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In answer to the man who wanted to know how differing quantities of electrons, protons, etc., in atoms could lead to such different properties: He likened it all to different coloured marbles in his hand. Adding more of the same marbles (electrons, neutrons, protons, etc) shouldn't make a difference, so why does it make a difference in atoms by forming new elements with different properties?
The answer is for him to think of the electrons and protons and neutrons as letters in an alphabet, not marbles. Take the word "elbow," for instance. The letters are e, l, b, o, and w. We don't even have to add more letters to change the meaning and connotations of the word (or the "properties" of the word). The same letters can be rearranged and spell "below," a whole different property, and again, we can rearrange and spell it as "bowel," a far bit "below" our "elbow." Again: The word "three" becomes "there." The word "pearl" becomes "apparel" when you add one more of the same -- another "p" and and another "a."
Properties are all in the arrangement of the atomic particles, because properties do not exist in the thing itself, but in the relationship of one matter to another. Our man may object that this makes properties nothing more than a "perception." Well, what is an electron? It's barely more than just an electrical charge. And what, after all, is that?
What is a "thought" or, for that matter, a "perception?" Each is very real, as they have accumulated in the world to change the face of the planet physically. But can you put a thought in your hand? Or on a scale and weigh it? Thoughts are just the weightless "insubstantial" relationship between the synapses, neurons and grey-matter molecules in our brain. Yet we know that thoughts are darn real as they move our bodies and hands, which physically change the earth. Our thoughts move matter, indeed!
Matter's weighty apearance as seeming hard and "substantial" is just one of matter's properties. Not all real things have to have these "substance-like" properties. In reality, matter is a bit more ethereal, itself being a matter of "how it's spelled," more than anything else. There's the real mystery. Where does the "image" end and the "substance" begin? Or maybe we were tricked into this semantic dead-end by the very properties we thought were part of matter itself -- Tangible, weighty, substantial and "hard copy," and confusing them with being intrinsic to the matter rather than to its relationship to other matter (ourselves included).
The relationship is as much "matter" as is matter.

A further excerpt from Continuum, called Evolution of the Social Brain, deals with the main thesis in Continuum. Is the earth a living being, as a whole? Are we developing a social planetary organ of thought? Is there any evidence for this?