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Books > Science & Mathematics > Physics > Applied physics & special topics > Biophysics
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Scale - The Universal Laws of Life, Growth, and Death in Organisms, Cities, and Companies (Paperback)
Loot Price: R411
Discovery Miles 4 110
You Save: R76
(16%)
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Scale - The Universal Laws of Life, Growth, and Death in Organisms, Cities, and Companies (Paperback)
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List price R487
Loot Price R411
Discovery Miles 4 110
You Save R76 (16%)
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
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"This is science writing as wonder and as inspiration." -The Wall
Street Journal Wall Street Journal 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.
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