Reviews
Scale: The Universal Laws of Life and Death in Organisms, Cities and Companies by Geoffrey West
rick2's review against another edition
4.0
Fantastic and thought-provoking book that maybe could’ve used an editor to streamline and punch up some parts.
The theory itself is amazing. And it’s one of those things, having read this book a couple years ago, I noticed it seeping into so many aspects of my life. I keep looking at things as diverse as crime statistics and football scores and wondering what kind of the universal underpinnings are. Fortunately, for my league mates in fantasy football, I am an amateur with all of this. Whereas West actually teased out some signal from all the noise. More so on the crime statistics than the football scores, although my DMs are open, my team needs some help.
What results is a really interesting inverse of kind of a common accepted wisdom around organism scaling. To maybe butcher my freshman biology, but as in organism scales with size, it essentially is constrained by sort of a 3/4 power law. Basically saying that within the same sort of class, (mammals, invertebrates, etc.) the larger an organism gets the harder it is to spread around nutrients. Blood vessels get smaller and smaller the farther away they are from the heart in a mathematical way. This impacts things like metabolism, heart size, and so on, and so forth.
The really fascinating bit that I keep coming back to mentally is that the inverse is true for systems. I’ve been fortunate to work at a handful startups as they’ve grown from 10 people to 20 to 50 to 100. and it’s always interesting to reflect back and look at how the
problems you solve at 10 people and at 100 people differ so wildly. The last couple I’ve worked in an operations role so it’s everything from on boarding people to IT support. And with 10 people you can do it all by hand, FaceTime me personally and I’ll solve your computer issues by lunch. That doesn’t work when you have 100 or 200 people. You have to set up entirely different systems to support them, from wikis, to recorded videos, to paying for actual IT software. I have a nightmare where I would be forced to do this for an organization of like 10,000 people and from scratch have to figure out how to navigate that tar pit.
So the really cool part of this book is that there’s some actual mathematical underpinning for all of that. As an organization scales, the complexity scales exponentially. As a city scales, the resources to deliver essential services like crime prevention and fire fighters scale in an exponential way as well. I’m sure we all can instinctively tell that traffic does not get more congested on a linear path. As an aside, I would say it’s more of a jump diffusion model, but I think it also fits in here with Mr. West musings. It’s fascinating as a theory, and I do think it should be more talked about.
As a minor criticism, I do think the book was clearly written by an academic. Despite being one of the more fascinating books I read in 2019, it’s kind of like eating porridge without add-in’s, nutritional but oh so bland. And I wouldn’t necessarily comment on it because the core ideas do carry the day, except for the fact that, while reading, I found myself quickly rendered comatose on more than one occasion. Having to reread whole chapter because my mind had decided to run off elsewhere. In my version of the world, where everything runs perfectly and I always win my fantasy football matchups, this guy meets up with Randall Munroe to produce the next edition of this.
The theory itself is amazing. And it’s one of those things, having read this book a couple years ago, I noticed it seeping into so many aspects of my life. I keep looking at things as diverse as crime statistics and football scores and wondering what kind of the universal underpinnings are. Fortunately, for my league mates in fantasy football, I am an amateur with all of this. Whereas West actually teased out some signal from all the noise. More so on the crime statistics than the football scores, although my DMs are open, my team needs some help.
What results is a really interesting inverse of kind of a common accepted wisdom around organism scaling. To maybe butcher my freshman biology, but as in organism scales with size, it essentially is constrained by sort of a 3/4 power law. Basically saying that within the same sort of class, (mammals, invertebrates, etc.) the larger an organism gets the harder it is to spread around nutrients. Blood vessels get smaller and smaller the farther away they are from the heart in a mathematical way. This impacts things like metabolism, heart size, and so on, and so forth.
The really fascinating bit that I keep coming back to mentally is that the inverse is true for systems. I’ve been fortunate to work at a handful startups as they’ve grown from 10 people to 20 to 50 to 100. and it’s always interesting to reflect back and look at how the
problems you solve at 10 people and at 100 people differ so wildly. The last couple I’ve worked in an operations role so it’s everything from on boarding people to IT support. And with 10 people you can do it all by hand, FaceTime me personally and I’ll solve your computer issues by lunch. That doesn’t work when you have 100 or 200 people. You have to set up entirely different systems to support them, from wikis, to recorded videos, to paying for actual IT software. I have a nightmare where I would be forced to do this for an organization of like 10,000 people and from scratch have to figure out how to navigate that tar pit.
So the really cool part of this book is that there’s some actual mathematical underpinning for all of that. As an organization scales, the complexity scales exponentially. As a city scales, the resources to deliver essential services like crime prevention and fire fighters scale in an exponential way as well. I’m sure we all can instinctively tell that traffic does not get more congested on a linear path. As an aside, I would say it’s more of a jump diffusion model, but I think it also fits in here with Mr. West musings. It’s fascinating as a theory, and I do think it should be more talked about.
As a minor criticism, I do think the book was clearly written by an academic. Despite being one of the more fascinating books I read in 2019, it’s kind of like eating porridge without add-in’s, nutritional but oh so bland. And I wouldn’t necessarily comment on it because the core ideas do carry the day, except for the fact that, while reading, I found myself quickly rendered comatose on more than one occasion. Having to reread whole chapter because my mind had decided to run off elsewhere. In my version of the world, where everything runs perfectly and I always win my fantasy football matchups, this guy meets up with Randall Munroe to produce the next edition of this.
zb1113's review against another edition
4.0
Reads pretty academically. Lots of interesting data on scaling laws (power laws, exponential/super exponential/linear) and the underlying structures of our biology, our cities, our economies and our companies. Interestingly, these laws scale to both the physical structures and the socieo-economic/relationship based structures, albeit differing in important (potentially catastrophic) ways. The final chapter as a call to cross-disciplinary investigation and societal changes toward sustainability was a nice sum up.
mkesten's review against another edition
3.0
A very ambitious study. Could have done with a little more editing.
Are there universal laws of scaling chemistry, biology? Yes.
Do the same universal laws apply to the structures of urbanization and commerce? The jury’s still out on this one.
How important is it to figure out how to reign in the exponential growth our species?
I’d say pretty darned important.
Will technical innovation do it for us? Not bloody likely.
Will we negotiate the political and economic compromises needed with other countries to make this happen? Also, not so likely.
Are there universal laws of scaling chemistry, biology? Yes.
Do the same universal laws apply to the structures of urbanization and commerce? The jury’s still out on this one.
How important is it to figure out how to reign in the exponential growth our species?
I’d say pretty darned important.
Will technical innovation do it for us? Not bloody likely.
Will we negotiate the political and economic compromises needed with other countries to make this happen? Also, not so likely.
kahawa's review against another edition
5.0
This is one of those books that stays with you. I'll probably go back and read this again. I always enjoy learning about complexity, and West breaks things down in a very understandable way with no scary equations. I was particularly fascinated with the idea that mammals are scaled versions of each other, each with the same blood pressure and average heart beats per life time. I enjoyed the look at cities too. I'm not sure they're as mysterious as some make them out to be; they are, after all, simply expressions of brains - brains build them, to suit the needs of brains, so it shouldn't surprise us that they emulate neural networks. Loved his discussion about science and interdisciplinaryism. And group size dynamics. This book put into words things that I've felt intuitively since I was very young. It does take away some of the spark of reality though. Things are much simpler and mechanistic than we realise in daily life.
tempse's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
Geoffrey West's "Scale" is one of the best non-fiction books I've ever read, and it left a deep impression on me. It's an incredibly informative read that's full of grand ideas that are expertly presented. Despite the wealth of information, the book is easy to follow and digest.
West explores how the principles of scaling apply to various fields such as biology, physics, and social systems. He offers insightful observations on how things change as they grow and how these changes can be predicted through mathematical modeling.
What I found most fascinating about this book is how it challenges our perspectives on the world around us. The author presents his ideas in an engaging writing style that makes complex concepts accessible to the reader.
I was thoroughly impressed with "Scale" and found it to be a thought-provoking and insightful read. I'm sure I'll pick up even more knowledge on a re-read, as there might be many nuggets of wisdom that I missed the first time around. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in science, math, and the underlying principles that govern the world around us.
seeyf's review against another edition
3.0
Interesting insights such as how various aspects of organisms like metabolism, lifespan etc. scale rather consistently according to simple power laws, and cities and companies a little less so. However, the same points are repeated throughout the book which ends up being longer than needed.
holodoxa's review against another edition
5.0
Scale is Geoffrey West's ambitious attempt to synthesize a universal theory of scaling (i.e. how things grow, shrink, change) for a lay audience. As West would admit, this framing is somewhat grandiose and purposefully over-claimed (to excite and provoke readers), but generally West's research findings are deeply intriguing and merit serious consideration (from laypeople and scientists). Part of West's angle is quantitatively examining dynamical systems (organisms, cities, economies, etc) using a "coarse-grained" perspective (basically a stepped-back, low resolution view). He's a theoretical physicist but applies his mathematical mind (with colleagues) to problems of economics, biology, city planning, etc. Some of the insights produced by this approach are truly fascinating.
I'm not eager to rigorously evaluate every claim made by West as he is generally right. His approach is quite powerful. In fact, I wish Scale explored the practical implications and applications of West's work a bit more. I can forgive this oversight because West is primarily concerned with theory and the philosophy of science. However, some phenomena are better suited for his approaches than others. His claims concerning organisms and allometry are probably the most persuasively and rigorous supported, while the claims concerning how cities, economies, and companies scale are a little more dubious (though they shouldn't be dismissed or ignored).
Of the critical philosophical issues raised by West's work, maybe the most salient concerns the race between human populations (economic growth) and natural resources. Can we grow forever on a plant with finite resources? Is our pace of growth sustainable? The Malthusians and eco-activists say "NO," while the futurists say "OF COURSE!" West comes down somewhere in the middle, criticizing both sides for prior or current oversights. However, it seems the historical record and current trends/developments suggest that the futurists/techno-utopians are winning the argument at this moment and by quite a bit. There is, of course, some upper limit (at least for human populations on earth itself), but it is far from clear that we are anywhere close to this upper limit. Moreover, West's discussion here doesn't seem to account for possible unforeseen developments or even account for how much human behavior and culture is changing as society advances and grows (mentions declining fertility rates and population flux back toward cities but his discussion doesn't explore these trends). West's coarse-grained approach inevitably misses some important factors though West's caution is reasonable.
Ultimately, Scale is definitely a book worth reading and probably more than once!
I'm not eager to rigorously evaluate every claim made by West as he is generally right. His approach is quite powerful. In fact, I wish Scale explored the practical implications and applications of West's work a bit more. I can forgive this oversight because West is primarily concerned with theory and the philosophy of science. However, some phenomena are better suited for his approaches than others. His claims concerning organisms and allometry are probably the most persuasively and rigorous supported, while the claims concerning how cities, economies, and companies scale are a little more dubious (though they shouldn't be dismissed or ignored).
Of the critical philosophical issues raised by West's work, maybe the most salient concerns the race between human populations (economic growth) and natural resources. Can we grow forever on a plant with finite resources? Is our pace of growth sustainable? The Malthusians and eco-activists say "NO," while the futurists say "OF COURSE!" West comes down somewhere in the middle, criticizing both sides for prior or current oversights. However, it seems the historical record and current trends/developments suggest that the futurists/techno-utopians are winning the argument at this moment and by quite a bit. There is, of course, some upper limit (at least for human populations on earth itself), but it is far from clear that we are anywhere close to this upper limit. Moreover, West's discussion here doesn't seem to account for possible unforeseen developments or even account for how much human behavior and culture is changing as society advances and grows (mentions declining fertility rates and population flux back toward cities but his discussion doesn't explore these trends). West's coarse-grained approach inevitably misses some important factors though West's caution is reasonable.
Ultimately, Scale is definitely a book worth reading and probably more than once!
mwcooper11's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.25