D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's "Science of Form" - the explanation of biological development and morphology through physical forces and mathematical laws - has traditionally been viewed as an idiosyncratic, even heretical, episode in the history of evolutionary biology. Yet recent scholarship has sought to overturn this view by demonstrating that Thompson was active in contemporary scientific networks. This paper argues that a key influence upon Thompson's seminal work, On Growth and Form (1917), may be far more practical, and lie closer to home, than previously realised: experimental demonstrations of basic concepts in physics. Harnessing previously unpublished archival sources, this paper traces Thompson's correspondence with Charles Darling, Arthur Worthington and Cecil Warburton. In these exchanges, Thompson described his own experiments, or requested that experiments be conducted on his behalf. This correspondence, and its subsequent inclusion in the first edition of On Growth and Form, revises our current picture of Thompson from that of an abstract thinker to keen experimentalist. Moreover, his contact with physicists indicates that simple experiments enabled extensive crosstalk between early twentieth century physics and biology.

中文翻译：

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模仿自然：D'Arcy Thompson的《形式科学》中的类比和实验。

达西·温特沃斯·汤普森（D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson）的“形式科学”（Science of Form）是通过物理力和数学定律对生物学发展和形态学的解释，传统上被视为进化生物学历史上的一种特质甚至异端情节。然而，最近的一项研究试图证明汤普森活跃于当代科学网络中，从而推翻了这一观点。本文认为，对汤普森开创性著作《成长与形式》（1917年）的关键影响可能比以前实现的要实用得多，而且离家更近：物理学中基本概念的实验证明。利用以前未出版的档案资料，本文追溯了汤普森与查尔斯·达林，亚瑟·沃辛顿和塞西尔·沃伯顿的往来。在这些交流中 汤普森（Thompson）描述了他自己的实验，或要求以他的名义进行实验。这种对应关系及其随后包含在《成长与形式》的第一版中，将我们当前的汤普森形象从抽象思想家的照片修改为敏锐的实验主义者。此外，他与物理学家的接触表明，简单的实验使20世纪初物理学与生物学之间产生了广泛的串扰。