When science is searching for answers, how the universe works, we see complexity. What is the origin of this complexity? Is it coming fro...
When science is searching for answers, how the universe works, we see complexity. What is the origin of this complexity? Is it coming from the complexity of the building blocks? Is our world complex because its building blocks are complex? When science needs to answer for newly formed questions, is it a good method, if we make the model more complex?
Looks like, the trend of our understanding follows the more-complexity path. For example, classical mechanics changed to relativistic and quantum mechanics, which are significantly more complex than the predecessor is. We can see this trend in science. Where did particle physics develop from the billiard ball model? Is that mean that nature is more complex, or at least, not less complex at deep down? Where is the complexity come from?
Our knowledge mostly is descriptive knowledge. We describe nature instead of understanding it. As our knowledge about nature grows, we need a more-and-more complex model, to match the experiments. Does that prove that the nature, on the level of its building blocks, is complex?
Why the snowflakes are complex and diverse? Is it because the water molecules are complex and diverse? The water molecule can be complex on its level, but a snowflake is complex and unique because all of them are different variations of their same building blocks. Just knowing a water molecule, we cannot even conclude to a snowflake, even less to its variability. However, the snowflake is not the result of the chaos either. Snowflakes are variations, built on rules. It is why so beautiful. Simple building blocks with simple building rules can create complexity, variability, and the beauty of symmetry.
We can build complex, diverse, and beautiful houses with simple bricks. A brick can be complex on its level, but the complexity of the buildings does not come from its building blocks' complexity. The two complexities are correlated, but they can be viewed separately. The inside complexity determines the shape and electromagnetic potential of the water molecule, but the shape and the electromagnetic field gain its own capability and independence from its origin, to build structures of differently looking snowflakes. The water molecule is simple in the sense of how they are connected to each other, yet capable of creating complex structures.
The whole universe might be built in a similar way. If we want more, than description, if we want to understand, we should search for simplicity, instead of creating complexity in our explanations. A more realistic description can be more complex, but the fundament, the cause should be simple. If we want to understand nature, if we want more than descriptions (which is inherently complex), we must search for simplicity. If our understanding provides a more complex model, that is the sign that we are going in the wrong direction with our understanding, or at least, it is a sign, that we are dealing with description, instead of understanding.
Nature, its building blocks may be complex on its inside level but can be simple at the level, where it forms structures. Nature can be simple on its fundament.
Einstein stated, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." It is exciting to think about, that nature can be simple when it is forming from its building blocks. It is exciting to know, that this gives us a direction to a path, how we can gain understanding. It is an exciting task to understand the complexity, variability, and symmetry created from this simplicity. And it makes us busy searching the existing, in both directions, on our level, the buildings' level, and on the brick level, which is a separate level from us, as well.
Nevertheless, by searching the reality, we must keep in mind: complexity in nature is built on simplicity. There is always a simple level of fundament.
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