Uncharted

However society might wish to make scientific progress efficient, the truth about complex systems is that trying to simplify them doesn’t guarantee that they become more effective; it risks making them less effective. They function best when they are robust, throwing off a vast array of insights whose value may be realised over time. That means the

A ghost tells Hamlet that his uncle murdered his father. But is the ghost reliable? Real? Is the information true? What if it isn’t? What if it is? Ambiguity paralyses Hamlet. What should he do? He does experiments. Putting on a play – ‘The Mousetrap’ – is an experiment. When Claudius explodes with rage, evidence mounts that he is a murderer. But t

All cathedral projects start with a galvanising, guiding principle that releases and energises the capacity to adapt and evolve and allows the future to emerge.

Nothing about this trajectory yields a coherent narrative. Jo was finding her way through life, little by little, experimenting with what suited her, and attracted employers. Every step she took revealed more of who she was and what she wanted from life. There was no map; she just explored.

If artists have the capacity to make work that defies time, it is because instead of trying to force-fit a predetermined idea of the future, they have learned to live productively with ambiguity, to see it as a rich source of discovery and exploration. Instead of trying to reduce complexity, they mine it, undaunted by contradictions and paradoxes.

The German philosopher Karl Popper described a parallel process in human history. He argued that the fundamental driver of all human progress is the growth of knowledge. We obviously can’t predict what we don’t know yet, and we can’t know how, in what directions, or at what speed, human knowledge will develop. And therefore, Popper concludes, histo

‘The (first) Industrial Revolution is a step change,’ Emma Griffin says. As professor of modern British history at the University of East Anglia, she is alert to how different the first Industrial Revolution was from today. ‘Before it, everything was made by hand and comes from the land. Normal experience is to die in a world very similar to the on

De Blok’s guiding principles – separating the simple from the complex, acknowledging humanity in work and a focus on outcomes before cost – have inspired healthcare systems around the world.

Approach the future with fervent curiosity, not with an ideology or itinerary but with a methodology that progresses with questions: what do we need to do now? What do we need to be now? What must we preserve at all cost?

The emerging view of our brain (and, by extension, of our mental, emotional and physical lives) shows that we routinely create, assemble and discover a vast array of possibilities not only at big, dramatic crossroads but throughout our lives.