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NOT PERFECT. "Now I am in Arden, the more fool I. When I was at home, I was in a better place, but travellers must be content." (Touchstone to Rosalind, in As You Like It, by WS). https://lnkd.in/dDMTAPP View in LinkedIn

THE GUIDE. "Touchstone puts all things and every person in the play, including himself, to the comic test. Entering Arden with Touchstone you cannot go astray or mistake the wood for the trees." https://lnkd.in/dDMTAPP View in LinkedIn

AVOIDING THE PALE MISFEATURED SHADOW. "It is as though Shakespeare, setting out for Arden, where so many excellent poets have lost themselves in affected sentiment, mislaid their common sense in refining on their sensibility, and, in their self-conscious pursuit of nature, found themselves grasping a pale misfeatured shadow, had determined in advance to take with them a guide who should keep him in the path of sanity." (As You Like It, WS). https://lnkd.in/dDMTAPP View in LinkedIn

THE COMIC TEST. "The character of Touchstone in Shakespeare's As You Like It, described as "a wise fool who acts as a kind of guide or point of reference throughout the play, putting everyone, including himself, to the comic test"." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchstone_(metaphor) View in LinkedIn

THE TOUCHSTONE QUOTATION. "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution". Theodosius Dobzhansky (geneticist). It may be just a piece of the puzzle, but it is the best we have just now. https://lnkd.in/dfRbEgj View in LinkedIn

ON GROWTH AND FORM. "Cell and tissue, shell and bone, leaf and flower, are so many portions of matter, and it is in obedience to the laws of physics that their particles have been moved, moulded and conformed. They are no exceptions to the rule that God always geometrizes. Their problems of form are in the first instance mathematical problems, their problems of growth are essentially physical problems, and the morphologist is, ipso facto, a student of physical science." (D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson). https://lnkd.in/dvUQ__w View in LinkedIn

ON GROWTH AND FORM promoted the idea of nature conforming to exquisite mathematical laws, leading the reader to marvel at the harmony and symmetry of nature's designs. "For the harmony of the world is made manifest in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all the poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied in the concept of mathematical beauty". https://lnkd.in/daGvtQB View in LinkedIn

DESCENT WITH MODIFICATION. "The myth here is that evolution equates to progress, an error inherited from Darwin's contemporary Herbert Spencer, who was using the word 'evolution' to support his metaphysical belief in universal progress. Darwin purposefully avoided using the term 'evolution' (preferring “descent with modification”) because of the risk of this misunderstanding." (Spencer's misfeatured shadow). https://lnkd.in/dMZi4Xr View in LinkedIn

EVOLUTION IS MESSY, and all living things are morphs, riddled with vestigial parts and bolt-on exaptations from the general tool kit of rebuilding and redesigning. Structures built by a committee, never from scratch. And most of that committee is viral. D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson idealized the beauty of biological structures, in line with centuries of thinking about an ascendancy to Perfection. Actually, an ascendancy to a bigger, sometimes better, junk yard. View in LinkedIn

GOOD ENOUGH. "Response: It is true that natural selection weeds out individuals that are unfit in a particular situation, but for evolution, “good enough” is good enough." ("When I was at home, I was in a better place, but travellers must be content." (Touchstone, by Shakespeare). https://lnkd.in/djzVhcc View in LinkedIn