The complexity of the world

When I look at the natural world I am reminded of Russian matryoshka (nesting) dolls. There are so many layers and layers of complexity in even the simplest-looking thing. Look at a “simple” plant. At our visual level there is already a fairly complex structure of roots, stems and leaves. Look more closely at a leaf and it devolves into complex layers of tissues and veins. Look at the tissues in detail and one sees a whole world of different cell types interacting. Inspect a single cell and one finds within a complex world of membranes, chloroplasts, Golgi bodies, mitochondria, nuclei, and many other structures, all interacting as tiny chemical factories. Look into any of these and a whole world of complex chemical reactions appears as proteins are built or modified and energy is extracted. Study the chemical interactions in detail and one enters a world of assemblies of atoms and electric charges. Break the atoms down and one is in the world of protons and neutrons and electrons. Break these down in turn and one enters the subatomic Alice in Wonderland world of quarks and quantum physics. And no doubt there are layers and layers of complexity yet to be discovered below this level.

What is the significance of all this? Only this: anything we humans think we know about the world is at best an approximation, though perhaps a useful one. The real world is far, far more complex than we can individually comprehend, and probably more complex than the whole human race acting together can ever comprehend, though we have come an amazing way thus far in our attempts.

That ought not to deter us from trying, because we can probably eventually understand at least a useful approximation of the major physical effects that drive the cosmos. But it ought to keep us humble about what we think we know, and always open to the very real possibility that we have got it wrong, in detail if not wholly.