Yes it's by David Brooks, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day... There are a lot of interesting observations in the article, but this is the one that caught my eye:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/opinion/29brooks.html?_r=1&emc=eta1">Tools for ThinkingWe often try to understand problems by taking apart and studying their constituent parts. But emergent problems can’t be understood this way. Emergent systems are ones in which many different elements interact. The pattern of interaction then produces a new element that is greater than the sum of the parts, which then exercises a top-down influence on the constituent elements.
Culture is an emergent system. A group of people establishes a pattern of interaction. And once that culture exists, it influences how the individuals in it behave. An economy is an emergent system. So is political polarization, rising health care costs and a bad marriage.
Emergent systems are bottom-up and top-down simultaneously. They have to be studied differently, as wholes and as nested networks of relationships. We still try to address problems like poverty and Islamic extremism by trying to tease out individual causes. We might make more headway if we thought emergently.
This is one of my favorite hobby-horses. Because of the complexity of the social, economic, political, technological and ecological systems we're dealing with in 2011, most of their interesting characteristics (including their problems) are emergent. The ability to recognize and understand the emergent qualities of a complex system is essential.
IMO the failures that have been on display in the Fukushima disaster, at all levels from the political and bureaucratic to the social and technical, have been the result of emergence. While reductionist thinking (move this wire over there, get larger fire trucks, sandbag the leaks etc.) will help ameliorate the immediate problems, reductionist analysis will be wholly insufficient to prevent their recurrence.