How does a living thing know what shape to take?
John Tyler Bonner’s 1952 essay examines the regularities of development and the physical and biological factors that guide pattern and form. This copy survives with its illustrated dust jacket and publisher ephemera.
The story
Every living thing grows into a shape of its own, and morphogenesis is the biologist’s word for how that form comes about. In 1952 John Tyler Bonner set out his thinking on it in what he called an essay on development. He looks for the regularities that hold across growth, at how pattern arises, and at the physical and biological forces that steer a living thing toward its form.
Numerous diagrams carry the argument, with examples taken from plants and from small organisms, and the book is an early contribution to the study of morphogenesis. Princeton University Press published it.
This copy is in the publisher’s green cloth and keeps its original green dust jacket, with its stylised branching design; the jacket is worn, chipped at the extremities and rubbed along the spine edge. The publisher’s printed information sheet is still loose inside. The leaves sampled are clean and look complete; there has been no full collation.
Details
- Date
- 1952
- Publisher
- Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey
- Binding
- cloth
- Condition
- Publisher green cloth in original green illustrated dust jacket, jacket worn with chipped extremities and spine edge rubbing. Publisher's printed informational insert present. Sampled leaves clean and complete-looking; no complete collation performed.