Description: Are animals designed economically? The theory of symmorphosis predicts that the size of the parts in a system must be matched to the overall functional demand. Weibel shows how animals as different as shrews, pronghorns, dogs, goats--even humans--all develop from essentially the same blueprint by variation of design.
Brief description: Ewald R. Weibel, M.D., is Professor of Anatomy, University of Bern, Switzerland.
Review Quotes: Symmorphosis is (and I use the term advisedly) magisterial: the best description anywhere of a provocative and creatively stimulating research approach to a large number of very important basic questions in animal--more specifically mammalian and human--anatomy, physiology, and evolution. This book is synthetic in the best sense of that word.--Malcolm S. Gordon, University of California, Los Angeles