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Scale
- The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life, in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies
- Narrated by: Bruce Mann
- Length: 19 hrs and 13 mins
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Publisher's summary
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.
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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I Wish I Knew This 20 Years Ago
- Understanding the Universal Laws That Govern All Things
- By: Justin Perry
- Narrated by: Steve White
- Length: 1 hr and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Life is not a series of random events but is orchestrated through a set of natural laws that govern life on Earth. Once we understand these laws, we will have a better understanding of how life works. Once we understand how life works, we can make it work for us instead of against us. This book is a guidebook intended to offer knowledge that you can use throughout life. If I could sum up this entire book in one statement, it would be: Your mind is literally shaping the world around you.
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Amazing and life changing!
- By wisdom1st on 12-18-15
By: Justin Perry
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The Technology Trap
- Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation
- By: Carl Benedikt Frey
- Narrated by: Richard Lyddon
- Length: 15 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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From the Industrial Revolution to the age of artificial intelligence, The Technology Trap takes a sweeping look at the history of technological progress and how it has radically shifted the distribution of economic and political power among society’s members.
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Very good
- By Brad on 07-04-19
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Complexity
- The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos
- By: M. Mitchell Waldrop
- Narrated by: Mikael Naramore
- Length: 17 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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In a rarified world of scientific research, a revolution has been brewing. Its activists are not anarchists, but rather Nobel Laureates in physics and economics and pony-tailed graduates, mathematicians, and computer scientists from all over the world. They have formed an iconoclastic think-tank and their radical idea is to create a new science: complexity. They want to know how a primordial soup of simple molecules managed to turn itself into the first living cell--and what the origin of life some four billion years ago can tell us about the process of technological innovation today.
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You won't learn anything you didn't know
- By Dennis E. Alwine on 12-26-20
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Sync
- How Order Emerges from Chaos in the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life
- By: Steven Strogatz
- Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins
- Length: 13 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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At once elegant and riveting, Sync tells the story of the dawn of a new science. Steven Strogatz, a leading mathematician in the fields of chaos and complexity theory, explains how enormous systems can synchronize themselves, from the electrons in a superconductor to the pacemaker cells in our hearts. He shows that although these phenomena might seem unrelated on the surface, at a deeper level there is a connection, forged by the unifying power of mathematics.
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Engaging, but maybe better suited for non-audio
- By Ryan on 05-26-12
By: Steven Strogatz
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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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Scale
- Seven Proven Principles to Grow Your Business and Get Your Life Back
- By: Jeff Hoffman, David Finkel
- Narrated by: David Finkel
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Business owners want growth but fear it will take over their lives. Surprisingly, the only way to truly grow your company is to reduce its reliance on you - to scale. Jeff Hoffman and David Finkel offer a blueprint to rapidly grow your business while also gaining more freedom. Based on their own experiences starting, scaling, and effectively exiting from multiple successful companies, they provide seven clear principles that will help you determine the best strategy for growth in your company.
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All stuff no fluff
- By Jonathan Bonanno on 05-25-21
By: Jeff Hoffman, and others
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I Wish I Knew This 20 Years Ago
- Understanding the Universal Laws That Govern All Things
- By: Justin Perry
- Narrated by: Steve White
- Length: 1 hr and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Life is not a series of random events but is orchestrated through a set of natural laws that govern life on Earth. Once we understand these laws, we will have a better understanding of how life works. Once we understand how life works, we can make it work for us instead of against us. This book is a guidebook intended to offer knowledge that you can use throughout life. If I could sum up this entire book in one statement, it would be: Your mind is literally shaping the world around you.
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Amazing and life changing!
- By wisdom1st on 12-18-15
By: Justin Perry
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Why Information Grows
- The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies
- By: César Hidalgo
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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What is economic growth? And why, historically, has it occurred in only a few places? Previous efforts to answer these questions have focused on institutions, geography, finances, and psychology. But according to MIT's anti-disciplinarian César Hidalgo, understanding the nature of economic growth demands transcending the social sciences and including the natural sciences of information, networks, and complexity. To understand the growth of economies, Hidalgo argues, we first need to understand the growth of order.
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Great book!
- By bpjammin on 01-07-17
By: César Hidalgo
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Shape
- The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else
- By: Jordan Ellenberg
- Narrated by: Jordan Ellenberg
- Length: 14 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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If you're like most people, geometry is a dimly remembered exercise you gladly left behind in the dust of ninth grade. It's plodding through a series of miniscule steps only to prove some fact about triangles that was obvious to you in the first place. That's not geometry. Okay, it is geometry, but only a tiny part, which has as much to do with geometry in all its flush modern richness as conjugating a verb has to do with a great novel. Shape reveals the geometry underneath some of the most important scientific, political, and philosophical problems we face.
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Excellent, but not suited for an audiobook
- By Fred271 on 06-21-21
By: Jordan Ellenberg
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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 Art of the Good Life
- 52 Surprising Shortcuts to Happiness, Wealth, and Success
- By: Rolf Dobelli
- Narrated by: Keith Wickham
- Length: 6 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Since antiquity, people have been asking themselves what it means to live a good life. How should I live? What constitutes a good life? Find out.The Art of the Good Life is a toolkit designed for practical living. Here you'll find 52 happiness hacks - from guilt-free shunning of technology to gleefully paying your parking tickets - that are certain to optimize your happiness. These tips may not guarantee you a good life, but they'll give you a better chance (and that's all any of us can ask for).
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Author doesn't know what he is talking about
- By Lahiru Gunathilake on 08-11-20
By: Rolf Dobelli
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Energy and Civilization
- A History
- By: Vaclav Smil
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 20 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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In this monumental history, Vaclav Smil provides a comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel-driven civilization and offers listeners a magisterial overview of humanity's energy eras.
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Not a good format for this book
- By C. Hoogeboom on 05-19-18
By: Vaclav Smil
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How Big Things Get Done
- The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything in Between
- By: Bent Flyvbjerg, Dan Gardner
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Nothing is more inspiring than a big vision that becomes a triumphant, new reality. Think of how the Empire State Building went from a sketch to the jewel of New York's skyline in twenty-one months, or how Apple’s iPod went from a project with a single employee to a product launch in eleven months.
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Great on Project Mgmt But Uninformed on Renewables
- By Richard Redano on 03-09-23
By: Bent Flyvbjerg, and others
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The Formula
- The Universal Laws of Success
- By: Albert-László Barabási
- Narrated by: Ryan Vincent Anderson
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Now, based on years of academic research, The Formula finally unveils the ground-breaking discoveries of their pioneering study, not only highlighting the scientific and mathematic principles that underpin success, but also revolutionizing our understanding of: Why performance is necessary but not adequate. Why "experts" are often wrong How to assemble a creative team primed for success. How to most effectively engage our networks.
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Summed up in the first few chapters
- By Amazon Customer on 07-09-19
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Notes on Complexity
- By: Neil Theise
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 4 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Nothing in the universe is more complex than life. Throughout the skies, in oceans, and across lands, life is endlessly on the move. In its myriad forms—from cells to human beings, social structures, and ecosystems—life is open-ended, evolving, unpredictable, yet adaptive and self-sustaining. Complexity theory addresses the mysteries that animate science, philosophy, and metaphysics: how this teeming array of existence, from the infinitesimal to the infinite, is in fact a seamless living whole and what our place, as conscious beings, is within it.
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Only the first couple chapters are about complexity
- By washington on 09-21-23
By: Neil Theise
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Systems Thinking for Social Change
- A Practical Guide to Solving Complex Problems, Avoiding Unintended Consequences, and Achieving Lasting Results
- By: David Peter Stroh
- Narrated by: Tia Rider
- Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Donors, leaders of nonprofits, and public policy makers usually have the best of intentions to serve society and improve social conditions. But often their solutions fall far short of what they want to accomplish and what is truly needed. Moreover, the answers they propose and fund often produce the opposite of what they want over time. We end up with temporary shelters that increase homelessness, drug busts that increase drug-related crime, or food aid that increases starvation.
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Listener beware: The word is causal NOT "casual"
- By darlene judson on 07-31-19
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The Five Rules for Successful Stock Investing
- Morningstar's Guide to Building Wealth and Winning in the Market
- By: Pat Dorsey, Joe Mansueto
- Narrated by: Marty Moran
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Over the years, people from around the world have turned to Morningstar for strong, independent, and reliable advice. The Five Rules for Successful Stock Investing provides the kind of savvy financial guidance only a company like Morningstar could offer. Based on the philosophy that "investing should be fun, but not a game", this comprehensive guide will put even the most cautious investors back on the right track by helping them pick the right stocks, find great companies, and understand the driving forces behind different industries.
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easy to understand
- By Thomas on 03-02-24
By: Pat Dorsey, and others
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The Dao of Capital
- Austrian Investing in a Distorted World
- By: Mark Spitznagel, Ron Paul
- Narrated by: Jeremy Arthur
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Dao of Capital, hedge fund manager and tail-hedging pioneer Mark Spitznagel - with one of the top returns on capital of the financial crisis, as well as over a career - takes us on a gripping, circuitous journey from the Chicago trading pits, over the coniferous boreal forests and canonical strategists from Warring States China to Napoleonic Europe to burgeoning industrial America, to the great economic thinkers of late 19th century Austria.
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Brilliant
- By Cully on 01-28-22
By: Mark Spitznagel, and others
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The Misbehavior of Markets
- A Fractal View of Financial Turbulence
- By: Benoit Mandelbrot, Richard L. Hudson
- Narrated by: Jason Olazabal
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In his first book for a general audience, Mandelbrot, with co-author Richard L. Hudson, shows how the dominant way of thinking about the behavior of markets-a set of mathematical assumptions a century old and still learned by every MBA and financier in the world-simply does not work. As he did for the physical world in his classic The Fractal Geometry of Nature, Mandelbrot here uses fractal geometry to propose a new, more accurate way of describing market behavior.
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Where are the PDF?
- By RD on 03-30-19
By: Benoit Mandelbrot, and others
What listeners say about Scale
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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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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4 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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