ToKers:

Thanks to John for introducing me to the most interesting person who I  
never paid much attention to (so far this week): Lancelot Law Whyte  
(1896-1972).

  https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_Lancelot-5FLaw-5FWhyte&d=DwIDaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=Moc3QSr-vgBWfRph7ovRmB2p-AnUVvL2B7lJDtAyI_A&s=adwjnhqXeGJ_wE6VPPKYzpwl_8-O7RKauumB9pHex3Q&e=

  I've just read his fascinating "not" autobiography -- /Focus and  
Diversions/ (1963) -- and I suspect that it is quite relevant for the  
ToK Society.  Whyte was apparently the go-to fellow for the  
exploration of "forms" in mid-century, likely as a result of  
publishing /The Unitary Principle in Biology and Physics/ (in 1948,  
the year I was born), along with his other books.

  Shortly after that, he was asked to edit /Accent on Form: Symposium  
on Form in Nature and Art/ (1951, honoring D'arcy Thompson, who had  
just died), followed by /Aspects of Form: An Anticipation of the  
Science of Tomorrow/ (1954).  Shortly after than Warren Weaver of the  
Rockefeller Foundation hired him for a year to wander around.  Nice  
work if you can get it.

Among the anecdotes he recounts was being contacted by three young  
architects contacted him and asked to meet.  When he asked why the  
answer was, "You're the only one who is alive and in Britain -- Lewis  
Mumford in the USA and Patrick Geddes is dead."  One of them was  
Jacqueline Tyrwhitt (who would later become close with Marshall  
McLuhan.)  He was also friends with Sigfried Gideon (another McLuhan  
stalwart and who introduced him to Tyrwhitt.)

Like so many others who attempted to "unify science," he failed -- as  
he discusses at some length in his life-account. 

  He winds up with these "predictions" --

1) The twentieth century will be seen to display a convergence towards  
a new universal world attitude towards man and his problems . . .

2) One of the key features of this coming view of the coherence of  
phenomena will be a clarified conception of those formative processes  
in which three-dimensional forms and structures separate from their  
environment . . .

  3) (Mainly for mathematicians.) The decisive factor converting this  
blind spot into a focus of attention will be the discovery by  
mathematical physics and biophysics that collective parameters  
(associated with complex finite systems) are more useful than either  
atomic or field parameters (associated with parts or points) . . .

4) The decades from 1950 onwards will be recognized as marked by a  
change in evolutionary philosophy: the gradual discarding of the  
unduly narrow view of the mechanism of the evolution of the species as  
due only to the external or Darwinian adaptive slection of matured  
forms resulting from haphazard mutations.

You be the judge of how much of this actually happened (or not) . . . <g>

  Mark

P.S. The closest that I could find to a "follow-up" to Whyte's work is  
a F. Burwick's /Approaches to Organic Form: Permutations in Science  
and Culture/ (1987, also at UCLA), which I suspect John can tell us  
alot about.  Btw, a free copy of this $200+ book can be found at  
memoryoftheworld.org.

   
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.amazon.com_Approaches-2DOrganic-2DForm-2DPermutations-2DPhilosophy_dp_9027725411&d=DwIDaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=Moc3QSr-vgBWfRph7ovRmB2p-AnUVvL2B7lJDtAyI_A&s=29ybQlXwnfUtGSMQJ7ZGEDtHMeECOoxYfiBUH0_FqsQ&e=

   


 

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