologist is the chart found on page 99 which highlights the growth of a French boy from the eighteenth century normally produced in Scammon's article published in the Journal of American Physical Anthropology, 1927.
7. Citation: Please refer to the author's use of Margaret Merrill's work in her "The Relationship of Individual to Average Growth," the third chapter of her Human Biology, found on pages 37-70, 1931.
8. Figures: Please enjoy the chart on page 103 "Relative Weight of American boys and girls, from Simmons and Todd's study, very careful measurements published in Growth, Volume 2, pages 93-133, in 1938.
December 12, 2009
"On Growth and Form" is a brilliant piece of scientific literature written by a true renaissance man. This remarkably varied book describes the wondrous diversity of patterns we see in nature, yet helps us to see the unity in their origins, through detailed explanations of the simple, common rules that govern the development and structure of all living organisms.
Written in 1917, "On Growth and Form" was ahead of its time, and was surely a seminal piece in the development of complexity theory and the understanding of self-organizing systems.
I highly recommend this book for those who wish to better understand the unity that lies beneath the bewildering diversity in our natural world.
Written in 1917, "On Growth and Form" was ahead of its time, and was surely a seminal piece in the development of complexity theory and the understanding of self-organizing systems.
I highly recommend this book for those who wish to better understand the unity that lies beneath the bewildering diversity in our natural world.
Read
November 24, 2016This is one of the most beautifully written works of science that I have had the luxury of reading, the prose style comparable to Gould at his best but with some of the clarity of Dawkins. It is also lavishly illustrated. Unfortunately, the author seems to have been a bit of an evolution-sceptic, and while he does not come out and say so, it is indicated in the introduction that he intended his principles to stand as an alternative explanation for structures in nature.
Thompson's drive, however, is entirely in the spirit of legitimate scientific enquiry, in that he seeks to place the study of structures on a numeric basis. Just as equations can be written to plot the movements of the planets, so he hopes that the understanding of natural forms can be understood as an engineering discipline. He probably doesn't get everything right, but it is surprising how much ground he covers and just how many insights he delivers. From what I understand, much of his thinking has been absorbed into evo-devo and remains very relevant and useful. He never created a successful challenge to natural selection, in my opinion, but he certainly provides a basis for understanding some of its constraints.
One niggle: Thompson was of an age where classical learning could still be taken for granted, and a stylistic tripwire for the modern reader is that he speaks Latin, Greek, French, Italian, German and probably Martian, and liberally sprinkles the text with untranslated fragments of nearly all the above.
A must.
Thompson's drive, however, is entirely in the spirit of legitimate scientific enquiry, in that he seeks to place the study of structures on a numeric basis. Just as equations can be written to plot the movements of the planets, so he hopes that the understanding of natural forms can be understood as an engineering discipline. He probably doesn't get everything right, but it is surprising how much ground he covers and just how many insights he delivers. From what I understand, much of his thinking has been absorbed into evo-devo and remains very relevant and useful. He never created a successful challenge to natural selection, in my opinion, but he certainly provides a basis for understanding some of its constraints.
One niggle: Thompson was of an age where classical learning could still be taken for granted, and a stylistic tripwire for the modern reader is that he speaks Latin, Greek, French, Italian, German and probably Martian, and liberally sprinkles the text with untranslated fragments of nearly all the above.
A must.
April 27, 2011
A beautiful and bountiful book, I have spent many hours since reading it the first time just looking at the pictures.
August 6, 2012
I read the modern reprint by Dover. I highly recommend this classic book, but I also recommend anyone avoid the Canto abridged edition pictured here.
February 7, 2019
This is an abridged version; the 1942 edition is over a thousand pages. The editor has taken advantage of the abridgement to cut out passages he considers outdated. The book is apparently considered a classic of sorts; it deals with the growth and forms of living organisms, from microbial life to the bones and skeletons of larger animals in terms of mathematical and physical patterns. It was actually quite interesting; although the author occasionally engages in polemics against "natural selection" which he considers to be a catchphrase for ignoring the specific development of various organisms, the patterns he suggests actually can be explained in terms of modern genetics as differential rates of growth in the course of development and so on. Undoubtedly purely mechanical causes do explain much of morphology -- how else could the genome regulate so many different features? He deals mainly with math and physics, with much less chemistry than one would expect -- of course DNA was not yet identified as the genetic material, much less analyzed.
May 1, 2025
It seems to me after reading this book that evolution once was seen as purposefully working in ways which could be said to behave along the lines of the coordinates plotted by Cartesian geometry. For my next cycle through my devised reading schedule, I plan to read Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, which perhaps I should substitute with his book The Blind Watchmaker if I was truly serious about getting to the bottom on the evolutionary trajectory of the concept of evolution itself. If my heart ailment was more serious and involved an actual blockage of arteries, rather than a simple dysfunction of the electrical system of my heart, I would make the appropriate changes to my reading itinerary. Such as it is, I can bide my time and wait awhile, with the full faith and confidence that the relevant information will come my way, eventually. Three stars to this ambitious text by a British comparative biologist that attempted to adapt Darwin's hypotheses to the historical and fossil records of paleolithic zoological science.
Read
March 13, 2011A science classic. The meaning of form. Invention of chaos: A science masterpiece. Written during WWI, revised during WW2. An amazing amount of knowledge, viewed through the eyes of an incredibly perceptive scholar and scientist. Early 20th century writing style. Greek, Latin, French and German citations. From the prefatory note: "an easy introduction to the study of organic Form, by methods which are the common places of physical science, which are by no means novel in their application to natural history, but which nevertheless naturalists are little accustomed to employ." Thompson's theory of transformations is covered in the last chapter.
May 15, 2019
It is basically a Bible, a Holy Grail for the study of Morphogenesis and understanding the patterns in nature. It is poetic, it is almost mystical and religious, it is artistic, it is science, it talks about complexity, it is a masterpiece and it has been a compass for my passion in biologic design and nature geometry
December 26, 2025
"good literature as well as good science"
I GENUINELY think this one should be made compulsory for all engineers and scientists.
It very elegantly brings together a lot of concepts, their respective mathematical formulae, analogies and even a bit of their philosophy.
D'Arcy is such an icon for this. It's really beautiful work.🫰
I GENUINELY think this one should be made compulsory for all engineers and scientists.
It very elegantly brings together a lot of concepts, their respective mathematical formulae, analogies and even a bit of their philosophy.
D'Arcy is such an icon for this. It's really beautiful work.🫰
August 25, 2020
Never read end-to-end but have worked sections over the years. The conceit is remarkable -- applying mathematical language to the changes organic morphology over time and across species. A different kind of Origin Of The Species.
Read
October 16, 2010This is the classic on the subject
January 20, 2015
One of my double armful of totally mind blowing books on my shelves!
March 26, 2018
This may be the most monumental read of my adult life. This book is not for the faint of heart. But, oh, the miracle that is this book. The work is considered by many to be the greatest work of scientific literature of the 20th century.
One note: I read the abridged version which is a mere 321 pages in comparison to the 1100+ page full version. But as Stephen Jay Gould wrote in his jewel of an introduction:
"Much as it must pain any scholar and publisher of integrity to abridge such a work (for such an act does resemble the dissection of a body), one must not as Jesus told us, 'light a candle and then place it invisibly under a bush.' 'On Growth and Human Form' is one of the great lights of science (and of English prose); it must be available at an affordable price and a totable heft: 'Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works.'"
The overall coordinating theory: that form and growth follow physical forces is presented all the way from single celled protozoa through the largest mammals and man.
The last chapter, which is considered the most influential, is a joy and masterpiece.
The first edition of the book was published in 1914 and then update in the early 40's. So, the genetic revolution is not really what this book is about. Instead, it's about physics and engineering in the development of living organisms.
I will never again look at quadruped without thinking of bridges, cantilevers, and the bridge over the Firth of Forth. I will never again look at the skull of a mouse and then a human without thinking of warping systems of coordinates.
This book will be with me for the rest of my life.
One note: I read the abridged version which is a mere 321 pages in comparison to the 1100+ page full version. But as Stephen Jay Gould wrote in his jewel of an introduction:
"Much as it must pain any scholar and publisher of integrity to abridge such a work (for such an act does resemble the dissection of a body), one must not as Jesus told us, 'light a candle and then place it invisibly under a bush.' 'On Growth and Human Form' is one of the great lights of science (and of English prose); it must be available at an affordable price and a totable heft: 'Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works.'"
The overall coordinating theory: that form and growth follow physical forces is presented all the way from single celled protozoa through the largest mammals and man.
The last chapter, which is considered the most influential, is a joy and masterpiece.
The first edition of the book was published in 1914 and then update in the early 40's. So, the genetic revolution is not really what this book is about. Instead, it's about physics and engineering in the development of living organisms.
I will never again look at quadruped without thinking of bridges, cantilevers, and the bridge over the Firth of Forth. I will never again look at the skull of a mouse and then a human without thinking of warping systems of coordinates.
This book will be with me for the rest of my life.
February 7, 2019
This is an abridged version; the 1942 edition is over a thousand pages. The editor has taken advantage of the abridgement to cut out passages he considers outdated. The book is apparently considered a classic of sorts; it deals with the growth and forms of living organisms, from microbial life to the bones and skeletons of larger animals in terms of mathematical and physical patterns. It was actually quite interesting; although the author occasionally engages in polemics against "natural selection" which he considers to be a catchphrase for ignoring the specific development of various organisms, the patterns he suggests actually can be explained in terms of modern genetics as differential rates of growth in the course of development and so on. Undoubtedly purely mechanical causes do explain much of morphology -- how else could the genome regulate so many different features? He deals mainly with math and physics, with much less chemistry than one would expect -- of course DNA was not yet identified as the genetic material, much less analyzed.
March 2, 2023
Think of it like a bible - it's huge and I'm instantly skeptical of anyone who claims to have read it from front to back. It shows its age and could benefit from a modern scholar adding in some heavy footnotes and citations - but if anyone's going across the country tucking these into motel night stands I'll pitch a few bucks their way.
December 10, 2025
Not for me: misleadingly marketed. Not maths or science dressed up a literate way; just lots of maths and (a fair amount of) outdated science presented in pretty much the dry standard way that may turn people not of that bent off. Some parts of interest, but not enough to keep me engaged or keep reading.
October 2, 2025
Read the 300 pages abridged version of the book. It is certainly worth reading the full 1000 pages. Beautiful prose and elementary yet elegant math come together to describing incredible details of natural growth and associated form. The last chapter is absolutely beautiful.
July 1, 2021
Lovely renaissance age literature which is scientifically rigorous and thoroughly thought provoking.
December 15, 2022
The book is a recognition of modern science, being able to understand it from the first line of reading.
January 1, 2023
Absolutely informative!
Never going to look at spirals the same ever again.
We are one.
SPIRALLING.
Never going to look at spirals the same ever again.
We are one.
SPIRALLING.
May 13, 2024
SOME INTERESTING OBSERVATIONS.
March 3, 2025
I like meticulous details and D'arcy obliged. He dug deep.
June 13, 2025
Some quality science packed with interesting examples. Some easy reading parts and some quite dense parts, but in general not bad for a hundred year old science book I think.
Want to read
February 2, 2026Found in the "Scale" book and is mentioned by some as "the finist work of litature in all annals of science that have been rocrd in the English tongue" by Sir PEter Medawar
May 6, 2018
Really nice work on mathematical biology, must-read for everyone who wants to learn about patterns that emerge in Nature. On the whole, the book focuses on empirical and analytical studies of emergent biological phenomena.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews