thinking in systems, not silos

a new episode of The Modern Renaissance podcast!

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over the past few weeks, we’ve interviewed everyone who took part in the first nano cohort of The Modern Renaissance. we’ve explored how polymaths navigate a world that wants them to be just one thing.

this conversation with Nicholas is different. it’s not just a story of a career; it’s a look at the invisible threads that connect the movement of atoms to the way we build companies. it’s an invitation to see the world not as a collection of objects, but as a set of evolving systems.

a bit of context

Nicholas has the kind of mind that doesn’t accept silos. he started his career studying natural sciences - physics, chemistry, psychology - but then Brexit triggered a “political awakening.” he started asking the same rigorous questions to power, media, and capital.

today, he works in strategic communications for companies solving the UN sustainable development goals, but on the side, he’s building a cohesive framework to explain how everything - from consciousness to the global economy - evolves.

“I find a lot of scientists can be so technical and specialized that a lot of these silos, these different disciplines, don’t end up talking to each other. But I actually think that the insights from physics can be applied to ecosystems and biology, and that can be applied to companies operating in an economy, right? There’s these insights from different disciplines that I think have something in common.”
-Nicholas

during the cohort, Nicholas took his project, Everything Evolves, and turned it from a sporadic collection of thoughts into a structured journey on Substack. he used the community to bridge the gap between “having an interesting thought” and “building a platform” to connect with others.

what to expect, what we took

from this conversation, we take home at least five lessons.

the first is that “scale changes the rules”. Nicholas uses the example of Lithium and Uranium: made of the same things, but one is stable and the other isn’t, simply because of size. the same applies to your life and your business. what works for a startup will break a corporation. context is everything.

the second is about “the “black magic” of ideas”. it doesn’t come from a single source, but from reading widely - from space cosmology to economics. if you want better ideas, you have to feed your knowledge framework with different layers of complexity.

the third is that “writing is thinking”. Nicholas shares how the process of putting thoughts onto paper is where the real work happens. it’s where you research against the literature and find out if what you think you know actually holds up. it’s a form of intellectual discipline.

the fourth is the “power of metaphors”. explaining entropy through a snooker table makes the abstract tangible. it’s a reminder for all creators: if you can’t visualize it, you probably don’t understand it well enough yet.

the fifth is the “value of a diverse network”. Nicholas explains how having an international perspective—like the one we are building—is crucial for understanding complex systems. you can’t understand a global system if you only look at it through the lens of one culture.

this conversation is for those who feel that the world is more connected than it appears. it’s for the curious who aren’t afraid to mix science with leadership.

the episode is available both here and on Spotify.

listen to it, let the concepts of entropy and emergence settle in... and then, as always, see what remains afterward.

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