Size: How It Explains the World | 誠品線上

Size: How It Explains the World

內容簡介

內容簡介 《這個世界運作的真相》作者瓦茲拉夫．史密爾新作！環境隨時在崩潰，GDP不能提升幸福感高個子賺更多錢？改變盤子大小有助於減重？二〇〇三年後，中國每三年水泥灌漿量等於美國廿世紀水泥灌漿量？加拿大能源與政策分析學者史密爾被譽為全球頂尖思想家與統計分析大師。他採用跨學科研究方法，闡明生命、地球、科技、社會和經濟在發展過程的規律與特例，探討收入不平等、傳染病傳播和氣候變遷失衡的影響，解答人類生存的大大小小問題。From the New York Times bestselling author of How the World Really Works, a wide-ranging look at the most fundamental governing principle of our world: size, whose laws, limits, and peculiarities offer the key to understanding health, wealth, and even happiness“No one writes about the great issues of our time with more rigor or erudition than Vaclav Smil.” — Elizabeth KolbertTo answer the most important questions of our age, we must understand size. Neither bacteria nor empires are immune to its laws. Measuring it is challenging, especially where complex systems like economies are concerned, yet mastering it offers rich rewards: the rise of the West, for example, was a direct result of ever more accurate and standardized measurements.Using the interdisciplinary approach that has won him a wide readership, Smil draws upon history, earth science, psychology, art, and more to offer fresh insight into some of our biggest challenges, including income inequality, the spread of infectious disease, and the uneven impacts of climate change. Size explains the regularities—and peculiarities—of the key processes shaping life (from microbes to whales), the Earth (from asteroids to volcanic eruptions), technical advances (from architecture to transportation), and societies and economies (from cities to wages). This book about the big and the small, and the relationship between them, answers the big and small questions of human existence:• What makes a human society too big? What about a human being?• Which alternative energy sources have the best chance of scaling and reducing our dependence on fossil fuels?• Why do tall people make more money?• What makes a face beautiful? How about a cathedral?• How can changing the size of your plates help you lose weight?The latest masterwork of “an ambitious and astonishing polymath who swings for fences” (Wired) Size is a mind-bending journey that turns the modern world on its head.

作者介紹

作者介紹 Vaclav SmilVaclav Smil is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba. He is the New York Times bestselling author of How the World Really Works, as well as more than forty other books on topics including energy, environmental and population change, food production and nutrition, technical innovation, risk assessment, and public policy. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, he has been named by Foreign Policy as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers.

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