The quark and the jaguar: adventures in the simple and the complex / Murray Gell-Mann

Prologue: an encounter in the jungle-- Early light-- Information and crude complexity-- RANDomness-- A child learning a language-- Bacteria developing drug resistance-- The scientific entrerprise-- The power of theory-- What is fundamental?-- Simplicity and randomness in the quantum universe-- A contemporary view of quantum mechanics: quantum mechanics and the classical approximation-- Quantum mechanics and flapdoodle-- Quarks and all that: the standard model-- Superstring theory: unification at last?-- Time's arrows: forward and backward time-- Selection at work in biological evolution and elsewhere-- From learning to creative thinking-- Superstition and skepticism-- Adaptive and maladaptive schemata-- Machines that learn or simulate learning-- Diversities under threat-- Transitions to a more sustainable world-- Afterword