Growth

Roderick Hunt

All living organisms are, at various stages in their life history, capable of ‘growth’ in the sense of change of size, change in form and change in number, given suitable conditions. These three processes together form an important part of the phenomenon of life itself and among natural systems help to distinguish the living from the non-living. Of course, many of the latter may also be said to ‘grow’: crystals, river deltas and volcanic cones can change recognizably within human time-scales. But, this apart, even within self-reproducing biological organisms a precise definition of what is meant by ‘growth’ is not all easy. Definitions may range from an unequivocal statement about change in a specific dimension to a highly abstract state of affairs in which the verb ‘to grow’ meaning nothing more than ‘to live’ or even ‘to exist’. […] I advance no firm definition to cover the use of the term in this book other than to say that it will be used to describe irreversible changes with time, mainly in size (however measured), often in form, and occasionally in number.

Fonte: Hunt, R. 1982. Plant growth curves. Londres, Arnold.