J. Doyne Farmer

"Even though something like Danny Hillis "connection machine" is big, its nothing compared with Avogadros number of processors that nature has at her disposal."

"The paradox that immediately bothers everyone who learns about the second law is this: If systems tend to become more disordered, why, then, do we see so much order around us? ...It seems to conflict with our "creation myth": In the beginning, there was a big bang. ...no one is saying that the second law of thermodynamics is wrong, just that there is a contrapuntal process organizing things at a higher level."

"We dont know what organization is. ...We do know that complex adaptive systems have to be nonlinear and capable of storing information. ...We know a little bit about what distinguishes an adaptive complex system from a nonadaptive system, such as turbulent fluid flow."

"One of the factors that caused Spencers ideas to lose popularity was social Darwinism... Social evolution is different from biological evolution: its faster, its Lamarckian, and it makes even heavier use of altruism and cooperation than biological evolution does. None of this was well understood at the time."

"Our goal is to build a broad-based model of key components of the economy: households, firms, banks and government... The failure to embrace things like simulation has inhibited progress in economics."

"Complex adaptive systems have the property that if you run them—by just letting the mathematical variable of "time" go forward—theyll naturally progress from chaotic, disorganized, undifferentiated, independent states to organized, highly differentiated, and highly interdependent states. Organized structures emerge spontaneously... A weak system gives rise only to simpler forms of self-organization; a strong one gives rise to more complex forms, like life."