The book biologists hate to read but love to cite

[@alistairmackintosh9412]

I read a description of the book, and the writer said "The book is essentially wrong, but it is wrong in a very interesting way".

[@midshipman8654]

I think that's the case for a lot of fundamental works in various fields. Though personally I would say flawed more than wrong. Often a field changes quite a bit over time, but the initial questions raised and the pathways explored are still very much of interest and iterated upon. if not repeating often rhyming those starting blocks of intuition.

[@redx11x]

Why is it wrong?

[@derpz_]

​@@midshipman8654agree. People mistake science as black and white

[@CoronaLisaa]

What do you mean "why is it wrong?" did you not watch the entire video? The book is clearly flawed and/or wrong in many areas.@@redx11x

[@darealrulezbreaker9493]

@@redx11x I mean the basic idea/principle of the book is clearly not wrong, because a lot of shapes and structures in nature ARE defined by physics and mathematics and we know that today. But it seems what the original comment meant is that the book is wrong about a lot of the details in some areas. That doesn't mean the book in general is wrong about everything tho so i think its poorly worded.

[@24680kong]

During my graduate research, one paper was cited by basically everyone in the field, because it was the "first" on the topic, so I wanted to include it as well. One problem: the original was in French and all the papers I read were English. "That's fine", I thought, "I'm sure someone's translated". But I couldn't find an English translation (only the original in French). So I asked my school's research library to search for it (they can call up other university libraries in the world and ask for pdf scans). After months, they couldn't find an English translation either. So I'm pretty sure the hundreds of papers that cited it never read the original paper! That's quite poor practice!

[@garrettw6532]

Some of them may have done that, but it's also possible many of those authors just know French.

[@LegendaryWizardPS]

Did you maybe consider the fact that some people can speak French

[@Kodizm]

During undergrad, I heard a similar story about a math paper. The article was written by someone from Georgia (the country) in their native language of Georgian. The author then did a talk about it in English at an international mathematical conference. Someone who attended this talk then cited one of the theorems in their research. People then read this research and cited the same theorem until tens of papers relied on research that was only available in the Georgian language. Eventually, the University of Georgia had to be contacted for assistance in translating the original paper to ensure that it really proved what tens of subsequent papers claimed it did. This might just be one of those stories that gets passed around academia but I thought it was pretty funny

[@targitausrithux2320]

@@LegendaryWizardPSI doubt he was the only one who didn’t know French… it’s poor practice absolutely

[@jchen8942]

​@@garrettw6532the problem isn't that none of the people read the papers, it was that basically everyone cited it, but the paper is so prevalently cited that there is no way that many researchers read the paper. And having a significant portion of researchers in the field not read that paper is an alarming problem

[@theobolt250]

The honeycombe cells start perfectly circular. Due to the development of the comb, which also results in increasing pressure on the outer sides of the cells, the hexagonal form developes, which sees to it that evenly divided pressure also results in the most economical use of space and a very strong, durable structure overall.

[@seanrowshandel1680]

Yeah, but the fact that the scientist is wrong every so often makes it possible for other people to actually believe that they can become scientists as well. The problem, though, is that ONE SCIENTIST was supposed to GET THE JOB DONE so that we wouldn't be FACING THE SAME HORIZON which we were facing BEFORE SCIENCE BEGAN. Any detective would agree. Not to mention that the M**** Carta ruined everything and the scientist who wrote the book was just trying to see How Much His Writing Could Hurt Lamarck (and then laugh because "humans are so weak that they can die without being physically attacked".

[@JKa244]

Slow-cooling liquid basalts also form vertical hexagonal prisms because of the even thermal contraction. Not all of the cells are perfect hexagons but the closer you get to the center of a single pool the better they get

[@TheAgamemnon911]

(X)doubt

[@justADeni]

@@TheAgamemnon911 there's nothing to doubt... bees build honeycombs out of round tubes but if you squish bunch of tubes together, they will converge into hexagons. Because hexagons are the bestagons

[@TheAgamemnon911]

@@justADeni Yeah, each sounds plausible. But the conclusion of throwing them together is complete BS. Honeycombs are not pressurized.

[@MrPatschen]

Another underrated biology book about neuroscience is the Tree of Knowledge by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela

[@Kitsaplorax]

Varela and Maturana are under appreciated. So is Mauss, whose work "The Gift" is fundamental to understanding societies. Mauss researched and wrote this after his experiences in WWI. Context matters a lot in scientific research and writing.

[@leonstenutz6003]

Thank you both. Had not heard of Maus.

[@nlald]

Francisco Valera is such a legend.

[@sergiuszstrzelczyk7984]

ohmygod yes

[@jmmrcriss]

Being a Chilean Biologist myself, I truly consider the work of Maturana and Varela as groundbreaking. However, I've never liked their writing style. They wrote more like philosophers than like biologists, too wordy and not necessarily clear.

[@Kitsaplorax]

Thanks for bringing this book out into modern daylight. Ernst Haeckel. "Art Forms of Nature" is a sort of precursor, though Haeckel wrote decades before. I've had Haeckel on my shelf for decades. It is sobering to realize that all authors in any field of study will have holes poked into their ideas in a half century or less.

[@seanrowshandel1680]

This is about how Lamarck prepared us for a An Infinite Future of Genetic Engineering, and you all sociopathically threw our futures ("our brains") in the garbage disposal when you sided with D'Arcy Thompson. Darwin was "unique" because he resorted to becoming a reformist of CHRISTIANITY (he was super Xtian and tried to do his work within the paradigm of Xtianity) due to him being fed up with the post-M** Carta strife -- which eventually killed him -- yes, he DEFINITELY died from being drowned in the Suffocating atmosphere of that "world" JUST to be able to convince himself that he'd made a coherent statement Once In His Life which might Actually Reach Anyone Else Whom He Would Have Considered Human. In other words, he was too scared to be a detective, but he dreamed of being "more than a" victim of the M** Carta. D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson was, specifically, an anti-Lamarckist. He pioneered the irritating way which most "scientists" nowadays seem to claim that every [new] aspect of Phenotype exists for a "utilitarian 'Purpose' [for which Each Aspect of Phenotype was ostensibly '*PRE-destined*' to take the form of Something Which Is Being Integrated Into The Phenotype of an Organism throughout any portion of its mortal life, in order to 'task the organism with' being occupied with 'self-awareness', in That regard, for the duration of the organism's lifespan']". In other words, the M** Carta ruined the world, and Thompson shouldn't have been taught how to read. He wanted "to leave some footprints behind after he died". To be honest, Lamarck was the last guy who ever stood up for me.

[@Leadvest]

Postulate, and iterate! Communicate, and collaborate! Some scientists are like Bernoulli's family arguing like wild dogs, others like Euler quiet and dimure. It takes all types to address every angle of a problem.

[@seanrowshandel1680]

Edit this: This is about how Lamarck prepared us for a An Infinite Future of Genetic Engineering, and you all sociopathically threw our futures ("our brains") in the garbage disposal when you sided with D'Arcy Thompson. Darwin was "unique" because he resorted to becoming a reformist of CHRISTIANITY (he was super Xtian and tried to do his work within the paradigm of Xtianity) due to him being fed up with the post-M** Carta strife -- which eventually killed him -- yes, he DEFINITELY died from being drowned in the Suffocating atmosphere of that "world" JUST to be able to convince himself that he'd made a coherent statement Once In His Life which might Actually Reach Anyone Else Whom He Would Have Considered Human. In other words, he was too scared to be a detective, but he dreamed of being "more than a" victim of the M** Carta. D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson was, specifically, an anti-Lamarckist. He pioneered the irritating way which most "scientists" nowadays seem to claim that every [new] aspect of Phenotype exists for a "utilitarian 'Purpose' [for which Each Aspect of Phenotype was ostensibly '*PRE-destined*' to take the form of Something Which Is Being Integrated Into The Phenotype of an Organism throughout any portion of its mortal life, in order to 'task the organism with' being occupied with 'self-awareness', in That regard, for the duration of the organism's lifespan']". In other words, the M** Carta ruined the world, and Thompson shouldn't have been taught how to read. He wanted "to leave some footprints behind after he died". To be honest, Lamarck was the last guy who ever stood up for me. @@Leadvest

[@Leadvest]

​@@seanrowshandel1680 Rock on dude, Lamarck's idea of applying erosion to biology is very creative. Funny that he and Mendel were both alive during the 1820s. I have heard people talk about biology that way, but I've also heard people on several occasions describe biological processes as successful rather than efficient. The old blood will eventually run as thin as it is cold, just give it time.

[@dylanb2990]

@@seanrowshandel1680why are you censoring Magna Carta? This whole thing sounds downright deranged.

[@zacharymorris6918]

Was not expecting to see the mini biography of my dissertation advisor (Dr. Arkhat Abzhanov) in the first minute of the video, but I am excited to see someone else appreciating this foundational text for quantitative studies of anatomy, ontogeny, and evolution!

[@mikemcguire1160]

This is a splendid short exposition of Thomson's work. He did have contemporaries. A notable one was "The Curves of Life" by Theodore Andrea Cooke published in 1914.

[@quintessenceSL]

This to me is the best kind of science/philosophy (in the rudimentary observe and hypothesize that lays the foundations)- that which gives you new, useful frameworks to think about things. The particulars may not always be correct, but it at least points to the questions to ask.

[@craigcook9715]

Science (in the Western world, at least) derives from what was called "Natural Philosophy". I am interested in the intersection of philosophy and science (in this case, neuroscience) based on the works of Maurice Merleau-Pony, particularly Phenomenology of Perception (his magnum opus).

[@kxs7267]

Thank you for this beautifully-formed trip down memory lane. My father, who was a medical consultant, introduced me to this book when I was in my teens. He would have loved the possibilities offered by computer modelling of these ideas. I hadn't thought of it in decades but now I have to go and find a digital copy...

[@cbooth2004]

It is in print right now via Dover Books.

[@kxs7267]

@@cbooth2004 thanks for that! I actually found several versions on Kindle, but if anyone else is interested, watch out for dud versions, check the number of pages. I picked one that's the original 1917 edition, and despite being really cheap, all 1000+ pages seem present and correct - including diagrams and hyperlinked footnotes - so all credit to the publisher.

[@ryanjbuchanan]

This is a phenomenal treatise, with some magnificent illustrations. I can see why this book took 30 years to write. Thanks for shining a light on this, cheers Tibees!~

[@phy6geniuxYTcreations]

As a physics grad student, this book made me interested more in biology.

[@thepracticalgymnast8001]

Biology gaaaaaaang

[@cady3987]

i am not a biologist, mathematician, or a physicist, or even trying to be one, but this video fascinated me and kept me interested the whole time. it was wonderful learning about a book that inspired so many people and modern research

[@UCKY5]

Thanks for the summary, now I too will be able to reference this book without having read it

[@HansLemurson]

I remember seeing that diagram of the fish; warped, stretched, and scaled; in a book about biology I had as a kid called "The Way Life Works"

[@CoronaLisaa]

When i watched this video i felt shivers, though, it's not cold where i am. I love learning, and this video gave me excitement shivers. Sometimes i wish i could be immortal so that i could study every subject and "learn everything." I just want to thank you for the joy this video has brought to my day.

[@astropgn]

I really hated when I learned that academics don't read their citations. When I wrote my first paper I had like 8-9 references from the articles I read to base my own. Then I sent it to my professor and he returned it with 55 citations and a very well written abstract. I was like "omg, he knows so much!!". Years go by and I noticed that some of the papers he cited on his papers are from prestigious articles in the field that he knows about, but some papers he never read. I was never too comfortable doing this, but later I had to, otherwise the PI would return the draft saying there is not enough references.

[@carimeslockdownedtree2654]

Oh I didn't know that. That sucks to see, honestly.

[@FemboyHasu]

2:11 i remember salvador dali was fascinated by these "crowns" as he called them! He drew them a lot! That's just goes to show how much thought went into these paintings.

[@bryanmcdermott4204]

Thank you for a succinct video on a weighty tome. I applaud anyone asking hard questions. Maybe a hypothesis is true, or perhaps it is false, but progress is only made when everything is questioned.

[@4d879]

It’s great to see an elegantly-edited video on this book. Honestly, even if you think Thompson went “too far” in challenging natural selection, he was one of the first to comprehensively and persuasively highlight natural selection’s immense difficulties in providing persuasive accounts of the development of distinct forms (while also offering a thoughtful alternative proposition for form development). 100+ years later, this problem has become central for biology. Much cutting-edge work in biology today (in complexity theory, or morphogenetic studies, for instance) is attempting to deal precisely with the kind of questions and critiques Thompson introduced, and their own answers are often inspired by Thompson’s work.

[@keiyakins]

While I'm just a curious outsider with the benefit of a century of other people's work, I see them as more complementary explanations than competing? Math and physics tells us a lot about what is "easy" to construct using iterative growth processes, and what those shapes can hold up against. It also lets us figure out how to maximize certain properties within certain constraints. At the same time, something needs to be allowing biology to explore that space to figure out the right forms for a given environmental niche... and natural selection provides that. They explain different *parts* of why things are the way they are. Darwin's birds had to grow those beaks somehow, after all, and they had to withstand forces.

[@4d879]

You can certainly see them as complementary, though some see them as competing. My point was just that natural selection *on its own* (or natural selection accompanied solely by genes, as in neodarwinism) has had great difficult accounting for morphogenesis, and that Thompson was one of the first to highlight these difficulties (at a time when it was not popular to do so). Personally, I think it makes a lot of sense to see natural selection and genes operating alongside other morphogenetic mechanisms to produce natural forms and species!

[@pedro4205]

@@4d879 I don't know where you took that from, we currently do study forms and since the beginnings evolution can do so. One of the classics in this regard is the Xanthopan moth. Darwin was asked to discover what kind of insect could be using this plant. He described the moth by the shape of the flower, decades later the moth was found. Evolution convergence is also a really old aspect of evolution and can be used to predict a shape. The author was just taking consequences as the cause.

[@drew1564]

Nice video! You might be interested to know that there are tons of books like this in the social sciences/humanities. You will find authors like Geertz, Foucault, Derrida, and so many others referenced countless times, but most citing scholars will only give it a cursory read, as there's simply not enough time to do a deep-dive into their work.

[@johnopalko5223]

I've read Foucault. The only thing I garnered was the man had an unhealthy obsession with prisons.

[@faithlesshound5621]

It's de rigeur to cite one of the "Four French Frauds" if you want to be credible yourself.

[@pleaseenteranamelol711]

Why bother reading? We're all just making shit up anyway. The only thing you learn from other people is what they're thinking. Which often isn't worth learning about.

[@lollertoaster]

@@johnopalko5223 Faucault was making a point about society's obsession with prisons and other normative practices.

[@dihexa7256]

I refuse to believe that anyone in history has ever actually read all 10 000+ incredibly dull pages of Das Kapital, even Marx died before he finished writing the whole thing, and that’s not even getting started all the other loooong books of Marxist theory that people pretend to have read. Postmodernists also quote Lacan like his words are holy scripture lol

[@artemisiaabsinthium1794]

A similar biology/maths cross-disciplinary book is Schroedinger's What Is Life, where he uses mathematical principles to theorise what the molecular structure of genetic material might be (ie what was later discovered to be DNA). Truly mind-bending to see how much of the complexity of life can be explained by mathematical rules!

[@mildlymarvelous]

This is an excellent quality video! The calm narration, the background music, the footage selected, and above all the interesting and thought-provoking topic!

[@Aura-Of-Syrinx]

I could smell the book each time you turned the page.

[@resinks2269]

I remember we learned about this book as an example of how arguments from analogy can be very appealing while being flawed

[@Chiemat]

I think right now is hard to underestimate this work. I think after my chemistry degree I also started to notice how some symmetry or energetic principles can influence on more comlex systems such as organisms.

[@ripme6616]

If they are going to take pages out what's stopping them putting pages in... This is one man's life work!

[@masterofthemoose1712]

just came to say that your soothing speaking voice and obvious passion for biology make your videos compelling even to someone unfamiliar with the field. Top notch stuff

[@Baddaby]

The same can be said for primer and PCR references No one reads the basis for the 16S and COI gene primers classical papers, and I know they don't because it's nearly impossible to find them. Nevertheless, they each gather more than 10k citations

[@faithlesshound5621]

That's going to be a problem if your departmental librarian throws out anything that's more than ten years old. A book more than 100 years old would have been binned in the 1980's or 90's and only get back in if it was republished in paperback.

[@Baddaby]

@@faithlesshound5621 that's not even the problem Those references are from the early 90's, but not preserved in accessible PDF's for some reason

[@maythesciencebewithyou]

That`s because you are expected to cite the original work and not work that has built on it. In most cases, there is absolutely no need to read those old papers and books. Knowedge has advanced much further in biology. In Physics, there are old papers that are still relevant and worth reading, but not so much in Biology. Not many biologists today have read Darwin`s "on the origin of species" and they don`t have to. We have a much better understanding of Evolution today. Some of the stuff has become common knowledge and you don´t really have to city stuff that is common knowledge anymore, but some people still do.

[@alanjones5639]

Thank you for your very helpful summary of Thompson's important ideas as well as his limitations. I look forward to assimilating your other efforts.

[@blah7983]

He basically predicted evolutionary developmental biology with the spirals chapter. He was _really_ close for somebody with limited or nonexistent experimental evidence

[@Eftkud]

As a Biologist, I believe that Thompson just needed the missing link of proteins and genes to realise that his ideas were not in the wrong track (for example the way the shell grows) and could work perfectly under a darwinian model of evolution

[@zacharymorris6918]

This is a wonderful summary of the work and importance of Thompson’s ideas, but I will add one point that was missed. “On Growth and Form” is a foundational book for the entire field of geometric morphometrics (GM), which applies his ideas in a modern and quantitative framework. If you want to study how an organism changes shape across development or how groups of organisms have evolved anatomical differences, GM is a critical tool to visualize, quantify, and test for the significance of differences in shape. For modern evolutionary anatomists, this is equivalent in importance as Darwin’s or Mendel’s ideas to biology more widely. This is my own research field, so I’m excited to see more people talking about this book!

[@DrGBhas]

Awesome. Please write a book on this topic so that people like me, who are not mathematicians , can also dwell in the joy of this knowledge of geometric morphometrics.

[@SignsBehindScience]

As soon as I saw this book's description, I was immediately appealed to read it completely ... but I'll just cite it

[@developsome209]

Yup, immediately knew which one the Tibees was talkin' about, before the title was revealed. It just had to be the one : that stands out like a mountain, few people have ever climbed. I tried, but it grew kinda dense on me. But, someday i'll tackle it again.

[@christophercooper6731]

Yup, that's the big-head yup. Yup, yup, yup.

[@markholm7050]

Harold Edgerton’s milk drop coronet photo is dated 1936. Thompson could not have included it in the first edition of his book. In 1917, when the book was published, Edgerton was 14 years old.

[@tibees2]

the physical book shown here is not the first edition, but you can see the first edition online (public domain link in description)

[@paperheartzz]

The music is magical with this. Great choice, feels like an adventure!

[@josgibbons6777]

I think there are two points at risk of conflation here: the extent to which pan-adaptationism has alternatives, and the extent to which biological phenomena admit mathematizable explanations. And it's important to know natural selection is as mathematized as anything else now.

[@nathan_gk]

This is such a well produced video. A lot of comments about the book but the editing really makes this very captivating, there's really challenging ideas being illustrated here

[@johnleake5657]

Oh, as a Classicist I _love_ D'Arcy Thompson. I have a copy of his _Glossary of Greek Birds,_ a book sought after among Classicists. A man with many a string to his bow!

[@davidloewen5528]

If I could’ve seen this video in high school, I would’ve understood what a book report was supposed to be.

[@degu44]

I am a collector of scientific books and after seeing this video ordered a copy of this book for my library. How had I not heard of it before? We stand on the shoulders of those who came before and prove or disprove their theories to advance our knowledge. While this is not the final destination it shows the road that led to the understandings we have today and was very advanced for its time.

[@roderic3261]

that sets an intriguing question about how likely other lifeforms in distant planets would have to develop similar shapes and thus, niches and ecosystems akin to those found on Earth. Perhaps life cannot express in many other different ways than the ones that already happened here because Physics conditions them more than we think

[@bushra2179]

I mine paper for references and follow up on them to get the details I need... more than once there's been something cited and I can't find where in the cited text they got their information

[@Roxanne-d5t]

The spirit, the will to win, and the will to excel, are the things that endure. These qualities are so much more important than the events that occur.

[@jonathanrouse]

Surprise encounter of hexagons being bestagons! CGP Grey would be proud.

[@ewthmatth]

12:03 "wolfram's work on cellular automata, which is a simulation project about how cells behave" I can't tell if you're describing cellular automata in general or just Wolfram's work on cellular automata. Either way, the description is way off. Yes they were named after biological "cells" originally but that wasn't their purpose back then, and even today. Biology is just a fraction of what cellular automata are applied to.

[@soup409]

As a glassblower I approve this message.

[@ssvemuri]

Books of this stature are a bibliophile's dream. Excellent video.

[@sampsqwantch4612]

youtube reeeeally wants me to watch this ive been getting this recommended to me for actually months

[@agranero6]

2:15 how those pictures were taken in 1917? Films were not very sensitive at that time to capture so short moments. Probably a very bright light source like nitrocellulose, magnesium, aluminium powder, or even an arc lamp, i bet on the latest as you would not need to sync the flash.

[@chiedzawith2ds]

I love how I already know what book the title is refering to.

[@mr.metaphysic1336]

Very interesting! I think this work could also have inspired Mandelbrot for his ideas of fractal geometry, as the idea of creating compexity by repeating simple patterns is quite present here.

[@sectec25blog]

Curiously enough, its not mentioned on his autobiography.

[@hedgehog3180]

It's not like Mandelbrot invented fractals.

[@mr.metaphysic1336]

@@hedgehog3180 Who said that?

[@JKa244]

The spiral thing reminds me of building a spiral compass ... Instead of unmoving arms to draw a circle, the center point is a cone or cylinder with string wound around it. The far end of the string with a pencil draws the spiral, which forms as the string winds or unwinds from the center post

[@ineedtoeatcake]

Wow I'm going to buy that book. I started out as a biology major and then became a physics major. This book is fantastic! 😁

[@dennisivanov6584]

W major to L major

[@ceeemm1901]

It's online as free pdf.

[@uIteriormotives]

I started as a physics major and now I'm a biology major!!!!

[@pritamraghuvanshi450]

​@@uIteriormotivesL major to W major

[@Quasihamster]

"We're all just frozen electricity." forgot where I got that from.

[@cinnasauria]

Ohhhh, my high school biology textbook used excerpts and some of the images from this book! I'm sure it was cited in the back but I'm only now realizing this and it's really interesting to see.

[@lalitathithyan7645]

Thank you so much for the overview of the book and the history. Deeply insightful.

[@zmani4379]

Fascinating video - it makes me want to seek out this book - there's something almost viscerally satisfying, conceptually and aesthetically, about the way Thompson sets out to systematically explore and visualize these shared patterns in unfolding processes - from the video, this reaction of Thompson to Darwin seems to me to echo the response of Jung to Freud - Thompson challenging Darwin's exclusive focus on Natural Selection, like Jung questioned Freud's focus on the Libido

[@SadgeZoomer]

You mentioned there are better books on the overview of biological processes and evolution, could you please share their names?

[@mertgokgoz4073]

Waiting here for responses

[@aflow-]

The Vital Question by Nick Lane: This book explores the origin and evolution of life, focusing on the role of energy and metabolism in shaping the diversity and complexity of living systems.

[@mertgokgoz4073]

@@aflow- thanks

[@cbooth2004]

The books on evo-devo by biologist Sean Carroll (same name as the physicist, but a different person), intended for non-scientists, are very readable and are captivating and informative. _Endless Forms Most Beautiful_ might be a good place to look. His _The Making of the Fittest_, which he wrote later, would be a good follow-up.

[@eastofthegreenline3324]

A wonderful introduction (and invitation) to this book.

[@edgeeffect]

Speaking as someone who spent a big chunk of the 1990s playing with L-systems and IFS fractals.... a lot of what's in this book is sort-of "obvious" ;) I've got to see if I can get a copy.

[@joseraulcapablanca8564]

This is a wonderful book, I had seen it mentioned so many times in other books. I just had to read it. Quite difficult to read but worth the effort. The pictures are fantastic too. Thanks.

[@leapfrogkate]

thanks for introducing me to this book! i am absolutely enamored by the contents you spoke about. i am awful at physics and math, but am incredibly fascinated with the concept of it being so much more intertwined with our observable nature than i realized. of course it’s all theories, but how incredibly fun it is to think about and notice anyways.

[@djoverkin]

I think the main takeaway from this is that enduring structures, be they bioogical or not, are enduring precisely because they take a form that minimizes internal stress. I've noticed this too during a short stint studying Crystalography - their structures and defects follow many of the same rules living tissue does. Atomic interactions favour certain structures' longevity, which in turn favour certain celular structures' longevity and so on...

[@parrotraiser6541]

It's a mistake to excise mistaken sections of books like that. They should include the original mistakes with notes about subsequent corrections.That helps both the historical record and the work's overall credibility. I had a great lesson in the mathematical development of shapes from a lecture about planarian worms, with a lot of cross-sections. It taught me that cabbages and worms have very similar when cutin half.

[@Genevie-l2n]

Even though he thought the world was flat he didn’t see the irony of wanting to travel around the world.

[@Xanchong]

where did you the get pig to human illustration from?

[@sasho_b.]

This reminds me of the book "1984" by Gorge Orwell. No, i havent read it, but i imagine this is what the book is like.

[@TheThreatenedSwan]

Underappreciated book. Most people engage in the kind of semantic shift in deference to power with no self awareness as described in the book and no thought to the material effect their words will have

[@itzakehrenberg3449]

It's an easy read, so read it.

[@ChristopheStrobbe]

You haven't read "1984"?? The book is so famous they named an entire year after it!

[@marleneg.7128]

Thank you. When I was a child I saw the patterns of certain insects while flying. Now it makes sense.

[@th4tw3irdg1rl]

the scope of the book is so large that I'm not surprised that it gets cited a lot. A lot of people working on a lot of different things can find something relevant in there for them to cite.

[@T121T]

@4:10 Good 4 minutes, now I can start citing it in my pay-pah's

[@bloodlove93]

that part about the water drop brought back an old memory, in my young teens when camping with friends at a lake, i had decided to go swimming, in the middle of swimming the dark suddenly went dark,then right after it started raining, i was neck deep and just floating there,staring in front where it was countless hundreds of thousands of that same effect, i just stayed there staring I'm not sure how long, everything seemed so incredibly slow and precise. thinking back, i miss that day...no,those moments, minutes? hours? idk it doesn't matter.

[@ouioui4136]

Sierpinski’s triangle at 12:03?

[@mineown1861]

Love the book , my brother gave me a copy for giving a helping hand with his architecture finals. Fascinating would be my one word summation .

[@superslash7254]

The only two reasons that matter are "credentialism" and "publish or perish". Every year academia cranks out an ever greater number of people whose entire careers, such as they are, depend on publishing an ever growing number of articles that must meet an ever growing demand for citation and influence. The natural result of this is the extraordinary inflation of bibliographies and publication from a means to an end unto themselves. Even a short paper from a student these days isn't accepted unless it's got dozens to hundreds of "citations". Journals have gone from repositories of scientific practice and investigation results to a culture of circular citations designed to prop up each others' careers while also manufacturing and enforcing ideological orthodoxy. This is why it's trivial to publish even outright word salad so long as it superficially sounds like it's making the right political genuflections.

[@chayanika8155]

Thank you! Your videos are always so fascinating and inspirational!

[@tagscientist]

If you ask people "who invented Polyacrylamide Gel Electrophoresis for protein separation" most people cite Laemmli, but if fact all he did was put SDS in it. The original paper was by Ornstein and Davis. (Edit spelling).

[@violetbob694]

4:09 another reason why hexagons are the bestagons

[@peoplesrepublicofliberland5606]

In Political Science we have one, it's called the Communist Manifesto. No one reads it, everyone uses it for citations

[@108u9]

The lesson here and perhaps the irony is that often we see what we want to see. Ironic in that in citing and trying to push back against a “Darwinist only” view, the author fell in love with the “mathematics” view and only saw things the way he wanted. When we force numbers and number patterns upon things, it’s easy to begin to see that it all lines up. It’s just like how we start to want to believe that “the universe is trying to send us signals”. It’s compelling and exciting. But it’s also only just a story. It made sense that he was self taught and really more a mathematician than a scientist, given he doesn’t seem to adhere to the scientific method. Do admire his conviction to have wanted to share his ideas and good that at least in later editions, for whatever reasons or motivations by whoever, at least some incorrect assertions were removed and that it wasn’t a continued insistence even in the face of the evidence otherwise. Ultimately the author I suppose is deeply human like any one of us. That we “need” (not in a way as we “need” water but that it fosters human wellbeing) meaning, meaningfulness.

[@philipplyanguzov9090]

Absolutely loved this video, I've just started reading this book and am finding it really fascinating in large part due to my interests in the mathematical side of biology.

[@Dacronhai]

I'm taking a facultative course in biophysics for my biology bachelor and it's very interesting, sadly they're gonna scrap the course after this semester

[@adseri]

I commend the author of those hand-drawn pictures. Nowadays we use computers for that in sciences but the past art of drawing complicated technical pictures is no longer practiced, maybe with the exception of basics taught in engineering schools. But I doubt anyone living today would be capable of creating pictures like in 4:58. No wonder it took the author 30 years.

[@shivakorn]

Simply beautiful... thanks for the effort put in making this video...

[@J4-kjtdr8775]

It's amazing how the universe copies itself symmetrically in so many ways here on earth almost like a controlled entropy that's started from a perfect split long ago

[@ifrimvictor]

on the minds that were inspired, we can count also mandelbrot, who pushed the study of patterns even further and now has numerous citations on his own.

[@cybervigilante]

Damn, the author was not only brilliant but a hell of a hard worker.

[@adamswierczynski]

In Kabbalah, there is an understanding that there are 4 realms of "intelligence of life". The first level is that of the mineral or basic elements; it is responsible for structure. Next is plant, plant introduces the "intelligence" of growth and reproduction; the simplest plant would be plankton as it gathers nutrition from minerals and uses sunlight to produce it's food. Growth and reproduction allows for the "intelligence" of structure to undergo various iterations for maximum benefit to further growth and reproduction. Next is animal, and it adds a level of mobility and emotion to the "intelligence" of structure, growth, and reproduction. Emotion and mobility adds a level of psychosocial influence to the "intelligence" of growth and reproduction as seen in mammalian proto-social hierarchies and migration influencing the next generation. Humans possess the 4th level of "intelligence" in the form of metacognitive awareness of structure, growth, reproduction, mobility, and emotion to make meaningful, voluntary changes to the world.

[@One-bs4os]

7:29 whats this animal called?

[@aruthorcarly]

Narwhal

[@Bloink]

I loved this video! Very well done and lovely!

[@Mortimer-f1t]

Being unacquainted with the chief raccoon was harming his prospects for promotion.

[@wellesradio]

I love this video. I love this channel. I really like your first channel, but I absolutely love this one.

[@hyperdude144]

What's the name of the music????

[@gtd9536]

Reminds me of what my mathematical logic professor said about Principia Mathematica by Whitehead. "Every mathematician knows about this book and cites it in their class, but no one actually read it."

[@Butschrick]

My mind is blown, thank you for sharing this knowledge.

[@laka1469]

This is beautiful. Really makes me look at animals in a different way

[@Tadfafty]

For some reason, I did not expect this to be a book I had.

[@os2171]

For sure biology must obey physics and chemistry patterns . That doesn’t mean that those patterns don’t follow natural selection. Actually, it’s because it follows physics and chemistry that are fixed in populations, because the function in a physical environment… that is physiology, biophysics and biochemistry…

[@pauldavies7746]

I bought the abridged version of this book. It was recommended as pre-course reading for my masters degree.

[@WillN2Go1]

Interesting . This seems very similar to " The Elements of Dynamic Symmetry" by Jay Hambidge (1920 so it's likely partly derivative of On Growth and Form), and of course Stephen Wolfram' book "A New Kind of Science" (2002). The Elements of Dynamic Symmetry when I read it I realized is the basis for most of Disney's "Donald in Mathmagic Land" (1959) which captured the imaginations of Boomer nerds. When it finally made it to the internet and we could pause it, we realized a lot of the Golden Mean lines laid over images were completely arbitrary. Edward Weston in the 1930s or 40s made a funny image of a friend, Charis Wilson hanging out of the windows of his house in Carmel based on the over application of the ideas in that book. It does make a lot of sense that this book of scientific/mathematical speculation would have such an profound impact. Leonardo's analysis of legs bone sizes by animal size is still the first example of that bio engineering. (Sometimes the artists get to the science first.) So Darwin's theory of evolution explains how organisms evolve for environmental and reproductive advantage. Thompson attempted to define the mathematical developmental parameters of those possible changes. Thompson will continue to be cited because he was first.