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.”
发表于2024-11-21
Scale 2024 pdf epub mobi 电子书
“这是最好的时代,也是最坏的时代” 《规模》这本书,详细讲述了:”规模“,在生物学、医药、造船业、城市发展、企业生存方面的规律及特性。 作者作为一个“理论物理学家”,通过详细的大数据分析,解释了隐藏在不同领域下的生长规律。 书中引经据典,案例详实,数据可靠。 ...
评分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...
评分 评分图书标签: 科普 complexity 管理 物理 Scale 科学-生物/医学/生命科学 生物学 心理学
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.
Very interesting book. A good way of looking at life and death. Animal, people and organizations are not all that different, with sublinear scaling whereas city has super-linear scaling. The key of keeping growth is to overcome discontinuity and use innovation to fuel the growth. However, whether singularity will come is still a question.
评分这本书会让你见识到物理学家风格的思维方法——“尺度分析”,和它带来的惊人结论。尺度分析本来只研究物理问题,而作者韦斯特把这个方法用在了生物学、社会科学和经济学上,结果一出手就等于横扫。这本书能让你见识一点世界的底层逻辑,了解一点物理学的套路,又能治疗某些流行的妄想。它难度系数有点高、道理有点硬,非常值得你来挑战一下。
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.
评分本来我对人类未来能大幅度提高寿命还是挺乐观的,但是看了这本书顿时觉得希望渺茫了。
评分生物学思维还是很有好处的,英文也很优美
Scale 2024 pdf epub mobi 电子书