As I began to ponder what the origins of these surprising scaling laws might be, it became clear that whatever was at play had to be independent of the evolved design of any specific type of organism, because the same laws are manifested by mammals, birds, plants, fish, crustacea, cells, and so on. All of these organisms ranging from the smallest, simplest bacterium to the largest plants and animals depend for their maintenance and reproduction on the close integration of numerous subunits—molecules, organelles, and cells— and these microscopic components need to be serviced in a relatively
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