A discussion of spherulitic crystallization and spherulitic morphology in high polymers.

An outline is given, before publication of recent experimental work and of more detailed discussion, of revisions in our views as to how our phenomenological theory of spherulitic crystallization should be interpreted in specific application to high polymers; limits to this applicability are also noted. It is shown that recent criticisms by Bassett and Vaughan of our early interpretations of spherulitic crystallization and spherulitic morphology in high polymers are not substantively founded. Their dominant/subsidiary lamellar construction is not fundamentally different from the structures we discussed; if anything, it represents a more limited viewpoint in which habits (shapes) of lamellae and their organization into relatively discrete stacks are neglected.