5 | Geoffrey West on Networks, Scaling, and the Pace of Life

5 | Geoffrey West on Networks, Scaling, and the Pace of Life

If you scale up an animal to twice its height, keeping everything else proportionate, its volume and weight become eight times as much. Such a scaling relation was used by J.B.S. Haldane in his famous essay, "On Being the Right Size," to help explain certain features of living organisms. But scaling relations go much deeper than that, and they are often much more subtle than the volume going as the cube of the length. Geoffrey West is a particle physicist turned complexity theorist, who studies how features from metabolism to lifespan change as we adjust the size of an organism -- or of other complex systems, from cities to computer networks. His insights have important implications for innovation, sustainability, and the best ways to organize life here on Earth. [smart_track_player url="http://traffic.libsyn.com/seancarroll/geoffrey-west.mp3" social_gplus="false" social_linkedin="true" social_email="true" hashtag="mindscapepodcast" ] Geoffrey West received his Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University. He is currently a Distinguished Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, where he served as President from 2005 to 2009. He has been listed as one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world. He is the author of Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies. Home page Wikipedia page Amazon page TED talk on "The Surprising Math of Cities and Corporations" Google Scholar publications Download Episode

Episoder(418)

323 | Jacob Barandes on Indivisible Stochastic Quantum Mechanics

323 | Jacob Barandes on Indivisible Stochastic Quantum Mechanics

The search for a foundational theory of quantum mechanics that all physicists can agree on remains active. Over the last century a number of contenders have emerged, including Many-Worlds, pilot-wave ...

28 Jul 20252h 58min

322 | Philip Pettit on Language, Agency, Politics, and Freedom

322 | Philip Pettit on Language, Agency, Politics, and Freedom

When we think of the capacities that distinguish humans from other species, we generally turn to intelligence and its byproducts, including our technological prowess. But our intelligence is highly co...

21 Jul 20251h 20min

321 | David Tong on Open Questions in Quantum Field Theory

321 | David Tong on Open Questions in Quantum Field Theory

Quantum field theory is the basis for our most successful theories of fundamental physics. And yet, there are things we don't understand about it. Some of these puzzles are relatively well-known, whil...

14 Jul 20251h 19min

AMA | July 2025

AMA | July 2025

Welcome to the July 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreo...

7 Jul 20254h 3min

320 | Solo: Complexity and the Universe

320 | Solo: Complexity and the Universe

Our universe started out looking very simple: hot, dense, smooth, rapidly expanding. According to our best current model, it will end up looking simple once again: cold, dark, empty. It's in between -...

30 Jun 20252h 14min

319 | Bryan Van Norden on Philosophy From the Rest of the World

319 | Bryan Van Norden on Philosophy From the Rest of the World

It is common to refer to philosophy as "a series of footnotes to Plato." But in the original quote, Alfred North Whitehead was more careful: he limited his characterization to "the European philosophi...

23 Jun 20251h 12min

318 | Edward Miguel on the Developing Practice of Development Economics

318 | Edward Miguel on the Developing Practice of Development Economics

Economics is seeing an upsurge in the importance of controlled, reproducible empirical studies. One area where this has had a great impact is on development economics, which studies the economies of l...

16 Jun 20251h 20min

317 | Nicole Rust on Why Neuroscience Hasn't Solved Brain Disorders

317 | Nicole Rust on Why Neuroscience Hasn't Solved Brain Disorders

The human brain is extremely complicated, but decades of careful neuroscientific research have revealed quite a bit about how it works, including how certain genes affect particular brain behaviors. N...

9 Jun 20251h 14min

Populært innen Vitenskap

fastlegen
rekommandert
tingenes-tilstand
forskningno
sinnsyn
rss-rekommandert
smart-forklart
liberal-halvtime
villmarksliv
jss
fjellsportpodden
pod-britannia
vett-og-vitenskap-med-gaute-einevoll
tomprat-med-gunnar-tjomlid
rss-paradigmepodden
psykopoden
dekodet-2
rss-nysgjerrige-norge
nevropodden
rss-overskuddsliv