M. Mitchell Waldrop

For that matter, why do humans spend so much time and effort organizing themselves into families, tribes, communities, nations, and societies of all types?

This is a book about the science of complexity—a subject that’s still so new and so wide-ranging that nobody knows quite how to define it, or even where its boundaries lie. But then, that’s the whole point.

If evolution (or free-market capitalism) is really just a matter of the survival of the fittest, then why should it ever produce anything other than ruthless competition among individuals