Last Thursday night I had a discussion with my friend, Mr. E, concerning magical thinking.  He proclaimed that magical thinking is like a chess player who moves his knight one space to the left and responds to his partner's protests with a nonchalant, "yep.  That's my move.  Nope. I won't change it.  That's it."  For those of you unclear as to the rules of the knight, the knight can move a) to one of the four spaces parallel to it, followed by b) moving two spaces perpendicular to space a).

I love this analogy.  It's hilarious.  It showed the fear with which believers in reductionism consider the flexibility of the rules.  Evolution cannot exist without emergent properties.