On Being the Right Size

On Being the Right Size is a 1928 essay by J. B. S. Haldane which discusses proportions in the animal world and the essential link between the size of an animal and these systems an animal has for life.

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Thesis

Haldane's thesis is that sheer size very often defines what bodily equipment an animal must have:

"Insects, being so small, do not have oxygen-carrying bloodstreams. What little oxygen their cells require can be absorbed by simple diffusion of air through their bodies. But being larger means an animal must take on complicated oxygen pumping and distributing systems to reach all the cells."

Influence

This link became known to others as Haldane's principle, being referred to as such by urban planning theorist Jane Jacobs.

Another planning theorist, Christopher Alexander, refers to this principle in his theory of Independent Regions in A Pattern Language:

"...just as there is a best size for every animal, so the same is true for every human institution. In the Greek type of democracy all the citizens could listen to a series of orators and vote directly on questions of legislation. Hence their philosophers held that a small city was the largest possible democratic state..."

The conceptual metaphor to animal body complexity has been of use in energy economics and secession ideas.