Sublime

some form of complexity theory is required if we are to understand many of the intimate, and patently uncertain, interactions found in modern society.

“The Global Economy as an Adaptive Process,” at seven pages and zero equations, is well worth a read. Holland recounts many, now familiar, difficulties in mathematical analysis of economics that assume linearity, exclusively negative feedback loops, equilibria, and so on, before proposing that the economy is best thought of as what he calls an adap

Redundancy provides insurance against loss. The American chestnut largely disappeared from the forests of the northeastern United States, but other species filled its niche. In 2004, though, when Chiron, one of only two companies providing flu vaccines in the US, announced that its plants in Liverpool were contaminated, our house of cards was at re

A closer look shows that the hierarchies are constructed on a “building block” principle: subsystems at each level of the hierarchy are constructed by combinations of small numbers of subsystems from the next lower level.

este principio se le suele llamar «la ley de Price», en honor a Derek J. de Solla Price,

Both are dynamic systems in which the selfish actions of countless individuals—whether they be cells or investors—lead to unpredictable consequences at the system level. In turn, these collective actions and consequences feed back to influence individual actions in endless cycles of adaptation and evolution.