Qualitatively, this extreme version of reductionism may indeed have some partial validity, though I’m not sure to what extent anyone actually believes it—but, in any case, something is missing. The “something” includes many of the concepts and ideas implicit in a lot of the problems and questions considered in this book: concepts like information, emergence, accidents, historical contingency, adaptation, and selection, all characteristics of complex adaptive systems whether organisms, societies, ecosystems, or economies. These are composed of myriad individual constituents or agents that take
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