Skeletal Function and Form: Mechanobiology of Skeletal Development, Aging, and Regeneration

Abstract

D. R. Carter, G. S. Beaupre. 2001. Skeletal Function and Form: Mechanobiology of Skeletal Development, Aging, and Regeneration. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 318 pp. ISBN 0-521-79000-X, price (cloth), $80.00. The preface to Skeletal Function and Form states that the main goal of the book is to demonstrate that function determines form. In a wide variety of ways, the authors succeed admirably. That form determines function is tacitly accepted by contemporary researchers working on diverse aspects of evolutionary biology, although answers to research questions are not usually framed in these terms. Therefore, this book is a valuable resource because it provides many anatomical examples that show how structure is shaped by selective pressures that favor the purposes they serve and how structure and function change in concert through time. In the first chapter, the authors set the stage by discussing development of the intellectual framework supporting these ideas with a recounting of historical approaches. They draw here, as elsewhere in the narrative, from the work of the earliest writers on “nature” to the first evolutionary theorists, from pre-Darwinian naturalist-philosophers to contemporary researchers and writers. Not only is this discussion informative, but it also provides background necessary for the reader to appreciate the complexity of the interrelationship between form and function and the correspondingly great significance of the historical dialogue, as well as its relevance to issues of significance to present functional studies of morphology. By identifying and tracing structural patterns observable in organisms, both through documenting evolutionary change and individual growth and maturation processes, it becomes possible to tease apart the effects of each. The authors initiate their contribution to this analysis with the discussion of long-established attributes of bone and cartilage. The skeletal system has many elements that are described using a complex and specialized vocabulary, and this book is one of the few places where the …