Category: Growth

Biology of the Army

June 23, 2025 By arne hendriks Off

The Crazy Ape (1970) is a critical and pessimistic commentary on science and the prospects for human survival by Nobel prize winner Albert Szent-Györgyi. In the book he writes: “One of the main biological characteristics that armies share with cancer cells is that they continue to grow, even…

Turtles All The Way Down

April 18, 2024 By arne hendriks Off

There exists an inescapable logic in the relationship between that which supports and what is being supported. The support should be strong enough to carry what is on top of it. In the logic of “Turtles all the way down” which states that the planet…

Massenerhebung Effect

November 21, 2023 By arne hendriks Off

When big things hang out together, they change the rules. This is clearly witnessed in what in geography is called the massenerhebung effect, a phenomenon where treelines are typically higher and trees are typically taller on mountains in close proximity to other mountains. Trees make visible what…

200 Years of Growing Pain

October 5, 2023 By arne hendriks Off

The term growing pain was first mentioned in 1823 by Marcel Duchamp, not the artist but a French physician. It relates to the condition of benign nocturnal limb pains in childhood, most often occuring between 3 and 12 years old. Many studies have tried to…

Big Hand Hug

June 29, 2022 By arne hendriks Off

Acromegaly is a serious growth disorder that results in continuous growth of the body as a result of a benign tumor of the gland that produces growth hormone. Before medication made it possible to suppress this unnatural growth patients would simply grow to their untimely…

GHRE: Gravitropism

March 29, 2022 By arne hendriks Off

The word growth is rooted in the proto-Germanic word GHRE. It refers to early spring when the first signs of green emerge as young leaves and grasses start to sprout. The GHRE-series investigates if and how our generally positive understanding of growth was influenced by its specific seasonal…

Trunkism

November 10, 2020 By arne hendriks Off

The growth of a tree trunk demands considerable investment and focus of resources. The competition for sunlight can lead to very differently formed trunks within the same species of tree. A comparison of two white oaks tells the story. The broad-crowned shorter oak grew as a…

The Aesthetics of Upward Arrow

February 25, 2019 By arne hendriks Off

Are arrows going up more beautiful than arrows going down? The upward arrow seems deeply embedded within the psyche of modern man. It inspires a positive emotional response while a downward arrow triggers negative feelings. The Simple Growth Obsession Test shows this default response also occurs when…

Hallmarks of Malignant Growth: Deregulating Energy Metabolism

December 20, 2018 By arne hendriks Off

In trying to understand what makes the idea of continuous growth so powerful (despite clear evidence that it is a harmful concept) The Incredible Shrinking Man turned to cancer research to learn where healthy growth turns malignant. Although cancer is a very complex phenomenon the…

Hallmarks of Malignant Growth: Tumor-promoting Inflammation

November 3, 2018 By arne hendriks Off

In trying to understand what makes the idea of continuous growth so powerful (despite clear evidence that it is a harmful concept) The Incredible Shrinking Man turned to cancer research to learn where healthy growth turns malignant. Although cancer is a very complex phenomenon the…

Growth Hormone Jungle

April 29, 2018 By arne hendriks Off

Growth hormone is a peptide hormone that stimulates growth, cell reproduction and cell regeneration in humans and other animals. As with all hormonal pathways the path concerning the promotion and secretion of growth hormone leads right into a dense entanglement of interrelated secretions of life. If…

HPS Axis Pirouette

March 15, 2018 By arne hendriks Off

To soften the pressure of the increasingly dominant genetic profiles for greater human height, humanity at some point may opt to interfere in the cell signaling pathways that induce growth. One such pathway, the hypothalamic–pituitary axis, includes the secretion of growth hormone (GH) into the circulation and the subsequent stimulation of insulin-like…

Land Reclamation

November 5, 2017 By arne hendriks Off

It is certainly not a coincidence that the Dutch are known for their expertise in the process of land reclamation. They live surrounded by the sea and The Netherlands are a small country. Yet the most obvious reason for the Dutch desire to create new…

Bigger Before Better

December 22, 2016 By arne hendriks Off

A common leadership philosophy in business is to get better before you get bigger.  With evolution it doesn’t work that way. Evolution doesn’t plan ahead. If it would, the human body would certainly not be getting taller in a world of dwindling resources. Evolution is…

Long Legged Risk

October 3, 2016 By arne hendriks 0

Long legs beautiful? Perhaps, but according to a study presented at the American Association for Cancer Research’s annual meeting  the long-legged have a 42 percent higher risk of developing bowel cancer. Lead author of the study Guillaume Onyeaghala has two hypotheses that may explain the…

Full Growth Potential

April 8, 2016 By arne hendriks 0

In 1997 the World Health Organisation undertook a comprehensive review of child growth references. It stated: ‘We now have scientific evidence proving that infants and children from geographically diverse regions of the world experience very similar growth patterns when their health and nutrition needs are…

The Tall Dutch

April 9, 2015 By arne hendriks 0

The Dutch are the tallest people in the world: its women stand almost 1.71 metres (5.6 feet) tall, and its men 1.84 metres. But how the Dutch became the world’s tallest people is still debated. Now a Dutch scientist, Gert Stulp, of the London School…

The Cell Cycle: Détente

April 7, 2015 By arne hendriks 0

The Cell Cycle is a series of articles on the mechanisms and substances that regulate cell growth. The contemporary cell climate is one of constant biological and cultural high pressure to grow, to proliferate, to expand and conquer. The Incredible Shrinking Man wants to investigate…

The Simple Growth Obsession Test

January 15, 2015 By arne hendriks 0

We’re obsessed with growth. The Simple Growth Obsession Test is a simple test to check for yourself how much growth and our deeply embedded sensitivity for signs of growth create an emotional response when confronted with signs of its absence or presence. The test itself is…

The Baby Illusion

September 16, 2014 By arne hendriks 0

Dr. Jordy Kaufman, senior researcher at the The Swinburne BabyLab, asked himself why many parents, after the birth of a second child report that their first child appears to grow suddenly and substantially larger? Is it simply because of the contrast that stems from the comparison of the…