Sublime

Realistically, agents not identical, don’t know other agents’ circumstances or likely behavior; or situation complicated and not fully known. There is fundamental uncertainty: Therefore “the problem” is not well-defined; Therefore “rationality” is not well-defined; Therefore “optimal” behavior is not well-defined; Behavior and outcome unlikely to b

The economy is not a closed static equilibrium system; it is a system perpetually open to novel behavior, and complexity economics forces us to keep this in mind.

Traditionally, science seeks order by understanding the simplest parts of a system. How does a single gas particle behave given a certain temperature? Which gene in our DNA determines eye color? Scientists then try to develop theories that explain more general observations based on their detailed understanding of the individual parts.

Brenner was in a thoughtful mood, drinking sherry before dinner at King’s College. When he began working with Crick, less than two decades before, molecular biology did not even have a name. Two decades later, in the 1990s, scientists worldwide would undertake the mapping of the entire human genome: perhaps 20,000 genes, 3 billion base pairs. What