In the foregoing chapters of this book we have attempted to study the inter-relations of growth and form, and the part which certain of the physical forces play in this complex interaction; and, as part of the same enquiry, we have tried in comparatively simple cases to use mathôÙeôÙmatôÙiôÙcal methods and mathôÙeôÙmatôÙiôÙcal terminology in order to describe and define the forms of organisms. We have learned in so doing that our own study of organic form, which we call by Goetheãs name of Morphology, is but a portion of that wider Science of Form which deals with the forms assumed by matter under all aspects and conditions, and, in a still wider sense, with forms which are theoretically imaginable.
The study of form may be descriptive merely, or it may become analytical. We begin by describing the shape of an object in the simple words of common speech: we end by defining it in the precise language of mathematics; and the one method tends to follow the other in strict scientific order and historical continuity. Thus, for instance, the form of the earth, of a raindrop or a rainbow, the shape of the hanging chain, or the path of a stone thrown up into the air, may all be described, however inadequately, in common words; but when we have learned to comprehend and to define the sphere, the catenary, or the parabola, we have made a wonderful and perhaps a manifold advance. The mathôÙeôÙmatôÙiôÙcal definition of a ãformã has a quality of precision which was quite lacking in our earlier stage of mere description; it is expressed in few words, or in still briefer symbols, and these {720} words or symbols are so pregnant with meaning that thought itself is economised; we are brought by means of it in touch with Galileoãs aphorism (as old as Plato, as old as Pythagoras, as old perhaps as the wisdom of the Egyptians), that ãthe Book of Nature is written in characters of Geometry.ã
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