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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1979 Nov;76(11):5413–5417. doi: 10.1073/pnas.76.11.5413

Growth of complex systems can be related to the properties of their underlying determinants

Michael A Savageau 1
PMCID: PMC411657  PMID: 16592715

Abstract

Growth—increase in size, number, or amount—in many cases appears to follow simple empirical laws. Such laws have been noted in a wide variety of fields for many years. Until now these laws have never been related to the underlying determinants of these systems. By starting with fundamental properties of the component mechanisms in such systems, one can derive a basic growth equation for which the well-known laws of growth are special cases.

Keywords: organismal biology, population biology, social systems, economics, organization

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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