Scale
The Universal Laws of Life and Death in Organisms, Cities and Companies
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Beschreibung des Verlags
Geoffrey West's research centres on a quest to find unifying principles and patterns connecting everything, from cells and ecosystems to cities, social networks and businesses.
Why do organisms and ecosystems scale with size in a remarkably universal and systematic fashion?
Is there a maximum size of cities? Of animals and plants? What about companies?
Can scale show us how to create a more sustainable future?
By applying the rigour of physics to questions of biology, visionary physicist Geoffrey West found that despite the riotous diversity in the sizes of mammals, they are all, to a large degree, scaled versions of each other. This speaks to everything from how long we can expect to live to how many hours of sleep we need. He then made the even bolder move of exploring his work's applicability to cities and to the business world. These investigations have led to powerful insights about the elemental natural laws that bind us together in profound ways, and how all complex systems are dancing to the same simple tune, however diverse and unrelated they may seem.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
West, a theoretical physicist and former president of the Santa Fe Institute, argues in this dense yet accessible work that there are simple laws that underlie all complex systems, whether organic entities or human constructs. Animals, plants, economies, cultures, cities, and companies are united by the fact that they come into existence, grow, mature, and decline. West's central conceit in studying these phenomena is scaling: how a system changes when its size changes. He finds that the answer is not obvious, but it can be expressed mathematically. For example, doubling an animal's size increases its energy requirements by only 75%, which remains true whether one looks at a mouse or a whale. The structures of civilization scale similarly, West shows, as he analyzes cities and corporations within this framework. He supports his evidence with a plethora of striking charts and graphs that are notable for their simplicity. Reducing biological and cultural systems to quantifiable data streams has become fashionable, if rightly contentious, but West turns up many fascinating paradoxes in this large, stimulating, and mostly lucid book of Big Ideas.
