Quotes About Interconnectedness

complex systems do not have obvious one-dimensional cause-and-effect mechanisms, and that under opacity, you do not mess with such a system.

The main idea behind complex systems is that the ensemble behaves in ways not predicted by its components.

Complications lead to multiplicative chains of unanticipated effects.

as societies gain in complexity, with more and more "cutting edge" sophistication in them, and more and more specialization, they become increasingly vulnerable to collapse.

Mark Buchanan's Ubiquity, Philip Ball's Critical Mass, and Paul Ormerod's Why Most Things Fail.

as the sum becomes increasingly different from the parts.

It is very difficult to isolate a single cause when there are plenty around.

Things are not as simple as that. We

It is the system and its fragility, not events, that must be studied

when something is in relation to something else, that something else can be manipulated.

The links that united her to the rest of human kind - links of flowers, or silk or gold - had all been broken.

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

I know this sounds weird...but it's like we're all a part of this machine. The things we've done—the things we still have to do—they're all connected.

I am nothing without Risa.

The varieties are not like islands, carefully apart," Perales explained. "They are more like gentle hills in a landscape—you see them, they are clearly present, but you cannot specify precisely where they start.

The natural world is incomplete without the human touch.

The Columbian Exchange had such far-reaching effects that some biologists now say that Colón's voyages marked the beginning of a new biological era: the Homogenocene. The term refers to homogenizing: mixing unlike substances to create a uniform blend. With the Columbian Exchange, places that were once ecologically distinct have become more alike.

Charles C. Mann

One hand has surely worked throughout the universe.

Let it also be borne in mind how infinitely complex and close-fitting are the mutual relations of all organic beings to each other and to their physical conditions of life; and consequently what infinitely varied diversities of structure might be of use to each being under changing conditions of life.

the structure of every organic being is related, in the most essential yet often hidden manner, to that of all the other organic beings ...

El muérdago depende del manzano y de otros pocos árboles, pero solamente en sentido muy artificial puede decirse que lucha con estos árboles, porque si en el mismo árbol crecen muchos de estos parásitos, el árbol languidece y muere. Pero de algunos muérdagos que producen semillas y que crecen juntamente en la misma rama puede decirse con más razón

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.

The number of living creatures of all orders whose existence intimately depends on kelp is wonderful. A great volume might be written describing the inhabitants of one of these beds of seaweed…. I can only compare these great aquatic forests…with terrestrial ones in the intertropical regions. Yet, if in any other country a forest was destroyed, I do not believe so many species of animals would perish as would here, from the destruction of kelp