Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life, in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies in Science and Inquiry

Dec 01, 2017 David Rubenstein rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: economics, biology, physics, mathematics

This is a fantastic book about scaling laws and how to understand them. Geoffrey West is a theoretical physicist, who has spent a lot of time at the Santa Fe Institute, deriving theoretical scaling laws, and applying them successfully to biology, cities, and companies. He derives the theories from the structure of networks; arteries, capillaries in organisms, social networks and city infrastructure, and companies.

The scaling laws themselves are fascinating. In the very first chapter, Geoffrey We This is a fantastic book about scaling laws and how to understand them. Geoffrey West is a theoretical physicist, who has spent a lot of time at the Santa Fe Institute, deriving theoretical scaling laws, and applying them successfully to biology, cities, and companies. He derives the theories from the structure of networks; arteries, capillaries in organisms, social networks and city infrastructure, and companies.

The scaling laws themselves are fascinating. In the very first chapter, Geoffrey West hits the reader with an astounding set of scaling laws that certainly surprised me. As to biology, there are about 50 different metrics that have interesting scaling laws--and West touches on a few of them. The scaling of metabolism, heart rates, brain matter, growth rates, life spans, aorta lengths, tree heights, and on and on; you get the picture. These scaling laws pertain across organisms, from the tiniest microbe to the blue whale; over 20 orders of magnitude.

But the really surprising aspect is that almost all of the scaling laws are factors of 1/4! For example, metabolic rate scales as Mass to the 3/4 power. Doubling the mass of a mammal increases its time to maturity by 1/4, its lifetime increases by 1/4, and its heart rate decreases by 1/4. And, these laws apply over the entire range of mammals, despite their diversity. Mitochondrial mass, relative to the total mass of an organism, goes as Mass to the -1/4 power. And, Geoffrey West describes how he and colleagues have derived theoretical scaling laws and growth curves from first principles. He shows how remarkably well the data fit his theoretical predictions.

As a physicist, West felt that this universal 1/4-power scaling tells us something fundamental about the dynamics, structure, and organization of life. These laws suggest dynamical processes that constrain evolution. And there are some surprising constants among all mammals. Blood pressure is approximately the same, and the number of heart beats in a lifetime is about the same, among all mammals!

But the discussion of scaling laws don't stop with biology. West finds fascinating scaling laws that apply to cities and to companies. The most perplexing question he addresses is, why do most cities live forever, while companies have short lifetimes? Cities are the prime drivers of economic development, not the nation state. And, most of the scaling laws associated with cities are either to the 0.85 or 1.15 power. That is to say, comparing two average cities, one twice as big as the other in population, the larger city will not have double the number of gas stations, but only 85% more than the smaller one. The larger city will have 115% higher wages, more doctors and lawyers, patents, GDP, number of cases of AIDS, crime and pollution. This scaling applies within all countries, but not across from one country to another.

The average half-life of companies is 10.5 years!And in any given year, the risk of a company disappearing (through bankruptcy, or merger, or acquisition) is the same, regardless of a company's size!

While cities become more diverse as they age and grow, companies do the opposite; they lose diversity, as they become more supportive of tried-and-true products in order to guarantee short-term returns. As companies grow, so too does their bureaucratic control. And, this is at the expense of innovation and R&D (Research and Development).

At times, the narrative deviates from scaling, and goes into various qualitative aspects of cities and companies. The author is rather opinionated in these areas, but his conjectures are interesting, though open to controversy. My only complaint about this book is that, while theoretical scaling laws in biology are developed and tested successfully against data, the book does not offer theoretical scaling laws for cities and companies. To some extent, these are more difficult to develop, because they depend on socio-economic structures and social networks. Data for these, especially for companies, are more difficult or expensive to obtain. Nevertheless, this book offers a wealth of information, and is endlessly fascinating. Highly recommended! ...more

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Aug 01, 2017 Charlene rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: biology, favorites, chaos-complexity-emergence, ecology, mindgasms, physics, medicine, information-theory, origins-of-life, evolution

If you are only going to read one book on networks/ systems, let it be this. Whenever a physicist takes on the question of What is Life, like Erwin Schr枚dinger did in 1944, spectacular things come from it. Physicist Geoffrey West has carried on the Schr枚dinger tradition and given the world some serious food for thought.

This is probably going to be the longest review I have ever written because this is, without question, one of the most important books I have ever read and is an essential read f ...more

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Nov 10, 2017 aPriL does feral sometimes rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction, twisted-me-peculiar, science, academic-notations

'Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies' surprised me. I learned so much from this book!

Why can we live up to 120 years, but not 1,000? (laws of Thermodynamics)

Why do mice live for up to 2 to 3 years, and elephants live up to 75? (laws of Thermodynamics)

Why do organisms and ecosystems from cells to whales to forests scale with size in a predictable fashion? (Underlying universal math principles of biol ...more

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