The Second International Congress for Stereology, again, has brought together scientists from very diverse discipl ines for discussion of problems concerning the recognition of three-dimensional structure, problems which confront those who study materials, rocks, biological systems or heavenly bodies. The program was organized into sessions each dealing with a special type of structural problem regardless of systems in the study of which these problems occur. Since all natural sciences have similar structural questions to investigate, discourses among biologists, metallurgists etc. were intense. Subject areas were not separated during the Congress. No concurrent sessions were held. Each participant had the opportunity to hear every paper. This re sulted in an unusually high attendance. During the last session, after five and a half days of intense work almost half the participants were still present in the lecture hall. Each of us was fascinated with what he was able to learn from fellow stereologists who studied different sectors of nature. Friendshipswere establ ished across oceans and across discipl inary boundaries. Each session was introduced by a key-note lecture didactical, meth odological and theoretical in nature. These key-note lectures can be recognized in this volume by their greater length, 12 pages being allotted to each key-note speaker. Collectively they constitute al most a textbook of stereology. Contributed papers in each problem category deal with appl ications.

This inquiry into the relationship between the “step” in dance and the “foot” in verse invites the reader into a tapestry woven by its crossed paths. A duel career as a dancer and as a poet allows the author to follow his interest in the dance origins of scansion and link it to how the foot connects lyric writing to an “exiled sense” through the felt tread of its rhythm. This is to rediscover the physical feeling of poetry; the fulcrum of a relationship that goes back to the Greek chorus, when every phrase was danced. The author shows how verse and the dance emerged together, as we initially developed bipedalism and speech. Written is a discursive style which allows the author to wander whenever digression seems appropriate, the book offers the reader an entertaining compendium of anecdotes, notions and quotes concerning the relation between our words and our movements. Walking in itself may have ushered in predication —syntax—putting one word in front of another as one put one foot in front of another. Did song emerge separately from language and stimulate ritual dance among women who linked their steps to sounds? The link of speech with movement is explored in ancient art, in theatre and in military drill and psychoanalysis. From the ballet to performance art, the author traces the evolution of recent creativity—free verse finding a parallel in Mick Jagger dancing freely on his own in the ‘60s while performance artists used the freedom of conceptual art to explore “action phrases” linking task-orientated movement with verbal articulation.