Field and Transformation in Relation to Biological Form

Ray Paton

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12775/ths.2008.010

Abstract


Ideas about field and transformation are especially important in modem physics and have also made an impact of biological thinking in various ways. The purpose of this paper is to look at some integrative ideas in biology that access field and transformational thinking, particularly in relation to form. The paper begins with a brief consideration of some philosophical schools of thought that may and do influence thinking about form. This is followed by a consideration of relations between field and form in the work of Gurwitsch and Thompson. Finally, Thompson’s transformational approach to comparative forms is considered with regard to interactions between biological forms and their environments.

Keywords


transformational thinking; biology; Thompson's transformational approach; biological form

Full Text:

PDF

References


Beloussov, L. V. (1997a). Life of Alexander G. Gurwitsch and his relevant contribution to the theory of morphogenetic fields. Int J Dev Biol 41, 6, 771-7.

Beloussov, L. V. (1997b). Morphogenetic Dynamics in Tissues: Expectations of Developmental and Cell Biologists, in Att, W., Deutsch, A. & Dunn, G.(eds) Dynamics of Cell and Tissue Motion, Birkhauser Verlag, 215-219.

Beloussov, L. V. (1998). Personal communication.

Bookstein, F. L. (1991). Morphometric Tools for Landmark Data: Geometry and Biology. N.Y., Cambridge Univ. Press. An overview of the approach can be found at URL http://life.bio.sunysb.edu/morph/glossary/

Capra, F. (1996). The Web of Life. London: HarperCollins.

Conrad, M. (1996). Cross-scale Information Processing in Evolution, Development and Intelligence, BioSystems, 38, 97-109.

Ehresmann, A. C. & Vanbremeersch, J-P. (1987). Hierarchical evolutive systems: mathematical model for complex systems. Bull. Math. Biol., 49, 1, 13-50.

Ehresmann, A. C (1997). Personal communication.

Gilbert, W. (1958). De Magnete translated and edited by P. Fleury Mottelay. New York, Dover.

Harre, R. (1986). Varieties of Realism: a Rationale for the Natural Sciences, Blackwell, Oxford.

Harre, R., (1988), Parsing the Amplitudes, in Brown, H. R. & Harre, R. (eds), Philosophical Foundations of Quantum Field Theory, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 59-71.

Harre, R. (1998). Personal communication.

Hesse, M. (1961), Forces and Fields A Study of Action at a Distance in the History of Physics, London: Thomas Nelson and Sons.

Igamberdiev, A. U. (1999), Foundations of Metabolic Organisation: Coherence as a Basis of Computational Properties in Metabolic Networks, BioSystems, 50, 1-16.

Lenoir, T. (1987). Goethe’s biological thought, in: Amrine, F, Zucker, F. J. & Wheeler, H. (eds), Goethe and the Sciences: a Reappraisal, pp. 17-28. Dordrecht, D. Reidel.

Matsuno, K. & Paton, R.C. (2000), Is there a Biology of Quantum Information, BioSystems.

Maxwell, J. C. (1982). A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field, edited and introduced by T. F. Torrance. Edinburgh, Scottish Academic Press.

Medawar, P. B. (1947). Size, shape and age, in Le Gros Clark, W. E. & Medawar, P. B. (eds), Essays on Growth and Form. Oxford, Clarendon Press.

Medawar, P. B. (1982). D’Arcy Thompson and Growth and Form, in: Pluto’s Republic, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 228-241. This article was first published in 1958.

Miller, A. I. (1996). Insights of Genius, Imagery and Creativity in Science and Art. Copernicus: NY.

Needham, J. (1934). Chemical Heterogony and the Ground-Plan of Animal Growth, Biol. Rev., 9, 79-109.

Needham, J. (1968). Biochemical Aspects of Form and Growth, in Whyte, L. L. (ed) op. cit., 77-90.

Paton., R. C. (1992). Towards a Metaphorical Biology. Biology and Philosophy 7, 279- -294.

Paton, R. C. (1H97). Glue, Verb and Text Metaphors in Biology. Acta Biotheoretica 45, 1-15.

Paton, R. C. (2000). Systemic Metaphor and Integrative Biology, Theoria et Historia Scientiarum, in press.

Piaget, J. (1991 ). Structuralism, RKP: London.

Roehe, J. J. (1993). The Semantics of Graphics in Mathematical Natural Philosophy, in Mazzolini, R. G. (ed), Non verbal Communication in Science Prior to 1900, Firenze: L. S. Olschki.

Rosen, R. (1967). Optimality in Biology, London: Butterworths.

Rosen, R. (1991). Life Itself, NY: Columbia University Press.

Seigel, A. F. & Benson, R. H. (1982). A Robust Comparison of Shapes, Biometrics, 38, 341350.

Spemann, H. (1938). Embryonic Development and Induction, Yale University Press. Strómberg, G. (1942). Coherence in the physical world, Phil, of Science, 9, 4, 323-334.

Thompson, D’Arcy W. (1942). On Growth and Form. A New Edition. University Press:Cambridge University Press. Also the 1992 Canto edition with Cambridge University Press.

Webster, G. & Goodwin, B. C. (1996). Form and Transformation Generative and Relational Principles in Biology. Cambridge: CUP.

Welch, G. R. (1992). An analogical field construct in cellular biophysics: history and present status. Prog. Biophys. molec. Biol. 57: 71-128.

Whyte, L. L. (ed) (1968). Aspects of Form: a Symposium on Form in Nature and Art. Second Edition, London: Lund Humphries.

Young, J. Z. (1978). Programs of the Brain. Oxford: OUP.


Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Bookmark and Share



ISSN 2392-1196 (online)

Partnerzy platformy czasopism