In an interview on MIT's Cambridge Nights program, SFI Distinguished Professor Geoffrey West discusses the implications of metabolic rate scaling with species size.
West and his collaborators relate biological networks such as the circulatory system and chemical networks within cells themselves to the mathematical regularities found in biological systems. This is why knowing the size of a living being provides detailed metrics about its other quantifiable physiological attributes.
West also describes ongoing explorations of the underlying principles of natural selection and how natural selection is not random but rather governed by laws that are independent of design and focused on networks that support life. Evolution, he says, tends toward energy optimization in living beings.
Watch the Cambridge Nights interview (October 19, 2011)