Growth

​Growth by Vaclav Smil is one of the most interesting books that I have read in 2019.  Over 664 pages of examining growth in life and society.  It truly explores the rules and patterns of growth in for key areas:  those of the living world, human artifacts, energy consumption, human populations, and finally, societies and economies.  

The book looks rather frightening at first as Smil's enthusiasm for quantitative analysis is utterly evident in every page, and thus Growth is filled with numbers, charts, graphs, and mathematical figures.  Yet it is indeed written to be easily explained for general readers, making intelligent yet easy use of statistics to illustrate remarkable features of growth in all its physical forms.  In short, Growth is a compelling read for everyone, mathematicians and non-mathematicians alike.  If you are a nerd like me, you'll be surprised by the 100-page bibliography and the fact that hardly a sentence goes by without some bit of quantitative analysis or citation. 

Every chapter in this book is extraordinary.    However, the section on populations, societies, and economies was most fascinating to me.  And as Smil calls it the world's "most complex assemblies,"  Graphs after graphs lead to imminent limits to energy stocks, crop harvests, available cropland, economic growth, and our life expectancy.  

The book reminds us that our present society's rates of consumption and environment degradation cannot keep growing forever,  and making specific forecasts on this front based on past trajectories is not prudent.    For example, attempting to predict future growth or decline based on how closely recent data correspond to a particular curve is a recipe for big mistakes.  The book uses the example of oil. For instance, Geoscientist Marion King Hubbert predicted that US crude oil production would top around the 1970s, and his bell-shaped curve indicated that production would return to its 1940 level by 2015.  This isn't what actually happened, of course.  Instead, thanks to the shale oil boom, American oil extraction began to reverse its post1970 descent a little over a decade ago, ultimately forming a bimodal distribution rather than that regular pattern that Hubbert first suggested.  

One of the most intriguing chapters of Growth is its chapter describing the various types of growth.  The basics of linear and exponential growth; confined growth patterns and collective outcomes of growth.  Later on, Slim goes over some common mistakes we make when extrapolating from growth accounts. Errors like predicting future growth or decline based on a past data set's fit to one curve or another, Or our common mistake to recognize the temporary type of exponential growth.   This is an example that causes people to fall for the financial bubble (like the one in 2008 in the US), or to even naively assume that some new technology that's currently developing exponentially will continue to do so indefinitely. This one makes me think about Artificial Intelligence, of course. 

So if you are looking for a general look at the topic of growth and would like to take a deeper dive, this book truly delivers. Growth is a methodical examination of growth in nature, society, from little organisms to the trajectories of nations and civilization.  

Growth from bacterial attacks through animal metabolism to megacities and the global market.  A real reminder of how it has been both an unspoken and an explicit aim of our individual and collective striving.