In his book "Scale", Geoffrey West, takes a close look at Biology using the physics toolbox and finds fascinating patterns. Did you know that the hearts of all mammals beat approximately 1.5 billion times? The heart beat rate gets slower as the weight of the animal grows, with heavier animals therefore living correspondingly longer. According to the data compiled in the book, this rule also applied to us, homo sapiens, up to about 1800. Thanks to the technological and societal improvements, our hearts now beat 2.5 billion times on average.
A second finding was that all mammals consume approximately 300 food calories per gram of body mass throughout their entire lifespan. This was also true for us humans before we started agriculture, and our energy flux corresponded to about 100 watts. Since then, it has grown to about 11'000 watts, almost as much as that of a whale.
Suppose unconstrained Darwinian evolution were the only mechanism at play then we would not expect to see "constants" like the one's above. We would see a continuum of values. It was this discrepancy that led West to the research and the findings published in the book that I am not going to leak here, of course.
Saw a post yesterday about Nostr not being funny (my internet connection here is so bad I can't search for it). This book is brilliant and great fun.
... even Freud admitted that reducing human behavior to unconscious drives could sometimes miss the obvious truth. He famously said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
A man is shaving with a straight-edged razor when the razor drops out of his hands and lops off his penis. He gathers it up, stuffs it in his pocket, rushes outside and hails a cab, telling the driver to get him to the emergency room fast.
There he tells the surgeon what happened and the surgeon says, “We'll have to work quickly. Give it to me.”
The man reaches into his pocket and deposits its contents in the surgeon's hand.
“But this is a cigar,’ says the surgeon, “not a penis!”
And the man says, “Oh, my God, | must have smoked it in the cab.”
GN
