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.”
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.
无论你住在哪里,你每天花在通勤上的时间是恒定的1小时。 这被称为马尔凯蒂定律,他把这个发现于1994年发表在一篇论文中,他指出,即便是是一个被监禁的犯人,没有地方可去,他每天也会走上一个小时。 理解这一点,对于理解城市的合理规模很有启发。人步行速度是每小时5千米,...
評分无论你住在哪里,你每天花在通勤上的时间是恒定的1小时。 这被称为马尔凯蒂定律,他把这个发现于1994年发表在一篇论文中,他指出,即便是是一个被监禁的犯人,没有地方可去,他每天也会走上一个小时。 理解这一点,对于理解城市的合理规模很有启发。人步行速度是每小时5千米,...
評分 評分1、规模缩放法则 为了理解这个概念,可以先从两个常识讲起。 第一个常识是我们在中学课本上就知道的一个几何知识。对于正方形来说,如果边长增加为原来的10倍,那么面积会增加为原来的100倍,体积会增加为原来的1000倍,体积的增加速度要远快于面积和长度的增加速度。反过就是...
評分当两个人组成了一个家庭,很多资源能共用,多余的精力可以投放到更有生产力的工作中,实现一加一大于二。同理,当人类由独居变成群居,随着规模的增大,世界向前更进一步。 世界顶级理论物理学家杰弗里·韦斯特在《规模》一书中,用数学的语言告诉我们复杂世界存在的简单规律,...
好書,作者對生物和社會組織,使用科學的方法,一數據分析的方式,推導齣規模化擴張的一般規律。也解答諸如為什麼螞蟻這麼小,卻可以舉起自身重量若乾倍的重物等。
评分生物學思維還是很有好處的,英文也很優美
评分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 among animals, human beings, companies, cities, ... very inspirational.
评分好書,作者對生物和社會組織,使用科學的方法,一數據分析的方式,推導齣規模化擴張的一般規律。也解答諸如為什麼螞蟻這麼小,卻可以舉起自身重量若乾倍的重物等。
评分好書,作者對生物和社會組織,使用科學的方法,一數據分析的方式,推導齣規模化擴張的一般規律。也解答諸如為什麼螞蟻這麼小,卻可以舉起自身重量若乾倍的重物等。
本站所有內容均為互聯網搜索引擎提供的公開搜索信息,本站不存儲任何數據與內容,任何內容與數據均與本站無關,如有需要請聯繫相關搜索引擎包括但不限於百度,google,bing,sogou 等
© 2025 qciss.net All Rights Reserved. 小哈圖書下載中心 版权所有