ABSTRACT
The revolution associated with complexity provides a set of theoretical insights that meet the demand from society at large for an urgently needed paradigm change in science. The success of reductionism is the back door through which replicant knowledge was inserted into science for governance. Contingent valuation methods are based on interviews to identify individual preferences. This information is then used to assign numerical values to the encoding variable 'market price' in those situations in which there are no market mechanisms available to determine market prices. Narratives of the type 'when the market is able to internalise the full cost' and 'when the price is finally right' are wishful thinking with little relationship to the reality of a planet in continuous evolution subject to biophysical constraints. The universe of what is feasible for a society is certainly bound and constrained by biophysical constraints.
