shalizi notes thompson's simplicity, explaining the processes of life "using little that a second-year physics undergrad wouldn't know. (thompson's anti-reductionist admirers seldom put it this way.)". he notes that thompson deliberately avoided invoking natural selection as an explanation, and left history, whether of species or of an individual's life, out of his account. he quotes thompson's "a snow-crystal is the same today as when the first snows fell": adding "so, too, the basic forces acting upon organisms", and comments that we have forgotten other early twentieth century scientists who scorned evolution. in contrast, he argues,