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Scale : the universal laws of growth, innovation, sustainability, and the pace of life in organisms, cities, economies, and companies / Geoffrey West
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Scale : the universal laws of growth, innovation, sustainability, and the pace of life in organisms, cities, economies, and companies / Geoffrey West

by Geoffrey B. West

This study explores universal scaling laws and mathematical principles governing the life cycles of biological organisms, cities, and businesses. It analyses how fractal networks determine energy efficiency and growth across complex systems.

Accession 14692 ISBN 9781594205583 Publisher Penguin
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TAGS
Curated Derived
Animals Architecture Culture Economics Geography Growth Human Evolution Life Sciences Science Social Sciences
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LOCATION HISTORY
G:W1:5 5 Current vertical
2 days, 12 hours ago
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Scale : the universal laws of growth, innovation, sustainability, and the pace of life in organisms, cities, economies, and companies / Geoffrey West
vernon_id
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14692
vernon_slug
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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. Fundamentally, he has proven, the issue has to do with the fractal geometry of the networks that supply energy and remove waste from the organism’s body. West’s work has been game-changing for biologists, but then he made the even bolder move of exploring his work’s applicability. Cities, too, are constellations of networks... -- blurb

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Geoffrey B. West
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