Sixty years in socks is enough

It’s been 100 years since J. B. S. Haldane published his essay “On Being the Right Size,” wherein he explains why a mouse can’t be the size of an elephant. It’s because when you make something twice as big you multiply its volume eight times while increasing the cross-section of each bone just four times. A mouse even the size of a cow would collapse into a gooey mess. The idea that Haldane illustrated this by literally dropping a horse down a 1,000 foot mineshaft is at best a misinterpretation of the man’s work and at worst a vile slander.