polype's

Updated: May 7, 2025

If the sudden folding of a sensitive-plant's leaf when touched, or the spreading out of the stamens in a wild-cistus when gently brushed, is to be considered a vital action of a purely physical kind; then so too must be considered the equally slow contraction of a polype's tentacles.

Herbert Spencer - Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I

It cannot so determine the polarity of the molecules with which it is supplied by the arteries as to constrain them to group themselves into a new layer, instead of merely repairing an old one. A crab or a lobster, or a polype's molecules are clever enough for this, a man's not.

William Thomas Thornton - Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics: With Some of Their Applications