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

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Geoffrey West's research centres on a quest to find unifying principles and patterns connecting everything, from cells and ecosystems to cities, social networks and businesses.

Why do organisms and ecosystems scale with size in a remarkably universal and systematic fashion?

Is there a maximum size of cities? Of animals and plants? What about companies?

Can scale show us how to create a more sustainable future?

By applying the rigour of physics to questions of biology, visionary physicist Geoffrey West found that despite the riotous diversity in the sizes of mammals, they are all, to a large degree, scaled versions of each other. This speaks to everything from how long we can expect to live to how many hours of sleep we need. He then made the even bolder move of exploring his work's applicability to cities and to the business world. These investigations have led to powerful insights about the elemental natural laws that bind us together in profound ways, and how all complex systems are dancing to the same simple tune, however diverse and unrelated they may seem.

Review

'The sort of big-ideas book that comes along only every few years . . . This is a book full of thrilling ideas' ― Sunday Times

'Magisterial . . . you reach the end of this profound, revealing book rewarded. West shows how scientific method helps to peel back the hidden reality of our world. The concepts of physics dominated the last century. It is the concepts of biology - of networks, evolution and feedback dynamics - that are going to dominate the next' -- Matthew Syed ― The Times

'Quite dazzling . . . The book proceeds by introducing one mathematical concept in each chapter (power laws, fractals and so on), and explaining it vividly through numerous examples drawn from biology, history, urban planning, and many other fields . . . written with great joy and a disarming humility' -- Steven Poole ― The Spectator

'An absolutely riveting read. Like the best detective story, West lays out the amazing challenge of understanding why animals, cities and companies all scale so uniformly and then skilfully lets us into the secrets that his detective work has uncovered. This book captures the spirit of science in the twenty-first century, revealing the deep connections not just across physics and biology but society and life. The book is a perfect balance between the big scientific story and West's own personal narrative. We accompany the author on his quest to face up to his own mortality while at the same time being exposed to the theoretical discoveries that West has pioneered in his groundbreaking work' -- Marcus du Sautoy, Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University and author of The Great Unknown

'This is an important and original book, of immense scope. Geoffrey West is a polymath, whose insights range over physics, biology and the social sciences. He shows that the sizes, shapes and lifetimes of living things - despite their amazing diversity - display surprising correlations and patterns, and that these follow from basic physical principles. He then discovers, more surprisingly, the emergence of similar 'scaling laws' in human societies - in our cities, companies and social networks. This fascinating book deserves a very wide readership' -- Lord Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal

'Scaling is the most important yet most hidden and rarely discussed attribute -- without understanding it one cannot possibly understand the world. This book will expand your thinking from three dimensions to four. Get two copies, just in case you lose one' -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb

'I can think of no more exciting thinker in the world today than Geoffrey West. By bringing a physicist's razor-sharp mind to wonderfully surprising questions - "Why Aren't There Mammals the Size of Tiny Ants?" or "Are Cities and Companies Just Very Large Organisms?" - West forces us to see everything anew, from our own bodies to the mega-cities our species increasingly chooses to inhabit. Scale is a firework display of popular science' -- Niall Ferguson

'Trees, brains, hallucinogenics and even imaginary monsters are considered in this joyous, mind-boggling study of scientific methods' ― Telegraph, Top 50 Best Books of 2017

'An enchanting intellectual odyssey . . . also a satisfying personal and professional memoir of a distinguished scientist whose life's work came to be preoccupied with finding ways to break down traditional boundaries between disciplines to solve the long-term global challenges of sustainability . . . Mr West manages to deliver a lot of theory and history accessibly and entertainingly . . . Provocative and fascinating' ― New York Times

'It's rare in the history of science that someone has a big, bold, beautiful, stunningly simple new idea that also turns out to be right. Geoffrey West had one. And Scale is its story' -- Steven Strogatz, Professor of Mathematics, Cornell University and author of The Joy of X

'Geoffrey West's Scale is a revelation. Based on his path-breaking theory and research on super-linear scaling, it provides powerful new insights into the basic scientific laws that power our modern society and economy, its start-up companies, large corporations and cities. The book is a must-read for CEOs, technologists, mayors, urban leaders and anyone who wants to understand the simple laws that shape the complex, self-organizing world in which we live' -- Richard Florida, author of THE RISE OF THE CREATIVE CLASS and a senior editor at THE ATLANTIC

'Scale is filled with brilliant insights. West illuminates the laws of nature underlying everything from tiny organisms and humans to cities and companies, and provides a quantitative framework for decoding the deep complexity of our interconnected world. If you want to know why companies fail, how cities persist and what is needed to sustain our civilization in this era of rapid innovation, read this amazing book' -- Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Salesforce

'If there were a Nobel Prize for transdisciplinary science Geoffrey West would have won it for the work covered in Scale. This is a book of great originality and deep importance, containing startling insights about topics as seemingly unrelated as aging and death, sleep, metabolism, cities, energy use, creativity, corporations, and even the sustainability of our existence. If you are curious about how the world really works, you must read this book' -- Bill Miller, LMM Investments

'This spectacular book on how logarithmic scaling governs everything is packed with news - from the self-similar dynamics of cells and ecosystems to exactly why companies always die and cities don't. I dog-eared and marked up damn near every page' -- Stewart Brand, creator of the WHOLE EARTH CATOLOG

'When Geoffrey West, a brilliant theoretical physicist, turned his lens to the study of life spans, biological systems or cities he stumbled onto a game-changing universal insight about growth and sustainability. Scale is dazzling and provocative and West proves himself to be a compelling and entertaining writer - this is a book we will be talking about for a long time' -- Abraham Verghese, author of CUTTING FOR STONE

This book is breathtaking in its scope and vision! It represents the culmination of exciting theoretical work addressing critical questions in life. Written by a clever physicist and one of the most influential thinkers of the time, Geoffrey West, this volume elaborates on the author's intriguing discovery that the growth, organisation and dynamics of humans, animals and plants scale with their size. .....It is really an enjoyable read
that takes readers on a journey of fresh insights and illuminating perspectives.

-- Walid El-Sharoud ― SCIENCE PROGRESS

In this "grand unified theory of sustainability", physicist Geoffrey West explores underlying laws that link society and nature, called scaling theory. Insights (into city size and walking speed, for instance) abound -- Mary Craig ― NATURE

Book Description

A startlingly original 'theory of everything' that invites us to rethink our understanding of the connections between human civilization and the laws of nature.

Review:

4.7 out of 5

93.85% of customers are satisfied

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing read!

D.A. · 22 December 2021

A very stimulating book that raises many fascinating issues and shows ways in which they may yet be resolved. The ‘physics of cities’ is a spectacular prospect!

4.0 out of 5 stars Good read for anyone

A.C. · 18 February 2018

I found this book very thought provoking. Especially the parts where he discussed the city and social connections. Also the parts of exponential population growth and what might follow were interesting. There were some repetition in the book, it could have been more edited, but on the other hand the book had a quality that you can't stop reading it which is allways fun when you read a lot. He is very fluent writer and I think anyone can find joy reading this book. It was between entertaining and scientific.

5.0 out of 5 stars great read

P.B.B. · 22 August 2024

great read

5.0 out of 5 stars It's a great read and hat's off to the author

R.H. · 29 March 2018

There's too many non-positive reviews of this book! It's a great read and hat's off to the author. He doesn't quite clinch the point he is trying to make (so perhaps I should drop a star) but that really is besides the point, not least because he's tackling complexity so it's hard to be definitive. This book will make you think and that's the most important thing for me.

3.0 out of 5 stars Some gems in places but also too hand wavy

S.B. · 27 September 2018

The way biology scales and an insight to the birth and death of companies were fascinating. But much of the book was not rigorous enough for me. Perhaps it is because what he is trying to analyse is still a young science. I felt the author knew more about our near future than he is letting on because he wanted to maintain an upbeat tempo.

5.0 out of 5 stars Mind opening

b. · 2 September 2019

An extremely interesting book setting out a theory that was completely new to me, but which grips the imagination and changes the way one thinks.

4.0 out of 5 stars A very interesting factual book

P.A.H. · 7 June 2018

This is a most interesting book. I did not give it 5 stars because it is a bit wordy in places. However, it gives much thought provoking info. If you like factual books then a great book for the summer holiday.

5.0 out of 5 stars "Scalable" is a buzzword not properly understood

A.C. · 8 January 2021

That living beings have some significant similarities. That cities as they grow attract talent but also crime. That companies can either fail (50% within ten years) or last a long time, depending on how they deal with innovation

An expert on the science of scale

M.A. · 24 June 2024

ENGLISH: Geoffrey West is well-known as one of the developers of the science of scale, which studies the fractal structure of many phenomenons in living beings, societies and economies. This book popularizes his contributions to this science in a pleasant easy-to-follow way.Figure 31 and its description is wrong. The growth of human population is not an exponential (as he says at the beginning), but a logistic curve that went through inflection around 1985. True, he mentions later that indefinite exponential growths are not sustainable and their growth finally stops, but I don't think that's a sufficient correction to the previous mistake.By the way, his growth curve in a closed system (in chapter 5, paragraph 3) is quite similar to those I included in two of my books: [book:Human cultures and evolution|15213517] (1979) and [book:Evolución biológica y evolución cultural en la historia de la vida y del hombre|35338306] (2017).In this book he exhibits more than once his philosophy; he is clearly adept to the theory of emergent materialism. Of course, it's his right, if he doesn't present his philosophy as science (he usually doesn't do that).Sometimes the book is repetitive saying things over and over again. Being a popularization, the author probably wants his ideas to be clear to the reader. However, for those who know something about the matter, it's somewhat tedious.ESPAÑOL: Geoffrey West es uno de los desarrolladores de la ciencia de la escala, que estudia la estructura fractal de muchos fenómenos de los seres vivos, sociedades y economías. Este libro divulga sus contribuciones a esta ciencia de manera muy amena y fácil de seguir.La figura 31 y su descripción son incorrectas. El crecimiento de la población humana no es una curva exponencial (como dice al principio), sino una curva logística que pasó por el punto de inflexión hacia 1985. Es cierto que más adelante menciona que los crecimientos exponenciales indefinidos no son sostenibles y su crecimiento acaba por detenerse, pero no me parece que la corrección sea suficiente.A propósito, la curva de crecimiento del capítulo 5, apartado 3 es muy semejante a las que yo incluí en dos de mis libros: [book:Human cultures and evolution|15213517] (1979) y [book:Evolución biológica y evolución cultural en la historia de la vida y del hombre|35338306] (2017).En este libro demuestra más de una vez su filosofía; es claramente adepto a la teoría del materialismo emergentista. Sí, tiene perfecto derecho a hacerlo, siempre que no presente su filosofía como ciencia (y en efecto, no lo hace).A veces es muy repetitivo; dice las cosas una vez y otra. Sin duda, al ser un libro divulgativo, quiere que sus ideas queden claras para el lector. Sin embargo, para quien sabe algo del asunto, resulta un poco tedioso.

Biologia, Economia e Física conversando em uma mesma sala!

G.B. · 26 November 2020

O livro é incrível: o físico G. West consegue transformar, com uma escrita agradabilíssima, uma diversidade de disciplinas numa fórmula capaz de explicar o porquê dos números impostos pela Natureza. E o mais interessante: no capítulo 9, utiliza essa conjunção para criar a Ciência das Empresas, numa tentativa de dotar estes seres artificiais de vida: um belo coroamento para o livro. Para mim, que trabalho na área de empreendedorismo-inovador, foi uma bela e útil viagem.

A must read if you want to understand scale

C. · 27 November 2019

Geoffrey West’s look at the concept of scale is the book that anyone with applied interests in complexity, social innovation, and social change has been waiting for. This is the book I will recommend to any of my clients or colleagues who use the term scale ‘blindly’.West has not only written a wide-ranging scientific book that is relevant and applied in nature, it’s also a very readable book. Those two things don’t always go together.If you are interested in complexity science drawn from many scientific disciplines - physics, biology, sociology, mathematics and more - this is your book.

The universal laws of life are clearly and lucidly explained.

A.R.S. · 1 July 2019

Geoffrey West’s book Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, And Companies (Penguin Press (New York), 2017, is a wide-ranging survey about the way in which scale and scalability affects every life form and activity, including civilization and its human institutions here on earth. This is a profoundly important book, in that it brings together fundamental knowledge and understandings of the biological sciences, biochemistry, and physiology in ways that show that there appear to be what might be called the ‘Laws of Life’ might be hypothesized and generalized as traits and characteristics that all life forms share in common regarding commonalities and replications of patterns, their respective strengths, stabilities, and lengths of time that they may be expected to remain alive and retain viability.These matters have occupied the thoughts and explorations of philosophers since the days of ancient Greece when schools of philosophical thought first became systematized and written down. In many respects, the Platonic model, consisting of idealized prototypes to which they are real-world exemplars emulated poorly, was a step or two along the right path, but not in the way that anyone would readily recognize, because Platonic thinkers utilize the mathematics of geometry to express their ideas. It would take humankind an additional 2500 years in order to arrive at understandings about the ultimate nature of reality, not in terms of circles, squares, and triangles, as believed by the ancient Greeks; but rather as stochastic processes that are now believed to govern the known universe itself. It is not the Platonic ideals as to form whose characteristics are now being studied; instead, it is the operation of evolution itself, achieved through random processes that apply to all living things, and that the atoms, molecules, and organic tissues themselves that are developed over time within a myriad of species share common characteristics as to their strengths, their replicabilities, and their scalabilities that allow them to remain viable, and to reproduce their respective species. This concept of scalability as a limiting factor West shows as apply across the board, from the simplest unicellular life forms to the largest animals capable of independent locomotion and survival here on earth.Geoffrey West is a theoretical physicist who has taught at major universities around the world, among them Oxford University, Imperial College, London, and elsewhere in the world. He is also a Distinguished Professor and former president of the Santa Fe Institute.He has also conducted pioneering research into the nature of complex systems, and what might be expected to occur when those systems reach beyond the cycles of natural growth that they would otherwise have without the intervention of innovative technologies that allow those systems to expand beyond their natural limitations. His treatise is a tour de force about how these earthly life forms develop and expand from there simplest roots to the complexities that we face every day. More importantly, scaling itself allows him to explore the nature of complexity; the concept of emergence, self-organization, biological networks, and resilience. He addresses matters of ecological and environmental sustainability; innovation and what he refers to as ‘Cycles of Singularities’.West talks about the institutions of human life, from the simple to the most complex; how cities and urbanization closely resemble diverse colonies of protozoa; the nature of exponentiality and so-called ‘power laws’, and why that is important, as increasing size is also a hallmark of inherent weakness in individuals, in species, and in human-made societies, economies, and institutions. He speaks about the emerging science of cities and city life, what makes them good, interesting, and viable; but he also speaks to how cities can drown in their own complexities.He also talks about something called fractal geometry, and how the complex patterns on which fractal mathematics is based is widely applicable to a wide range of subject matter, from computer graphic interfaces and motion pictures, to explaining cardiac arrhythmia, to music and artwork, to simulations of weather and earthquakes, and to explain volatility in the stock market. The important thing to remember about scale is that it magnifies both what is known, and what is unknown; and it is in that realm that magnification multiplies disruptive effects. In seismology, we all know about the Richter Scale, in which the effects of earthquakes are magnified exponentially with each incremental increase of force on the scale magnified by a power of 10. The higher the number, the much more powerful they become, causing their disruptive effects to propagate over a much wider area. The Richter scale is illustrative of what is known as a power law, meaning that on a logarithmic scale, the strength of the effect increases according to the size of the exponent that acts as a multiplier of lower numbered effects. At the same time, those exponentially larger effects are less commonly seen, and by virtue of their absence from consciousness, people lose awareness of the potential for incalculable damage once those effects become manifest. Along with heightened impact come interactions with other aspects of the environment that might not be noticeable. For example, the great Alaskan earthquake of 1964 exceeded 9 points on the Richter scale, but it was the tsunami that followed that wiped out coastal towns and villages. So, scale matters, even if one of the more significant dangers is our collective forgetfulness that these events occur; and they do occur more frequently than we would like to imagine.West concludes by considering about an emerging science of commercial entities, i.e., companies: their various complexities and more limited abilities to remain sustainable over time.As an interconnected body of knowledge in which groundwork findings in biology are shown to have relevance to larger matters about the way society operates, West’s book is essentially a work in progress. Social science, including economics, psychology, and politics (including law) are still far behind their physical science brethren in making the proper connections, and in arriving at the appropriate conclusions. Nevertheless, the fundamental understandings are there for study and contemplation. Sometimes, it is more than enough that a pioneering researcher or philosopher simply points the way forward for others to follow. That is perhaps the ultimate value of Geoffrey West’s magnificent book: acute observations provoke serious inquiry lead to further observations and explanatory hypotheses.Science is always a work in progress; and what we claim to know today can become subsumed in a larger body of knowledge that is now accumulating. West acknowledges that there are natural limits to what living metabolism can do to keep an organism alive, even if that organism is the beneficiary of natural selection. He invokes the Second Law of Thermodynamics to suggest that entropy places an upper limit on the amount of energy in living things that can be turned to productive use. When a process reaches equilibrium in a closed system, the process itself may cease to continue; and whether it is described as an accumulation of disorder, or tagged with a pejorative appellation such as ‘useless energy’, the idea encompasses a physiochemical process beyond which its constituent parts cannot process further. The concept of wisdom implicitly acknowledges that lives are finite, that at some point things come to an end, and in the end, the preferred course of action is to make the best use of the time and resources we have available to us. To that end, an ungovernable sense of unrestrained scalability may cause us to throw away whatever potential for good or betterment that we can reasonably expect to have left to us over our remaining lifespans. In this respect, Geoffrey West may be considered something of a stoical philosopher. And that is yet another excellent reason to acquire and read his book. Highly recommended!

Truly multidisciplinary and a very interesting book.

s. · 20 November 2019

Very interesting book. Multidisciplinary, informative and integrates scaling laws across many disciplines -biology, physics, geography, business, innovation, sociology, structures, networks, systems. Highly recommended.

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

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