For much of the twentieth century scientists sought to explain objects and processes by reducing them to their component parts. Over the past forty years, there has been a marked turn toward explaining phenomena by building them up rather than breaking them down. This book shows how this strategy -- based on a widespread appreciation for complexity even in apparently simple processes and on the capacity of computers to simulate such complexity -- has played out in a broad array of sciences. They describe how scientists are re-ordering knowledge to emphasize growth, change, and contingency and, in so doing, are revealing even phenomena long considered elementary -- like particles and genes -- as emergent properties of dynamic processes. | 
