Geoffrey West: "Metabolism and the Hidden Laws of Biology”
Apr 3, 2024
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Physicist Geoffrey West discusses metabolic scaling laws in nature and their application to human societies. The conversation explores Kleiber's law, city growth patterns, social metabolism, and the need for aligning communities with energy realities. West reflects on sustainability, urban planning, and the interconnectedness of societal structures and nature.
Kleiber's law explains the correlation between metabolism and size in organisms.
Metabolic rates follow a three-quarters power scaling law across various organisms.
Sublinear scaling of energy consumption in organisms showcases efficient use as size increases.
Deep dives
Clybers Law and Metabolism in Organisms
Kleiber's law, named after biologist Max Kleiber, explores the connection between an organism's metabolism and its size. The law states that metabolic rate scales to the three-quarter power of an organism's size. This phenomenon was discovered to hold true across a wide range of animals, showcasing a systematic and mathematically simple scaling law. Despite the historical contingency of each organism's evolution, Kleiber found that metabolic rates align on a straight line on a logarithmic graph with a slope close to three-quarters. This law suggests a fundamental, almost natural principle governing metabolic rates.
Universal Scaling and Distributive Networks
The three-quarters power scaling law discovered by Kleiber applies not only to mammals but also extends to a wide range of organisms, including fish, birds, and cells. This robust law hints at a universal principle governing metabolic rates that closely relate to the mass of the organism. The origin of this scaling law is attributed to the intricate networks within organisms that efficiently distribute energy and resources to sustain life. The mathematics and physics of these networks constrain metabolic rates to follow the three-quarters power scaling across various taxonomic groups, reflecting a fundamental stability in how energy use scales.
Implications of Sublinear Scaling and Energy Efficiency
The sublinear scaling of metabolic rate, where energy use per organism decreases as size increases, has far-reaching consequences for understanding energy efficiency and ecological impact. A scaling exponent less than one, such as three-quarters in Kleiber's law, implies an economical use of energy as organisms grow larger. This phenomenon leads to a systematic economy of scale, where doubling in size leads to less than a proportional increase in energy consumption. The significance of this sublinear scaling extends to the sustainability of ecosystems and the biosphere, showcasing the efficiency achieved in biological systems.
Application of Scaling Laws to Social Metabolism
Extending the principles of Kleiber's law and scaling phenomena to human exosomatic energy use in cities and economies reveals insights into social metabolism. Cities exhibit superlinear scaling where energy use per capita increases with city size, suggesting a positive feedback dynamic fueled by social interactions and economic activities. Understanding the implications of scaling laws in social systems highlights how city structures and dynamics impact energy consumption, environmental impact, and the efficiency of resource allocation within urban environments.
Understanding Urban Scaling Laws for City Planning
Urban scaling laws play a crucial role in city planning as they dictate the organic evolution of cities. Historical examples like Brasilia and Washington, DC showcase how adherence to these laws leads to successful city development, while deviations result in lackluster, unsustainable outcomes. By aligning city planning strategies with scaling laws, future disasters and inefficiencies in urban design can be minimized.
Exploring the Sustainability of Human Societies and Aging
The host's research delves into the sustainability and mortality of human societies, posing inquiries into the longevity of the anthroposphere. By considering global sustainability through a scientific lens, there is a quest to establish a grand unified theory of sustainability, aiming to engage all individuals in safeguarding the future of our socio-economic systems. This work reflects a deep-rooted concern for the biosphere and aims to balance environmental impact reduction with societal prosperity.
On this episode, physicist Geoffrey West joins Nate to discuss his decades of work on metabolic scaling laws found in nature and how they apply to humans and our economies. As we think about the past and future of societies, there are patterns that emerge independently across cultures in terms of resource use and social phenomena as the size of a city grows. Does Kleiber’s law, which describes the increasingly efficient use of energy as an animal gets larger - also apply to human cities? How have humans deviated from this rule through excess social consumption beyond a human body’s individual metabolic needs? What could we learn from these scaling laws to adjust our communities to be more aligned with the biophysical realities of energy and resource consumption? Can an understanding of social metabolism impact our social metabolism?
About Geoffrey West
Geoffrey West is the Shannan Distinguished Professor and former President of the Santa Fe Institute and an Associate Senior Fellow of Oxford University’s Green-Templeton College. West is a theoretical physicist whose primary interests have been in fundamental questions ranging across physics, biology and the social sciences. His work is motivated by the search for unifying principles and the “simplicity underlying complexity”. His research includes metabolism, growth, aging & death, sleep, cancer, ecosystems, innovation and the accelerating pace of life. Most recently he has been developing a science of cities and companies, including the challenge of long-term global sustainability of the anthroposphere. He is the author of the best-selling book Scale; The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies.
