
Scale
The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life, in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies
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Narrated by:
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Bruce Mann
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By:
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Geoffrey West
About this listen
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, including how much food it eats per day, what its heart rate is, how long it will take to mature, its life span, 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 percent more efficient - and lives 2 percent 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.
©2017 Geoffrey West (P)2017 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"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.” (The New York Times)
“Scale, a grand synthesis of topics [Geoffrey West] has studied for several decades, makes an important and eloquent case for the significance [of universal laws of size and growth] in an ecology of the natural and human world - and in understanding whether the two can fit together.” (Nature)
“West’s insightful analysis and astute observations patiently build an intellectual framework that is ultimately highly rewarding, offering a new perspective on the many scales with which nature and society challenge us.... A fascinating journey.” (Science Magazine)
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Great story -- horrible pauses
- By Rodney on 01-29-13
By: Jon Gertner
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Infinite Powers
- How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe
- By: Steven Strogatz
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Infinite Powers recounts how calculus tantalized and thrilled its inventors, starting with its first glimmers in ancient Greece and bringing us right up to the discovery of gravitational waves. Strogatz reveals how this form of math rose to the challenges of each age: how to determine the area of a circle with only sand and a stick; how to explain why Mars goes "backwards" sometimes; how to turn the tide in the fight against AIDS.
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Not written to be read aloud
- By A Reader in Maine on 02-21-20
By: Steven Strogatz
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Naked Statistics
- Stripping the Dread from the Data
- By: Charles Wheelan
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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From batting averages and political polls to game shows and medical research, the real-world application of statistics continues to grow by leaps and bounds. How can we catch schools that cheat on standardized tests? How does Netflix know which movies you'll like? What is causing the rising incidence of autism? As best-selling author Charles Wheelan shows us in Naked Statistics, the right data and a few well-chosen statistical tools can help us answer these questions and more.
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Starts well then becomes non-Audible
- By Michael on 09-07-13
By: Charles Wheelan
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The Extended Mind
- The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain
- By: Annie Murphy Paul
- Narrated by: Annie Murphy Paul
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Use your head. That’s what we tell ourselves when facing a tricky problem or a difficult project. But a growing body of research indicates that we’ve got it exactly backwards. What we need to do, says acclaimed science writer Annie Murphy Paul, is think outside the brain. A host of “extra-neural” resources—the feelings and movements of our bodies, the physical spaces in which we learn and work, and the minds of those around us— can help us focus more intently, comprehend more deeply, and create more imaginatively.
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Must Read for Artists, Designers, Strategists
- By Cassie Phillips on 05-28-22
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The Fund
- Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and the Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend
- By: Rob Copeland
- Narrated by: Rob Copeland, Will Damron
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Ray Dalio does not want you to listen to this audiobook. Late last year, when the billionaire founder of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund on the planet, announced that he was stepping down from the company he started out of his apartment nearly 50 years ago, the news made headlines around the world. Dalio cultivated an aura of international admiration and fame thanks to his company’s eye-popping success, coupled with a mystique he encouraged with frequent media appearances, celebrity hobnobbing, and his bestselling book, Principles.
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Best finance book I've read in years
- By Aaron on 12-16-23
By: Rob Copeland
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Chaos
- Making a New Science
- By: James Gleick
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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James Gleick explains the theories behind the fascinating new science called chaos. Alongside relativity and quantum mechanics, it is being hailed as the 20th century's third revolution.
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Best AudioBook on Math/Physics yet
- By Ryanman on 03-02-11
By: James Gleick
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A Man for All Markets
- From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market
- By: Edward O. Thorp, Nassim Nicholas Taleb - foreword
- Narrated by: Edward O. Thorp
- Length: 16 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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The incredible true story of the card-counting mathematics professor who taught the world how to beat the dealer and, as the first of the great quantitative investors, ushered in a revolution on Wall Street.
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A life of a genius
- By Oleksiy Volovik on 05-08-17
By: Edward O. Thorp, and others
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The Art of Statistics
- How to Learn from Data
- By: David Spiegelhalter
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Statistics are everywhere, as integral to science as they are to business, and in the popular media hundreds of times a day. In this age of big data, a basic grasp of statistical literacy is more important than ever if we want to separate the fact from the fiction, the ostentatious embellishments from the raw evidence - and even more so if we hope to participate in the future, rather than being simple bystanders.
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very good statistics overview
- By Tom on 11-29-19
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The Signal and the Noise
- Why So Many Predictions Fail - but Some Don't
- By: Nate Silver
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 16 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Nate Silver built an innovative system for predicting baseball performance, predicted the 2008 election within a hair’s breadth, and became a national sensation as a blogger - all by the time he was 30. He solidified his standing as the nation's foremost political forecaster with his near perfect prediction of the 2012 election. Silver is the founder and editor in chief of the website FiveThirtyEight. Drawing on his own groundbreaking work, Silver examines the world of prediction, investigating how we can distinguish a true signal from a universe of noisy data.
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Learn About Statistics Without All The Math
- By Scott Fabel on 03-09-13
By: Nate Silver
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Thinking in Systems
- A Primer
- By: Donella H. Meadows
- Narrated by: Tia Rider Sorensen
- Length: 6 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In the years following her role as the lead author of the international best seller, Limits to Growth - the first book to show the consequences of unchecked growth on a finite planet - Donella Meadows remained a pioneer of environmental and social analysis until her untimely death in 2001. Thinking in Systems is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem-solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute's Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world....
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Skip to the Middle
- By John Chambers on 06-20-20
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The Alignment Problem
- Machine Learning and Human Values
- By: Brian Christian
- Narrated by: Brian Christian
- Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Today's "machine-learning" systems, trained by data, are so effective that we've invited them to see and hear for us - and to make decisions on our behalf. But alarm bells are ringing. Systems cull résumés until, years later, we discover that they have inherent gender biases. Algorithms decide bail and parole - and appear to assess black and white defendants differently. We can no longer assume that our mortgage application, or even our medical tests, will be seen by human eyes. And autonomous vehicles on our streets can injure or kill.
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Required reading for any AI course
- By ehan ferguson on 11-16-20
By: Brian Christian
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How Not to Be Wrong
- The Power of Mathematical Thinking
- By: Jordan Ellenberg
- Narrated by: Jordan Ellenberg
- Length: 13 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Ellenberg chases mathematical threads through a vast range of time and space, from the everyday to the cosmic, encountering, among other things, baseball, Reaganomics, daring lottery schemes, Voltaire, the replicability crisis in psychology, Italian Renaissance painting, artificial languages, the development of non-Euclidean geometry, the coming obesity apocalypse, Antonin Scalia's views on crime and punishment, the psychology of slime molds, what Facebook can and can't figure out about you, and the existence of God.
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Great book but better in writing
- By Michael on 07-02-14
By: Jordan Ellenberg
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On the Edge
- The Art of Risking Everything
- By: Nate Silver
- Narrated by: Nate Silver
- Length: 15 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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In the bestselling The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver showed how forecasting would define the age of Big Data. Now, in this timely and riveting new book, Silver investigates "The River," or those whose mastery of risk allows them to shape—and dominate—so much of modern life. These professional risk takers—poker players and hedge fund managers, crypto true-believers and blue-chip art collectors—can teach us much about navigating the uncertainty of the 21st century.
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Fascinating report from a distant land
- By David Benjamin on 09-14-24
By: Nate Silver
What listeners say about Scale
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- Gary
- 08-12-17
That poor elephant doesn't live in a linear world
We live in a complex world. As the author says in the book, the bible is based on 'opinions, intuition, and prejudices'; and is up to us to determine if 'life has meaning or is without purpose'. For us to bring order out of the chaos we need a narrative to hold the story together. The author tries to tie together all the items that are in the subtitle of the book into a coherent universal truth about the world by seeing the world as a recursive holistic entity tied together by a scaling parameter expressed through emergent properties. The author speaks trenchantly on each of the topics and ties each of the topics together with his universal way of seeing the world with his system wide approach for understanding.
We live in a non-linear world but we always intuitively think linearly (oh I felt for that poor elephant who was given a too large of dose of LSD). When we naively scale we default simplistically by using a linear interpolation. Most of the world is not best modeled linearly (this is why we have statisticians). The author takes our false default position and refines it by adjusting for the dimensionality between area (2 dimensions) and volume (3 dimensions) and adding a dimension for the fractal (recursive) nature inherent within all systems and making the power function such that every doubling means a corresponding increase of 168% (i.e. 2 to the 3/4 power). The core of the author's theory lies within that power function or variations of it.
He never really talks down to his readers and moves the story fairly fast. He speaks statistics fluently but doesn't use a single equation within the book to intimidate math phobic readers. When there is randomness in the creation of a system there will always be an exponential distribution. Just think of a young boy sitting on a dock fishing. The number of fish the boy catches in a very short time will never be more than one. The time between catching the fish will always be an 'exponential distribution' (and the number of fish the boy catches will follow a Poisson Distribution, poisson is fish in French). All I needed to establish that those very special distributions was independence and identically distributed events at a subsystem level (and a few other non specified and minor regulatory conditions). The author takes this fact about the real world and uses it to create the self similarity inherent within subsystems across a network. The author gives an example about aging that illustrates the magical properties inherent within this special distribution and why it is so special and is worth knowing about. (My favorite fiction book, 'Gravity's Rainbow' does that too and I highly recommend that book).
The author is a polymath. He drops a lot of philosophers names and usually that annoys me, because most writers who do that don't seem to know anything beyond the name that they dropped. This author seemed to understand the connections. Aristotle (who he mentions, but mostly for his politics not his metaphysics) would see the world in terms of 'whatness' or 'thatness', the universal verse the particular, or like Spinoza (who the author mentions multiple times) the quantitative verse the qualitative. The author wants to take the intuition (the narrative, the story we tell to understand our place in the universe) and replace it with analytic truths. He'll say at the end of the book, that 'more data is better, but less data is best' because a theory that connects is most powerful of all. He brings up Kepler's laws based on Tycho Brahe's data sets by explaining what is being observed and contrasting that with Newton's Laws which tell how things necessarily are based on a priori truth.
The author wants to establish a universal holistic systems understanding of the world through analytical truths. (I would recommend the movie available on Youtube, 'Mindwalk' for anyone who is interested in these kind of things. The movie is based on a Fritjof Capra book but not his famous book 'Tao of Physics' and Liv Ullmann and Mont St. Michael are always beautiful to behold). Within the author's theory there was a unfolding of the necessity of evolutionary theory similar to Alfred Whitehead's as expressed in the delightful lecture 'The Function of Reason', and parts of Nietzsche's 'eternal recurrence of the identical will to power', a way of seeing the world such that everything that is is that way because it has to be. The self similarity inherent within all systems as expressed by the author would fit within a Nietzscheian frame work of the world, but the author doesn't connect those dots.
The author is bothered by the 'finite time singularity' that he thinks we're coming to. His thoughts on economic growth overlap with Robert Gordon's book 'The Rise and Fall of American Growth'. They both seem to lean towards that spectacular innovation is behind us. That's just their opinion and I respect that even though my opinion lies differently (I'm more optimistic, maybe foolishly, but that's just my opinion). Both books, had a bigger problem for me. Both covered too many topics all of which I'm very interested in and consequently have read many books on the topics and the books seldom told me things that I was not already aware of. Authors should always assume that readers are interested in the topic and tell us things we don't already know from recently published books.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 03-31-19
Incredibly satisfying.
This book will change the way you see the world around you and help make sense of so many emerging phenomenon. A real gem.
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- Bassel H.
- 10-08-17
very general
very general information and long to amount of knowledge presented, didn't meet my expectations of content.
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- 11104
- 11-30-17
A tour de force of intellect and creativity
West and his colleagues have seen relationships and discovered patterns in areas I never would have imagined. How do living things, cities, businesses and the environment change over time with surprisingly regular patterns? How do these patterns compare to one another across different entities?
Serious research has been done on these questions and it is explained with clarity. I like West's habit of stating a principle and then giving a couple of easy-to-understand examples. These are topics I knew nothing about and many of the discoveries are eye-openers.
A few reviewers complained about the charts in the print version. I listened to the audiobook and they were explained well.If you know what a logarithmic scale is there's no problem. I found the English narrator's diction a bit difficult at first, not a plain as a BBC newsreader's, but I got used to it.
The author does not pound on it but his views about the future are bleak unless our species achieves radical change. This may be the best possible time to be old.
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- Michael
- 05-04-18
Best book of 2018
The year isn’t over but Geoff West’ audiobook has greatly enhanced my ability to understand and think about the world and sustainability issues at many levels. It may take some time to find another such book.
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- Kent be Happier!
- 08-10-17
Wow
terrifically exciting and fun, lives up to its full title. highly recommended to anyone no matter the field you may focus.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Lawrence the 4th
- 08-22-17
Loved It!
I loved hearing that there may be a connection between natural processes and business processes. It's very thought-provoking idea especially for myself in the green industry.
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- Bryce
- 10-25-17
Diverse, Mathematical, Highly Relevant
Embrace the interconnectivity of biology, economics and social structure in this extremely well researched tome. Geoffrey West sets out to deliver a book that could explain in depth theories of scale to any local bartender and in my opinion, succeeds. Great read, important information and eye opening interconnectivity proven through laws of scale, loved every minute of the listen.
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- Fredrey
- 04-23-18
A new thought
I have thought of these concepts before. Thank you for giving them a vocabulary. I hope to others will be able to note the incredible level of connectivity.
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- Richard McKown
- 04-13-18
Best book about cities since Jane Jacobs
What made the experience of listening to Scale the most enjoyable?
I could listen to Geoffrey West's insights all day long, again and again.
What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?
The nature of exponential growth
Which scene was your favorite?
The description of bacteria in a petri dish doubling in size every minute, and comparing this to the exponential growth of mega-cities throughout the world
If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?
Scale, a documentary about what we have done and where we might be going
Any additional comments?
Scale is the most comprehensive scientific study of the complexity of cities, examining their importance in terms of economic growth and innovation. Cities are poorly understood and as a result we continue to create policies that work against our own long-term sustainability. Most books on the subject of cities are filled with openion about costs and economics. Most books about cities a written with an agenda. Scale approaches the city from the scientific method, revealing entirely new insights into the underlying structure of cities, nature, and companies. So much of what we believe in these subjects has no foundation in fact. The more people, who work in the construction of cities, architects, planners, elected officials, developers and citizens, understand the fundamental nature of how cities work, the better we might be able to shape plans and policies for the long-term benefit of our economy, security and well-being. I believe everyone on the planet should read this book.
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