PREFACE
The intention of Advances in Morphogenesis is to help to link up the
various branches of biology that deal with development. It will seek to
do this by discussing topics of current interest, in a form that we hope
will be intelligible to a wider circle than the author's immediate colleagues. We regard as at least potentially within its scope any study of
the new formation or of the remodelling of living material. The diversity
of morphogenesis thus conceived is very great, but not so great that the
different branches cannot learn from each other. We may hope that their
mutual stimulation will encourage the synthesis of some much-needed
general ideas about mechanisms of development which, when successfully framed, will surely begin the next great advance in biology.
The series will have a considerable range of style as well as of content.
It is no longer possible to review completely everything that has been
published on a biological topic, unless it is a very restricted or exceptionally neglected one. An attempt to achieve the impossible usually ends in
a heaping up of data and opinions which obscures any coherent framework of theory. Some way of keeping a wide-ranging discussion in focus
is necessary. An increasingly common solution to the problem is to build
some or all of a review frankly around the author's own work, discussing
this against a background of the relevant research of others. Self-centred
reviews of this kind have the additional advantage that scientific workers
tend to be considerably more interested in their own research than in
anyone else's, and the liveliness of their writing and the acuity of their
insight is correlated with their interest. But one-sided chapters can
always be balanced by subsequent reviews in the same field, and this
form of writing must be welcomed, along with any other variant of the
review paper which may help to discourage the proliferation of clones of
scientific thought.
J.B.
M.A.
vii
The intention of Advances in Morphogenesis is to help to link up the
various branches of biology that deal with development. It will seek to
do this by discussing topics of current interest, in a form that we hope
will be intelligible to a wider circle than the author's immediate colleagues. We regard as at least potentially within its scope any study of
the new formation or of the remodelling of living material. The diversity
of morphogenesis thus conceived is very great, but not so great that the
different branches cannot learn from each other. We may hope that their
mutual stimulation will encourage the synthesis of some much-needed
general ideas about mechanisms of development which, when successfully framed, will surely begin the next great advance in biology.
The series will have a considerable range of style as well as of content.
It is no longer possible to review completely everything that has been
published on a biological topic, unless it is a very restricted or exceptionally neglected one. An attempt to achieve the impossible usually ends in
a heaping up of data and opinions which obscures any coherent framework of theory. Some way of keeping a wide-ranging discussion in focus
is necessary. An increasingly common solution to the problem is to build
some or all of a review frankly around the author's own work, discussing
this against a background of the relevant research of others. Self-centred
reviews of this kind have the additional advantage that scientific workers
tend to be considerably more interested in their own research than in
anyone else's, and the liveliness of their writing and the acuity of their
insight is correlated with their interest. But one-sided chapters can
always be balanced by subsequent reviews in the same field, and this
form of writing must be welcomed, along with any other variant of the
review paper which may help to discourage the proliferation of clones of
scientific thought.
J.B.
M.A.
vii