Scale: The Universal Laws of Life, Growth, and Death in

Scale: The Universal Laws of Life, Growth, and Death in Organisms, Cities, and Companies

"This is science writing as wonder and as inspiration."Â â€”The Wall Street Journal

Wall Street Journal

From one of the most influential scientists of our time, a dazzling exploration of the hidden laws that govern the life cycle of everything from plants and animals to the cities we live in.

Visionary physicist Geoffrey West is a pioneer in the field of complexity science, the science of emergent systems and networks. The term â€œcomplexityâ€ can be misleading, however, because what makes Westâ€™s discoveries so beautiful is that he has found an underlying simplicity that unites the seemingly complex and diverse phenomena of living systems, including our bodies, our cities and our businesses.

Fascinated by aging and mortality, West applied the rigor of a physicist to the biological question of why we live as long as we do and no longer. The result was astonishing, and changed science: West found that despite the riotous diversity in mammals, they are all, to a large degree, scaled versions of each other. If you know the size of a mammal, you can use scaling laws to learn everything from how much food it eats per day, what its heart-rate is, how long it will take to mature, its lifespan, and so on. Furthermore, the efficiency of the mammalâ€™s circulatory systems scales up precisely based on weight: if you compare a mouse, a human and an elephant on a logarithmic graph, you find with every doubling of average weight, a species gets 25% more efficientâ€”and lives 25% longer. Fundamentally, he has proven, the issue has to do with the fractal geometry of the networks that supply energy and remove waste from the organismâ€™s body.

Westâ€™s work has been game-changing for biologists, but then he made the even bolder move of exploring his workâ€™s applicability. Cities, too, are constellations of networks and laws of scalability relate with eerie precision to them. Recently, West has applied his revolutionary work to the business world. This investigation has led to powerful insights into why some companies thrive while others fail. The implications of these discoveries are far-reaching, and are just beginning to be explored. Scale is a thrilling scientific adventure story about the elemental natural laws that bind us together in simple but profound ways. Through the brilliant mind of Geoffrey West, we can envision how cities, companies and biological life alike are dancing to the same simple, powerful tune.
Country USA
Brand Penguin Books
Manufacturer Penguin Books
Binding Paperback
ItemPartNumber 30267504
Color Black
ReleaseDate 2018-05-15
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780143110903

Country	USA
Brand	Penguin Books
Manufacturer	Penguin Books
Binding	Paperback
ItemPartNumber	30267504
Color	Black
ReleaseDate	2018-05-15
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780143110903

Scale: The Universal Laws of Life, Growth, and Death in Organisms, Cities, and Companies

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