D'Arcy Thompson's ‘On Growth and Form’ and the Rediscovery of Geometry within the Geographic Tradition

Abstract

D'Arcy Thompson (1960–1948) was one of the most celebrated biologists of his day, best known for his On Growth and Form (1917) which was the first successful biophysical explanation of the size and shape of organisms. In particular, his concept of allometric growth and theory of transformations have informed cutting edge research in biometrics and practice in the fields of fine art, urban design and civil engineering. He was a seminal figure in the development of the spatial analysis tradition within geography in the 1960s and 1970s underpinning major contributions by Haggett and Bunge and inspiring Tobler to develop cartograms which liberated map projections from sole reliance on Euclidean geometry. Re-assessing his contribution to geography fifty years later, it is still to be found in Batty's work on the size, shape and scale of cities and in Dorling's World Mapper project. This re-discovery of the importance of geometry within the geographic tradition over the last half century owes much to Thompson who spent the whole of his academic life in the University of St Andrews and (what was later to become) the University of Dundee.     

From Paper to Celluloid and Back Again: Finance and Form in Jorge Délano’s Films

This essay argues that our current understanding of the cinematic work by the pioneering Chilean film director Jorge Délano obscures a sophisticated interaction between politics, art and economics, one that reveals unexamined aspects of how the film industry developed in Chile. Most notably, it argues that Délano’s illustrated political satire magazine Topaze was central to the development of early sound cinema in the country. Following Rielle Navitski, the essay utilizes and examines tensions between models drawn from periodical studies and the concepts of remediation and intermediality in film studies. Examining illustrations from the first three years of Topaze’s production (1931–1933) in the context of the country’s economic situation, the essay argues that Délano remediated cinema in Topaze as a strategy of capital accumulation. This analysis also makes it possible to see how one of his sound films, Escándalo (1940), similarly remediated the illustrated paper periodical as he pursued financing for the production of cinematic commodities for export. The essay ends by examining the relationship between these issues and the political situation in early Cold War Chile.     

Parties,Governments and Pollsters: A New Form of Patronage?

In its first term, the Howard government hired Australasian Research Strategies (ARS), headed by pollster Mark Textor, to conduct market research for several Commonwealth departments and agencies. This was, the Labor Opposition claimed, a case of the Liberals handing jobs to their 'mates'. Textor played a key role in the Liberals' 1996 and 1998 federal election campaigns. However, Labor's attack rings hollow since in the 1980s the Hawke government similarly contracted Rod Cameron's ANOP to conduct opinion research for Commonwealth departments and agencies. At the time Cameron was Labor's strategic pollster and centrally involved in planning Labor election campaigns. On both sides of Australian politics, governments have begun to channel patronage towards their party's pollsters. In this research note, we suggest that this development cannot be explained as 'jobs for the boys'. Instead, this new form of patronage has its roots in the vital role that pollsters now play in guiding election campaigns, and in the commercial reality that Australian politics provides too little work to sustain specialist political pollsters. Parties in government now appear to utilise incumbency to sustain an ongoing relationship with the commercial polling organisations like ANOP and ARS to whom they will entrust much of the planning of their campaign for re-election.     

MIT architecture and values: Gehry’s Stata and Holl’s Simmons

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2000 initiated a billion dollar building program featuring buildings by world‐renowned architects, including Frank Gehry and Steven Holl. Gehry’s Stata Center, which houses computer scientists, and Holl’s Simmons Hall dormitory raise questions about the relationship of architecture to MIT’s values. Many MIT faculty, students, and administrators celebrate Gehry’s Stata and Holl’s Simmons as expressing the inventiveness, energy, and excellence of the people within them and as moving the campus into the twenty‐first century. Others ask if MIT has lost its way by choosing elite, costly buildings at an institution historically characterized by utilitarian and functional values.     

Form,function, fiction – translations of technology and design in product development

This article is a case study of the design and development of a Norwegian crockery series for institutional households – the 1962 Figgjo 3500 Hotel China. It investigates how this product represented a decisive break with the conventions of postwar Norwegian design and manufacture. The onset of international free trade meant export or die for the manufacturing industry. The elitist aestheticism so prevalent in the so‐called Scandinavian Design movement was abandoned in favour of an ideology remarkably akin to what was at the German Ulm School of Design called scientific operationalism. The paper also analyses how the manufacturer sought to portray this product: first, it was inscribed as science incarnated, and the material morality reigned supreme. But as society's faith in science took some serious blows in the course of the 1960s and modernist design idioms were partly forsaken in the 1970s, the engineered tableware became the fashioned tableware as trends tamed technology. These translations of technology, design, identity and consumption tell the story of how an artefact is constantly in a state of transformation – on both sides of the factory gate.     

Divided Post‐Soviet Small Cities? Residential Segregation and Urban Form in Leninogorsk and Zyryanovsk,Kazakhstan

This paper maps and analyses ethnic and socio‐economic residential segregation in two small post‐Soviet mining and enrichment cities in Eastern Kazakhstan, Leninogorsk and Zyryanovsk. The study is based on data collected by the author in collaboration with the Eastern Kazakhstan oblast' statistical authority in an extensive questionnaire survey carried out during January 2001. The paper investigates the linkages between the physical spatial structure of small post‐Soviet cities and the socio‐spatial landscape that has unfolded in their context, and attempts to identify the principal factors that underlie the observed segregation patterns.     

Australian ‘left’ and ‘right’: (Social composition and ideological integrity)

Political self‐identification and interest in politics are used in this paper to define ‘left’, ‘centre’ and ‘right’ affiliation within the Australian public. Detailed political attitudes of these three groups are then analysed. The Australian ‘left’ is half the size of the ‘right’. It is, however, much better educated and much more ideological. Its political attitudes are twice as coherent as the attitudes of the ‘right’. The left's ideological congruence partly results from the better education of its affiliates. However, the difference in ideological congruence of the ‘left’ and the ‘right’ remains quite great even when the impact of education is statistically eliminated.     

‘To Form a Correct Estimate of their Nothingness when Compared with It’: British Exhibitions of Military Technology in the Abyssinian and Ashanti Expeditions

This paper examines the portrayal and reception of novel military technology as constructed spectacle in the popular coverage of the British Abyssinian (1868) and Ashanti (1873–74) expeditions. A series of cases are explored in which commanders attempted to frighten and subdue African allies and enemies through the mere presentation of technology, as are the interpretations and subsequent representations of African reactions which were made by British officers and journalists.     

Eastern Europe and ‘legitimacy crisis’

An unexpectedly swift collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe amidst flares of mass dissent raises doubts about the accuracy of explanations of the persistence of these regimes in terms of ‘legitimacy’ and their fall in terms of ‘legitimacy crisis’. Such explanations are criticised and rejected as theoretically inadequate and lacking empirical support. It is argued that East European regimes had never developed mass legitimacy, and that even before the current upheavals they showed clear symptoms of non‐legitimate domination. In order to suggest an alternative interpretation of their persistence and fall, the paper clarifies the meaning of the term ‘legitimacy’, suggests reasons for the popularity of ‘legitimacy interpretations’, and critically assesses the empirical evidence for the alleged legitimacy and ‘legitimacy crises’. The concluding section outlines the bases of (non‐legitimate) communist domination and looks at the problems of (re‐establishing legitimate authority by the post‐communist East European regimes.     

‘New Heaven and New Earth’

The idea that 19th-century Europeans and Islanders faced each other across virtually impassable linguistic and cultural boundaries has been a model for Pacific ethnohistory and can, perhaps, be traced in part to the Sapir–Whorf theory of linguistic incommensurability. Based on a case study concerning the translation of the Aneityum [Anejom] bible in Southern Vanuatu in the mid-19th century, the article considers whether the engagement between Islanders and missionaries might be better investigated through the dynamic dialogic model of Bakhtin and Voloshinov: thus speakers and interlocutors on Aneityum actively sought to understand each other through debates and dialogues about the new deity and His place in the spiritual cosmos of the island. The article first discusses the Protestant missionary defence of linguistic parity and commensurability and the formal practices of 19th-century British bible translation; then analyses debates on the new God's efficacy between missionary John Geddie and Nohoat, the foremost sorcerer of the area; and concludes by considering the translation of words particularly important to the Christian faith.     

‘Sane’ and ‘insane’ imperialism: British idealism,new liberalism and liberal imperialism

It is contended that British Idealists, New Liberals and Liberal Imperialists were all in favour of imperialism, especially when it took the form of white settler communities. The concession of relative autonomy was an acknowledgement of the potential of white settler communities to go the way of America by severing their relationship with the Empire completely. Where significant differences emerge in their thinking is in relation to non-white territories in the Empire where native peoples comprised the majority, and the British Government and its agents administered in trust ‘lower’ peoples on the scale of civilisation with the ostensible goal of guiding them towards self-determination in the Empire. The differences in degree of commitment to these ideals were largely expressed in terms of the pejorative categories of ‘sane’ and ‘insane’ imperialism, which were flexible and manipulated for political gain, rather than analytic precision. Liberal Imperialists and New Liberals were opposed to each other in terms of the degree to which they supported imperialism, whereas British Idealists aligned themselves on both sides of the divide.     

‘Good order and the police’

The emergence of police ordinances and police authorities in the early modern period has traditionally been seen as a way to discipline society in order to increase the power of the absolutist state. However, recent investigations of early modern policing in German and French regions show that ‘good order and police’ was in demand by the subjects and also adapted to local needs. Inspired by this research this article investigates the enforcement of police ordinances in the Danish market towns of Aalborg and Sæby and the country district of Børglum-Jerslev. The results show that policing remained focused on local needs even after the creation of a royal police office in 1682. Policing mainly concerned the welfare and privileges of burghers in market towns until the introduction of a country police in 1791, when agrarian reforms began to erode the patriarchal order in the countryside. As a new way of governing, ‘police’ was a way both to govern free burghers and preserve traditional order.