‘The great project of the twenty-first century – understanding how the whole of humanity comes to be greater than the sum of its parts – is just beginning. Like an awakening child, the human super organism is becoming self-aware, and this will surely help us achieve our goals’ (Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks by N. Christakis & J. Fowler)

The extracts  below were retrieved from http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/n/nicholas_a_christakis.html

‘We are, first of all, not solitary creatures and second of all, we are deeply embedded in the lives of others. It’s very easy to forget that and to engage in an atomistic fallacy – where we think that all we have to do is study the individual components of a system in order to understand the system’

‘It is well to look around at whom, and not just what, surrounds us. Population structure will change everything. Our health, wealth, and peace depend on it’

‘It used to be thought that our genes were historically immutable and that it was not possible to imagine a conversation between culture and genetics’

‘Whether we appreciate it or not, we live out our lives surrounded by an intricate pattern of social connections… We’re all embedded in this network; it affects us profoundly and we may be unaware of its existence, of its effect on us’

References for journal page above

‘The Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre’ extract and photo from Wikipedia

Magazine images from the April – 2016 issue of Country Living uk

Leaves images from The Topic Dictionary by S.M. Bennett and T.G. van Veen, 1982