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Too much change is as destructive as too little. Only at the edge of chaos can complex systems flourish.”
“Perhaps not,” Levine said. “But absence of proof is not proof of absence.
Anything new or unknown is automatically of interest, because it might have value. It might be worth a fortune.”
the truest picture of life in the past incorporated the interplay of all aspects of life, the good and the bad, the strong and the weak. It was no good pretending anything else.
Hammond’s little genetic zoo was a showcase. But this island was the real thing. This is where the dinosaurs were made.”
Malcolm smiled. “The big deal,” he said, “is that everybody agrees evolution occurs, but nobody understands how it works. There are big problems with the theory. And more and more scientists are admitting it.”
In the end, evolution is just the result of a bunch of mutations that either survive or die.
And it turns out, again and again, that living things seem to have a self-organizing quality.
Because raising children is, in a sense, the reason the society exists in the first place.
“That life is a complex system,” he said, “and everything that goes along with that. Fitness landscapes. Adaptive walks. Boolean nets. Self-organizing behavior.
“All your life, other people will try to take your accomplishments away from you. Don’t you take it away from yourself.”
“Human beings are so destructive,” Malcolm said. “I sometimes think we’re a kind of plague, that will scrub the earth clean. We destroy things so well that I sometimes think, maybe that’s our function. Maybe every few eons, some animal comes along that kills off the rest of the world, clears the decks, and lets evolution proceed to its next phase.”
