Applications [of the science in the book]

At the core of this book is a body of ideas and results that define a new kind of basic science. And I have no doubt that in time this will yield a remarkably broad range of applications. And sometimes—particularly in technology—these applications may be quite straightforward and direct. But if the objective is to develop a model for some specific system in nature or elsewhere it is almost inevitable that this will not be easy. For while I believe that the basic science that I develop in this book provides a remarkably powerful new framework, coming up with an actual model requires all sorts of detailed work and analysis. Certainly it would be wonderful if one could just take the ideas and results in this book and somehow immediately use them to create models for all sorts of systems. And indeed—particularly from the examples I give in Chapter 8—there will probably be at least a few cases where this can be done. But most of the time nothing like it will be possible. And instead—just as in any other framework—there will be no choice but first to learn all sorts of details of a system, and then to use judgement and creativity to see which of them are really essential to a model and which are not. (See also page 364.)