Mark, thank you for further fleshing LL Whyte out for us. I have only read
his The Unitary Principle in Biology. I know nothing about Burwick, so
thank you for the heads-up.......john

On Thu, Jul 12, 2018 at 10:33 AM, Mark Stahlman <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> 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=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=WsQH9Cyxeq8U4a_aWCrMGkqV63LEBYWW_SbsoMF-FKo&s=_-B7rJWQ8kG5oNbe5ahmDlZWyFunoeuFJG_PHlprGmU&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_&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=WsQH9Cyxeq8U4a_aWCrMGkqV63LEBYWW_SbsoMF-FKo&s=57SM4iHiBQ4oI0IPCFoRrsoGNrdS5c67qRhXjT9Wzzc&e=
> 9027725411
>
>
>
>
>
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