How Empirical Science Fails When It Comes to Complex Systems
We still need thinkers and theorists to make sense of the world around us
I sometimes think I was the victim of an unfortunate act of chance early on in my career. When I was just 17 years old, I took up my stepmom on her invitation to go to the mall — I was grounded at the time, so there wasn’t much else to do — and while there, we visited a Barnes & Nobles bookstore, and she told me to pick out a book for myself.
I meandered around the store aimlessly, pulling out random books here and there to look at, until one with an odd name and the image of a Caspar David Friedrich painting on the cover caught my attention. The painting in question:
It could’ve been a book on engineering, or medicine, or computer science, etc., and perhaps my lifepath would’ve been aided by steady work in a more commonplace job. As it stands, however, that book was Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Gay Science (aka “The Joyful Wisdom”), and it was his writing that would irreversibly change my worldview right from the first few pages and inspire to me pursue a life as a philosopher.
