INTRODUCTION

The waves of the sea, the little ripples on
the shore, the sweeping curve of the sandy
bay between the headlands, the outline of the hills, the shape of the clouds, all these
are so many riddles of form, so many problems of morphology.

D'ARCY THOMPSON
On Growth and Form


1.1. THE PROGRAM





A. The succession of form

One of the central problems studied by mankind is the problem of the succession of form. Whatever is the ultimate nature of reality (assuming that this expression has meaning), it is indisputable that our universe is not chaos. We perceive beings, objects, things to which we give names. These beings or things are forms or structures endowed with a degree of stability; they take up some part of space and last for some period of time. Moreover, although a given object can exist in many different guises, we never fail to recognize it; this recognition of the same object in the infinite multiplicity of its manifestations is, in itself, a problem (the classical philosophical problem of concept) which, it seems to me, the Gestalt psychologists alone have posed in a geometric framework accessible to scientific investigation. Suppose this problem to be solved according to naive intuition, giving to outside things an existence independent of our own observation.'(note) Next we must concede that the universe we see is a ceaseless creation, evolution, and destruction of forms and that the purpose of science is to foresee this change of form and, if possible, explain it.

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