“It was possible to borrow British technology, and increasingly governments began to promote development. By the end of the nineteenth century, governments… — David Christian Change Copy Share Image
“the conquests of the Achaemenid and Hellenistic dynasties encouraged commercial and intellectual exchanges reaching from central Asia to India to the western… — David Christian Copy Share Image
“So, as networks expand in size, their potential intellectual synergy increases much faster: “larger and denser populations equal faster technological advance.” — David Christian Technology Copy Share Image
“typical modern households live in urban environments where they earn incomes through some form of wage work and buy food produced by… — David Christian Family Copy Share Image
“no complex, nonlinear system can be adequately described by dividing it up into subsystems or into various aspects, defined beforehand.” — David Christian Copy Share Image
Every kid goes to school full of questions about meaning. You know, 'What's my place in the universe? What does it mean… — David Christian About Copy Share Image
“Both animal and human slaves could be controlled best if kept economically and psychically dependent on their owners.” — David Christian Copy Share Image
“The modern world is ruled by larger and more impersonal forces, from faceless bureaucracies to abstractions such as “inflation,” or “the rule… — David Christian Modern world Copy Share Image
“contain into new, durable configurations, which can handle huge energy flows without disintegrating. This, we will see, is the characteristic pattern of… — David Christian Copy Share Image
We, as extremely complex creatures, desperately need to know this story of how the universe creates complexity and why complexity means vulnerability… — David Christian Complex Copy Share Image
If, in schools, we keep teaching that history is divided into American history and Chinese history and Russian history and Australian history,… — David Christian American Copy Share Image
An egg is a beautiful, sophisticated thing that can create even more sophisticated things, such as chickens. And we know in our… — David Christian Beautiful Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“most of human history (chronologically speaking) has taken place in communities quite innocent of state power.” — David Christian History Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“the universe may, in fact, be bigger than this, because the notion of inflation suggests that in the first second of its… — David Christian Life Copy Share Image
“People must therefore get away from the idea that serious work is restricted to beating to death a well-defined problem in a… — David Christian Academic life Copy Share Image
I, and all the complex things around me, exist only because many things were assembled in a very precise way. The 'emergent'… — David Christian Arrangements Copy Share Image
What we normally define as history doesn't interest me. It's a constraint. — David Christian Constraint Copy Share Image
We inhabit an obscure planet, in an obscure galaxy, around an obscure sun, but on the other hand, modern human society represents… — David Christian Community Copy Share Image
“About 250 million years ago, most of the continental plates were joined into a supercontinent, which Wegener had christened “Pangaea.” It was… — David Christian Years ago Copy Share Image
“For the first time there appeared on earth kings, dictators, high priests, emperors, prime ministers, presidents, governors, mayors, generals, admirals, police chiefs,… — David Christian Concentration camp Copy Share Image
“Stars form durable structures because they are the result of a negotiated compromise between gravity, which crushes matter together, and the explosive… — David Christian Astronomy Copy Share Image
I had this feeling that, somehow, we ought to be teaching not just the history of particular nations or particular regions, but… — David Christian Feeling Copy Share Image
“though they are on the whole less violent, personal relations in modern urban communities also lack the intimacy and continuity of those… — David Christian Community Copy Share Image
