ABSTRACT
In D'Arcy Thompson's representation of Didion and Orthagoriscus, the vertical coordinates of Didion have become for Orthagoriscus a system of concentric circles, the horizontal coordinates a system of curves. Thompson's method "is static instead of dynamic, and substitutes the short cut of a geometrical solution for the more complex realities actually underlying biological transformation". Geometric morphometrics, pioneered by Fred Bookstein and F. James Rohlf, depends for its development on a mathematical theory. Results from geometric morphometrics are largely corroborated by the findings of DNA analysis, suggesting that it is legitimate to make evolutionary inferences from morphometric data. Julian Huxley's Problems of Relative Growth acknowledged the ground-breaking work of Thompson: "the coordinate method" is "of the utmost importance as affording a graphic and immediate proof of the need for postulating regularities in the distribution of growth throughout the body".
