"The infinite variety of forms which we observe in the realm of organic life not only delight our senses with their beauty and diversity, but also excite our curiosity, in suggesting the problem of their origin and connection. [...] The unity of the organic structure, which expresses itself everywhere in the fundamental features of living things and in the chemical composition and constructive power of their plasm, is also seen in the laws of symmetry in their typical forms. [...] In the protists … the constructive force of the elementary organism, the individual cell, determines the symmetry of the typical form and the special form of its supplementation; but in the histons … it is the plasticity of the tissue, made up of a number of socially combined cells, that determines this. [...] All the various fundamental forms that can be distinguished and defined mathematically are found realized in the graceful flinty skeletons of these unicellular sea-dwelling protozoa. [...] The great majority of organic bodies show a certain regularity both in their outer configuration and the construction of their various parts, which we may call ‘symmetry’ in the wider sense of the word. [...] These two branches of investigation have the common aim of detecting an ideal law of symmetry in the bodies they deal with and expressing this in a definite mathematical formula."
- Ernst Haeckel (1834 - 1919)
The Wonders of Life
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