Sublime

Human nature requires catastrophes to jolt us into change—but with some catastrophes, notably climate change, by the time that happens it may be too late.

Perhaps most important, artificial intelligence and biotechnology are giving humanity the power to reshape and reengineer life.

this large bulk of work demonstrates that indeed our proteins could have been made with a lower number of different amino acids,

Bangham was electrified. No one had any idea how membranes evolved—how the very first cells learned to build floppy globes around themselves. Now it appeared obvious. Membranes build themselves. They arise because one end of a lipid is attracted to water and the other end is repelled by it. So if you place lipids in water, their water-hating ends s

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.

Prigogine showed that the steady states that matter reaches in systems that are out of equilibrium tend to be organized. After chaos there is information.