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Scale: The Universal Laws of Life and Death (view source)
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{{a|br|}}{{br|Scale: The Universal Laws of Life and Death in Organisms, Cities and Companies}}, {{author|Geoffrey West}} | {{a|br|}}{{br|Scale: The Universal Laws of Life and Death in Organisms, Cities and Companies}}, by {{author|Geoffrey West}} | ||
{{drop|F|ascinating book, though}} probably somewhat in thrall to the [[financialisation]] of everything, in that it seeks to extract mathematical rules that explain sociological, as well as biological, phenomena. | |||
{{drop|F|ascinating book, though}} probably somewhat in thrall to the [[financialisation]] of everything, in that it seeks to extract mathematical rules that explain sociological, as well as biological, phenomena. No great surprise: West is a theoretical physicist from the Santa Fe Institute. These people are prone to hardcore [[reductionism]] and simplified mathematical truths — [[steven weinberg]]’s {{br|Lake Views}} was similar — but on the other hand you can see social scientists being a bit sniffy about this outsider traducing their sacred turf and calling it all a simple case of maths. | |||
There are some dimensional constants between organisations of different sizes. | There are some dimensional constants between organisations of different sizes. | ||
There seems to be something about the factor of four: scale factors are all expressed in “fourths” — five fourths, halves, three-quarters and so on — though West doesn’t offer a theory for what it is, and in any case isn’t clear anything | There seems to be something about the factor of four: scale factors are all expressed in “fourths” — five-fourths, halves, three-quarters and so on — though West doesn’t offer a theory for what it is, and in any case, isn’t clear anything turns on it. Lots of numbers are expressible in fractions denominated by four. | ||
====Sublinear versus superlinear scaling==== | ====Sublinear versus superlinear scaling==== | ||