“Two other themes that I did find interesting: The 1st was his notion that a system is at times less than the sum of its parts as parts of almost any system have a role in suppressing the behavior of other parts of a system. When a system breaks down these properties/behaviors can contribute to the system’s collapse, which might at that point be considered to be a useful features. Other parts of a system may be interpreted as noise but that too should be understood as part of the system.”
Was Moran arguing this in terms of human social systems or just complexity in general?