作者：GeoffreyWest
出版社：PenguinRandomHouseUSAEx
副标题：TheUniversalLawsofGrowth,Innovation,Sustainability,andthePaceofLifeinOrganisms,Cities,Economies,andCompanies
出版年：2017-5-16
页数：496
定价：GBP22.56
装帧：Hardcover
ISBN：9781594205583
内容简介
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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 “complexity” can be misleading, however, because what makes West’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 mammal’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 efficient—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 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 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.
作者简介
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Geoffrey West is a theoretical physicist whose primary interests have been in fundamental questions in physics and biology. West is a Senior Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory and a distinguished professor at the Sante Fe Institute, where he served as the president from 2005-2009. In 2006 he was named to Time’s list of “The 100 Most Influential People in the World.”
评论 ······
言外之意，世间万物，并不是简单的等比缩放。在更大的尺度上，它们另有一套规律。简单说，就是大了不一样。
地球上任何生物，其代谢率和体重的四分之三次方成正比。
人类寿命的理论上限，大概是125岁。
宏观结构和微观结构，呈现出的自相似性，就叫做分形。事物不断生长的最终结果，是形成一种分形结构。生长的过程也是分形的过程。分形的角度来看，人身体里的血管结构，其实是四维的。
1 组织越大，对基础设施的…
marvelous masterpiece! the reading experience is nothing short of an immersive and joyful roaming in the scientific exploration into the most profound and intriguing subject of our time. The grand-coa…
有点车轱辘话了
Highly recommended! It looks at life and death by integrating a physicist’s angles with sociologist’s perspectives, and compares the commonalities and differences as far as lifecycle is concerned amon…
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