![]() ![]() ![]() Scottish zoologist D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson was pushed to publish his own treatise in 1917 explaining that even nature's creativity is constrained by laws generated by physical and chemical forces. Yet one person saw all this as "runaway enthusiasm," writes English scientist and writer Philip Ball in his new book, Patterns in Nature: Why the Natural World Looks the Way it Does. The peacock's plumage, the spots of a shark must all serve some adaptive purpose, they eagerly surmised. ![]() When Charles Darwin first proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection in 1859, it encouraged science enthusiasts to find reasons for the natural patterns seen in beasts of the land, birds of the air and creatures of the sea. The curl of a chameleon's tail, the spiral of a pinecone's scales and the ripples created by wind moving grains of sand all have the power to catch the eye and intrigue the mind. ![]()
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