Meeting Abstract

AMS.1  Thursday, Jan. 3  The Snail: Evolving Metaphors and Visual Representations HICKMAN, C. S.; Univ. of California, Berkeley caroleh@berkeley.edu

Depicting the structure and function of organisms relies heavily on verbal metaphor and visual representation. The rich metaphorical landscape of biology is continually changing in order to achieve the closest transfer of knowledge within and between scientific disciplines and from the scientific domain to the popular domain. The snail provides vivid examples of representations that are both visual and verbal. The equiangular spiral of D�Arcy Thompson , Walter Garstang�s poetic depiction of the velum as a wheel and torsion as a mechanical twist, and David Raup�s famous morphospace of possible snails are now mismatched with modern knowledge � in the same way that pre-genomic metaphors of the gene are no longer appropriate. We remember them, nonetheless. In the mind�s eye they continue to have instructional and aesthetic value. I will develop three new microstructural representations of the snail: the radula as a dynamic slit cylinder, shell microarchitectures as self-assembled composites, and the elegant micropapillae of the primitive gastropod epithelium as paradigmatic conformations and configurations of sensory cells. In each instance the new visualization of structure and function replaces an older one and suggests the extent to which current metaphors and visualizations are temporary placeholders for what is yet to be learned.