*Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, Evan Thompson* # Progressive Summary # Definitions # Chapter Notes Aspects of science's blind spots: - reification of mathematical concepts - surreptitious substitution - fallacy of misplaced concreteness - amnesia of experience ## 9 - Earth ### Blind spot in economics Starting in the 18th-century, numbers and quantity started entering into political discussions. This matched the rise of industrialisation. Neoclassical economics is the economic equivalent of the Standard Model in physics. The inability of neoclassical economics to recognise the biosphere's existence is its most significant blind spot. Environmental economics and ecological economics are attempts to rectify this. William Nordhaus, who was given the Nobel prize in economics in 2018, applied neoclassical economics to the climate. He concluded that 3.5° warming was optimal for the economy based on his models. ### Complex systems are coevolving multilayer networks To unpack this, we need to look at the following aspects individually. #### Coevolution Physics and chemistry studies systems by establishing boundary conditions. In physics, "complexity" is handled by statistical mechanics, which only studies systems with ergodicity. This means that all possible states of a closed system are explored and assigned a probabilistic value. But in biology, systems are evolutionary, which means that their trajectories are path-dependent. Stuart Kauffman uses the term "adjacent possible" to describe this. The states that are possible are dependent on the past history of the system. Whitehead captured this with the statement: “Nature is never complete. It is always passing beyond itself. This is the creative advance of nature.” ### Networks # Quotes # References