This book is a personal account of some aspects of the emergence of modern science mostly from
the viewpoint of those branches of physics which provided the much needed paradigm shift of
more is different that heralded the advent of complexity science as an antidote to the purely
reductionist approach in fundamental physics. It is also about the humans that have helped to
shape these developments including personal reminiscences and the realization that the
so-called exact sciences are inevitably also a social endeavour with all its facets. Served by
the razor-sharp wit of the author this erudite ramble is meant to be neither comprehensive nor
systematic but its generous insights will give the inquisitive academically trained mind a
better understanding of what science and physics in particular could or should be about.
