This does not work simply because no one has implemented it yet. If you want to do this (and do worldjQuery a little better), just look at the "Contribute to jQuery" .page .
To solve your problem at the moment: you need to do the calculation yourself - something like the following (not tested, but you should get an idea):
For one item:
var element = $('#animate');
element .animate({
'width' : element.width()*2,
'height' : element.height()*2,
}, 'slow');
For multiple items:
$('.animate').each(function(){
var element = $(this);
element .animate({
'width' : element.width()*2,
'height' : element.height()*2,
}, 'slow');
});