Introduction: A New Look at Morphology

Is “constructional morphology”, as used in the title of this book, really the appropriate term for the treatment of morphological phenomena exemplified by the contributions of the participants of this Symposium? Is this not the only kind of approach that all biologists and paleontologists should choose when dealing with organismic form and patterns? Should not the traditional descriptive and comparative morphology be better called “morphography” leaving the term “morphology” to the attempt to analyze those processes that enforce and determine organismic form, that make it develop and evolve and that are produced by it? Or, should we not speak of “morphodynamics” (as proposed by Seilacher du…