As emphasized in the opening chapter, living systems, from the smallest bacteria to the largest cities and ecosystems, are quintessential complex adaptive systems operating over an enormous range of multiple spatial, temporal, energy, and mass scales. In terms of mass alone, the overall scale of life covers more than thirty orders of magnitude (1030) from the molecules that power metabolism and the genetic code up to ecosystems and cities. This range vastly exceeds that of the mass of the Earth relative to that of our entire galaxy, the Milky Way, which covers “only” eighteen orders of
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Order of magnitude: in earth as well as in universe
