And yet, as intriguing as molecular biology and computer simulation and nonlinear science were separately, Cowan had a suspicion that they were only the beginning. It was more a gut feeling than anything else. But he sensed that there was an underlying unity here, one that would ultimately encompass not just physics and chemistry, but biology, information processing, economics, political science, and every other aspect of human affairs. What he had in mind was a concept of scholarship that was almost medieval. If this unity were real, he thought, it would be a way of knowing the world that
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