What are the relations between the shape of a system of cities and that of fish school? Which events should happen in a cell in order that it participates to one of the finger of our hands? How to interpret the shape of a sand dune? This collective book written for the non-specialist addresses these questions and more generally, the fundamental issue of the emergence of forms and patterns in physical and living systems. It is a single book gathering the different aspects of morphogenesis and approaches developed in different disciplines on shape and pattern formation. Relying on the seminal works of D’Arcy Thompson, Alan Turing and René Thom, it confronts major examples like plant growth and shape, intra-cellular organization, evolution of living forms or motifs generated by crystals. A book essential to understand universal principles at work in the shapes and patterns surrounding us but also to avoid spurious analogies.
Author(s): Annick Lesne, Paul Bourgine (auth.), Paul Bourgine, Annick Lesne (eds.)
Edition: 1
Publisher: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
Year: 2011
Language: English
Pages: 346
Tags: Complexity;Biophysics and Biological Physics;Strongly Correlated Systems, Superconductivity
Front Matter....Pages i-xvii
Introduction....Pages 1-13
Ferrofluids: A Model System of Self-Organised Equilibrium....Pages 15-39
Hierarchical Fracture Networks....Pages 41-48
Liquid Crystals and Morphogenesis....Pages 49-86
Biological Self-Organisation by Way of the Dynamics of Reactive Processes....Pages 87-105
Dunes, the Collective Behaviour of Wind and Sand, or: Are Dunes Living Beings?....Pages 107-118
Morphodynamics of Secretory Endomembranes....Pages 119-141
From Epigenomic to Morphogenetic Emergence....Pages 143-166
Animal Morphogenesis....Pages 167-188
Phyllotaxis, or How Plants Do Maths When they Grow....Pages 189-198
The Logic of Forms in the Light of Developmental Biology and Palaeontology....Pages 199-209
Forms Emerging from Collective Motion....Pages 211-223
Systems of Cities and Levels of Organisation....Pages 225-249
Levels of Organisation and Morphogenesis from the Perspective of D’Arcy Thompson....Pages 251-272
The Morphogenetic Models of René Thom....Pages 273-281
Morphogenesis, Structural Stability and Epigenetic Landscape....Pages 283-293
Morphological and Mutational Analysis: Tools for the Study of Morphogenesis....Pages 295-314
Computer Morphogenesis....Pages 315-339
Back Matter....Pages 341-346
