Why Size Matter: From Bacteria to Blue Whales

145 Pages·2006·0.794 MB·English

by  John Tyler Bonner

WHY
S I Z E
M A T T E R S
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W H Y
S I Z E
M A T T E R S
FROM BACTERIA TO BLUE WHALES
John Tyler Bonner
Princeton University Press
Princeton & Oxford
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition of this book as follows
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Bonner, John Tyler
ISBN-13: 978-0-691-12850-4 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Why size matters : from bacteria to blue whales / John Tyler Bonner.
ISBN-10: 0-691-12850-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
p. cm.
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Includes bibliographical references and index.
QL799.B66 2006
ISBN-13: 978-0-691-12850-4 (hardcover : alk. paper)
578.4'1— dc22 2006004945
ISBN-10: 0-691-12850-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
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CONTENTS
Preface ix
1 Introduction 1
2 The Human View of Size 7
3 The Physics of Size 28
4 The Evolution of Size 62
5 Size and the Division of Labor 79
6 Size and Time 116
7 Envoi 147
Notes 153
Index 157
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One can live in the shadow of an idea
without grasping it.
—Elizabeth Bowen
PREFACE
Our interest in the size of things is entrenched in the human
psyche. It reveals itself in literature from Gulliver’s Travels, to
the Grimms’ fairy tales, to Alice in Wonderland. We see it in our
daily thoughts of our growing children, of the people who are
around us, of our pets, of the fish we catch, of the portions of
the food we are served, of the clothes we buy—are you small,
medium, or large?—and one could go on and on. There is
hardly anything we observe in daily life that we, either con-
sciously or unconsciously, do not take measure of its size. We
love to measure everything with rulers and scales and clocks.
I began to think of the matter of biological size years ago
when I first read that glorious chapter in D’Arcy Wentworth
Thompson’s On Growth and Form called “On Magnitude.” It is
a model of insight, erudition, and beautiful prose. He showed
me that size and shape are indeed interrelated and that the
reason that this is so is a matter of physics that underlies the
biology. From this initial inspiration there slowly grew inside
me the feeling that there was a hidden other dimension of the