Peter Randall-Page

On Theme and Variation by Peter Randall-Page, Volume 38, Number 1, March 2013, ISR Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, D’Arcy Thompson and his legacy, Philip Ball and Matthew Jarron. 

‘In this passage from the introduction to On Growth and Form, D.Arcy Thompson clearly sees himself as one of the .few.. At the same time, he reminds me that the search for community of principles or essential similitudes can also be applied to Darwin. Today it seems peculiar that until the mid-nineteenth century we thought of ourselves as unique creations and, as such, unrelated to the rest of the animal kingdom, despite our strikingly obvious physical similarities to other mammals. How, one is forced to wonder, could our forbears have imagined that we were not variations on an animal theme, and accordingly drawn conclusions about our place in the scheme of things? Perhaps they assumed that God’s plans fitted a certain template or perhaps similarities are invisible until we notice genuine differences. There is in any event something here of the blindness of hubris, as well as a perceived need to maintain distance between ourselves and lower forms of life. This human-centric frame of mind is conducive to a search for differences and fundamental contrasts. One could add the distinction between human and animal to Thompson.s list of opposites here’. You can read the full essay by clicking on the PDF link ABOVE.

Multiplication by Division – Sculptures in the studio