In her 2000 book The Nature of Economies, Jane Jacobs suggested that economies are
governed by the same rules as nature itself. Her actual hypothesis, however, was that living
organisms, ecosystems, and economies are all types of flow networks, and that similar
principles of growth and development apply to them all.
The study of flow simplifies the study of systemic health by providing
a logical basis for systemic behavior that holds regardless of whether
the network under study is a single living organism, a nonliving network
such as the Internet, an ecosystem, or the entire economy itself. This
simplification is a result of the fact that the basic dynamics of flow are
universal.
The existence of universal patterns then provides precise targets for
systemic health and development that take us far beyond metaphor.
Geometrically precise patterns – that play out in every kind of system at
every level of our world – have been the object of both awe and science
since the ancient Greeks labeled them “sacred geometries” over 2,500
years ago. Today most researchers believe such patterns exist because
they support some aspect of systemic health. The study of fractals provides a modern example
of how universal patterns provide precise, measurable targets for optimal systemic health.