The Network Law Review is proud to support the “Scaling Theory” podcast created by Dr. Thibault Schrepel, LL.M. and available on your favorite platforms (Spotify, Apple, YouTube).
The podcast is dedicated to exploring the power laws behind the growth of businesses, technologies, legal systems, and living systems. It will feature scholarly discussions with select guests and deep dives into the academic literature. Everything is explained in the introductory episode. Here is an excerpt:
It all starts with complexity science. I first encountered complexity science a couple of years ago when I read Darwin’s Origin of Species. This book is a masterpiece; not only is it incredibly well written and accessible, but it also presents elegant theories that all converge on the idea of complex adaptive systems. Although Darwin does not use the term “complexity science”, he remains a central figure to the field, for example, by explaining that biological rarity is the precursor to extinction, that natural selection is trying to make organisms efficient, and only that, that no species ever evolve to the exclusive benefit of another species, that no man can predict who will survive by looking at a group of different species and varieties, etc.
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Which brings me to “Scale” by Geoffrey West. Published in 2017, this book not only changed my perception of the world around me, but it also changed my approach to science. Geoffrey West’s work explores the power laws behind the growth of everything from cities to species to businesses. In a sense, the work of Geoffrey West and others explores the engine behind all complex systems. And he shows that there are identifiable power laws, across species, across cities, across businesses. Let me give you one: all mammals have about the same number of heartbeats in their lifetime. And for every mammal that is twice the size of another species, the heart rate decreases by 25% because an organism’s metabolic rate scales to the ¾ power of its mass. The discovery of this type of insights is how I became fascinated with scaling theory and decided to start this podcast. I want to know about the power laws that are out there and help the the discovery of new ones. Scaling theory, in a sense, explains evolution, it advances Darwin’s insight into what he called “the struggle for life” by asking a fundamental question: how do things change?
