Although life is probably the most complex and diverse phenomenon in the universe, many of its characteristics scale with size in a surprisingly simple fashion: for example, metabolic rate (the 2,000 food calories you need each day) scales in a systematically predictive way from cells to whales, while time-scales, from lifespans to growth-rates, and sizes, from genome lengths to tree heights, likewise scale systematically. Remarkably, cities and companies also exhibit systematic scaling: wages, profits, patents, crime, disease, and roads all scale in approximately “universal” fashion.

In this SFI community lecture and book-signing, Distinguished Professor Geoffrey West presents the origin of these scaling laws and their compelling implications for explaining the lifecycles of companies, social connectivity, aging and death, tumor growth, urbanization and slums, innovation, and the possibility of a grand unified theory of sustainability.

Copies of West’s new book, Scale, The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies will be available for purchase before the lecture.