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    <title>Notebooks   </title>
    <link>http://bactra.org/notebooks</link>
    <description>Cosma's Notebooks</description>
    <language>en</language>

  <item>
    <title>John Tyler Bonner</title>
    <link>http://bactra.org/notebooks/1997/05/03#j-t-bonner</link>
    <description>
American &lt;a href=&quot;development-bio.html&quot;&gt;developmental biologist&lt;/a&gt;, with a
special devotion to &lt;a href=&quot;slime-molds.html&quot;&gt;cellular slime molds&lt;/a&gt;.
Writes very good quasi-popular books.  Edited the abridged edition
of &lt;a href=&quot;darcy-thompson.html&quot;&gt;D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's&lt;/a&gt; &lt;cite&gt;On
Growth and Form,&lt;/cite&gt; which is the one you usually see in stores.

&lt;ul&gt;Recommended:
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;cite&gt;The Cellular Slime Molds&lt;/cite&gt; [No, honestly, they're
fascinating creatures, and despite being thirty years old, this is the most
up-to-date full-length study of them.]
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;cite&gt;The Evolution of Complexity by Means of Natural
Selection&lt;/cite&gt; [&lt;a href=&quot;../reviews/evolution-of-complexity/&quot;&gt;Review&lt;/a&gt;]
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;cite&gt;The Evolution of Culture in Animals&lt;/cite&gt;
[post-&lt;a href=&quot;dawkins.html&quot;&gt;Dawkins&lt;/a&gt;, and even uses the word
&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;meme.html&quot;&gt;meme&lt;/a&gt;,&quot; but more interested in why anything should
evolve the ability to have culture at all, and how it happened, than in the
content or dynamics of culture as such.]
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;cite&gt;Life Cycles&lt;/cite&gt; [Part autobiography, part summary of his
idea on development, especially the notion that what evolves is the entire
life-cycle of the organism]
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;cite&gt;Morphogenesis: an Essay on Development&lt;/cite&gt; [1952; a
fascinating view of what biology looked like before
the &lt;a href=&quot;molecular-biology.html&quot;&gt;molecular revolution&lt;/a&gt; swept all before
it]
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;cite&gt;On Development: The Biology of Form&lt;/cite&gt; [An attempt to
synthesize &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; organisms develop the way they do with evolutionary
considerations about &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; they do so.  Much of this is revisited, with
less technical detail, in &lt;cite&gt;Life Cycles&lt;/cite&gt;.]
	&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;To read:
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;cite&gt;Cells and Societies&lt;/cite&gt; 
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;cite&gt;First Signals&lt;/cite&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;cite&gt;The Ideas of Biology&lt;/cite&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;cite&gt;Sixty Years of Biology&lt;/cite&gt; 
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;citE&gt;The Social Amoebae: The Biology of Cellular Slime
Molds&lt;/cite&gt; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8952.html&quot;&gt;Blurb, ch. 1&lt;/a&gt;]
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;cite&gt;Size and Cycle&lt;/cite&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;citE&gt;Why Size Matters: From Bacteria to Blue Whales&lt;/cite&gt;
[&lt;a href=&quot;http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/8241.html&quot;&gt;Blurb,
	introduction&lt;/a&gt;]
	&lt;/ul&gt;
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