On the Motion of Growth. I. Introduction to the Energetics of Growth and Metabolism

Abstract

It is proposed in this and in a few succeeding papers briefly to present the major results of an extensive investigation into the general nature and mechanism of growth, a problem which has now occupied our attention for the past eight years. It is clearly impossible, accordingly, to do more here than to sketch in the barest fashion such features as are of primary interest to those working in this field. A detailed description whereby all steps in the argument are properly and fully justified has already been prepared for early publication elsewhere.

Previous workers as described by Scammon 1 have contributed greatly in diverse ways to our knowledge of the outward, graphical characteristics of growth in various biological forms, but it needs to be pointed out that no analyses have been brought to the point where the intrinsic properties or perhaps better, the special mechanisms of growth as such are thereby satisfactorily clarified, and further, that there is nowhere a hint as to the real connections of this fundamental process with other biological processes as, for example, that of metabolism. In the present instance we have founded our entire procedure upon the general, and indeed, almost obvious concept that all growth must be viewed as a process of biological energy exchange. Primary stress is therefore to be laid upon the importance of dealing with this entire subject from the standpoint of what may be called the energetics of growth. The dynamical association of growth with metabolism comes thus as a natural result of this principal postulate.