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

The essence of the book- disparate in nature, follow universal scaling laws, though in varying degrees- power laws, linearly, logarithmic-ally, ext. One fascinating thing pointed out- heart beats. The total number of beats of each heart for all organisms is pretty much the same, however the speed/frequency is heavily dependent on the size of the organism. Smaller creatures, tend to have much faster heartbeats, compared to larger ones.

I wish the author made his point in half the time. Too much inside stories.

Some interesting ideas and patterns are being shown in this book that seem to emerge in life, cities and companies arising from the necessities (oxygen, electricity) they each uniquely need. Lots of neat facts about animals too. Not sure what I learned from it though, because I’m not sure how I can apply the knowledge that many things are scaled versions of each other in my daily life. Maybe feeling more empathy for mice?

A bit hard to read

Geoffrey West explaine in a really awesome way how systematicaly is the growth in every form of live and how they tend to a 'order'

Main takeaways: - Sublinear scaling of a downside as a system grows = economies of scale. - 3/4 power scaling for organisms means that large insects/Godzilla would collapse under own weight. - Heating/cooling mechanisms in houses must scale with volume not area of walls. Ships increase in volume can carry more cargo and fuel but have less drag as that only scales with area. - areas considered included businesses and cities. E.g. walking speed in a city is greater compared to walking speed of people in a small town.

I found this super-interesting as it helped me understand the connections between individual actors within a system and the emergent system behavior along with lots of other interesting things. The author does a good job of keeping things relatively simple. I want and need to read more about this as I feel like I generally understand what he explained but I sure as hell couldn’t explain it very well. The things that will stick with me are: * common factors between plants and animals that make them scale similarly * “...what is irrelevant at one scale can become dominant at another...” * Fractal nature of natural systems can make two dimensional things become “space-filling” which means they effectively have an additional dimension. * Dangers of thinking things scale linearly. Blah blah blah, but how smart do I think I am when I look down my nose at economic comparisons that don’t incorporate per unit or per capita -which of course is linear scale - there is plenty in here that is humbling * “...continuous adaptation, not equilibrium, is the rule.” This seems like a better, although less simple way to describe economic systems. * increasing pace of innovation and life in general means that career disruption is something that everyone should expect more than once in their lifetime because whatever you learn will be obsolete within your lifetime.

Incredibly dense and important read to understand complex systems from biology to culture. Every once in a while, you read a book that changes your view of the world. This book was one of them. Starting my second read now.

El libro desarrolla un marco conceptual en el que manejar la complejidad biológica, de las ciudades y de las empresas de una forma muy extensa. Aunque es muy interesante, a veces se repite demasiado y se alarga en ejemplos redundantes.

This was a pleasant read, to say the least. I always find it fascinating when trying to use mathematical principles to describe social and environmental phenomena that is usually more quantitative. Of course, as a physicist I'm biased. I also thought that the idea of cities and companies being described as having lifespans and similar scaling laws was quite interesting. I'm always fond of using simple principles to describe a wide range of complex phenomena, so it was a lot of fun to read about. I definitely recommend the book.