Sum of Its Parts

With fragile states representing both a core development challenge and a source of major threats to international security, the search for strategies to assist the recovery of failing and war-torn countries has been high on the agendas of donor countries. Stewart Patrick and Kaysie Brown candidly assess efforts to bring together diplomatic, defense, and development instruments the so-called 3Ds of whole of government strategies made by seven major donor countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Explore your multifaceted mind - an invitation to personal healing and spiritual awakening

The 9th International Conference on Lymphatic Tissues and Germinal Centres in Immune Reactions was held in Oslo, 9-14 August, 1987. These conferen­ ces, by the regular devotees just referred to as the germinal centre con­ ferences or GCC, have been held regularly at roughly three-year intervals since 1966. The credo of these conferences is "in vivo veritas", signifying that investigating components, like molecules and cells, only gives partial truth. The components must ultimately be explored in their natural con­ text, to see how they interact with other parts and are integrated to a whole.

The purpose of the science of complexity is to provide, if not a unified approach, at least useful tools to tackling complex problems in various scientific domains. Generally, complexity is considered a fundamental challenge to the reductionist approach in science as a whole and to its ideas of certainty and randomness.

The purpose of the science of complexity is to provide, if not a unified approach, at least useful tools to tackling complex problems in various scientific domains. Generally, complexity is considered a fundamental challenge to the reductionist approach in science as a whole and to its ideas of certainty and randomness.
The overall behaviour of a complex system is different from and more than the sum of its parts. The behaviour of non-linear complex systems depends on the interaction (often with retroactive effects) among its constituent parts and not so much (or not only) on the characteristics of these parts themselves; the sum of the behaviour of single parts does not necessarily provide us with an explanation of the aggregate behaviour of a system.
All this is true for economic systems. These are based on the activities of single economic agents. Each individual can obtain only partial knowledge that is focussed around its "world" (local information) and react to external shocks in different ways (local rationality).

If Disraeli Gears was the album where Cream came into their own, its successor, Wheels of Fire, finds the trio in full fight, capturing every side of their multi-faceted personality, even hinting at the internal pressures that soon would tear the band asunder. A dense, unwieldy double album split into an LP of new studio material and an LP of live material, it's sprawling and scattered, at once awesome in its achievement and maddening in how it falls just short of greatness.