no complex, nonlinear system can be adequately described…

“It was possible to borrow British technology, and increasingly governments began to promote development. By the end of the nineteenth century, governments and large…

— David Christian

“the conquests of the Achaemenid and Hellenistic dynasties encouraged commercial and intellectual exchanges reaching from central Asia to India to the western Mediterranean. In…

— David Christian

“So, as networks expand in size, their potential intellectual synergy increases much faster: “larger and denser populations equal faster technological advance.”

— David Christian

“typical modern households live in urban environments where they earn incomes through some form of wage work and buy food produced by others. In…

— David Christian

Every kid goes to school full of questions about meaning. You know, 'What's my place in the universe? What does it mean to be…

— David Christian

“Both animal and human slaves could be controlled best if kept economically and psychically dependent on their owners.”

— David Christian

“The modern world is ruled by larger and more impersonal forces, from faceless bureaucracies to abstractions such as “inflation,” or “the rule of law.”…

— David Christian

“contain into new, durable configurations, which can handle huge energy flows without disintegrating. This, we will see, is the characteristic pattern of all such…

— David Christian

We, as extremely complex creatures, desperately need to know this story of how the universe creates complexity and why complexity means vulnerability and fragility.

— David Christian

If, in schools, we keep teaching that history is divided into American history and Chinese history and Russian history and Australian history, we're teaching…

— David Christian

An egg is a beautiful, sophisticated thing that can create even more sophisticated things, such as chickens. And we know in our heart of…

— David Christian

“Earth, for example, is made up of oxygen (almost 50 percent) and smaller amounts of iron (19 percent), silicon (14 percent), magnesium (12.5 percent),”

— David Christian

“most of human history (chronologically speaking) has taken place in communities quite innocent of state power.”

— David Christian

“what we can see may constitute no more than 10 percent, and perhaps as little as 1 percent, of the matter in the universe.”

— David Christian

“the universe may, in fact, be bigger than this, because the notion of inflation suggests that in the first second of its existence, the…

— David Christian