Perhaps some things are just too simple to express in words. The field of complexity studies is fascinating, as it attempts to find the lowest common denominators between sciences as diverse as computers and databases right up to biology and supposed "coincidence". But does it possess a suitable language to describe the phenomena it attempts to study, in any practically useful manner?

My conviction is that if you can't explain something in simple terms, or at least list a set of practical metaphors for your subject, you simply don't understand it well enough and you are doing little but taking a very scenic intellectual route to a fantasy destination. If I'm not mistaken, Einstein agreed.

My knowledge on the academic field of complexity studies is superfiscial, at best. Or perhaps I should just say "simple". Perhaps you don't need to acquaint yourself with a rich set of acronyms and formulae, and surround yourself with career academics in order to usefully advance any field of science. Perhaps any brain will do. But how do you tap into it?

Perhaps this would be my point of departure: What is the minimum number of identifyable components or perspectives for any useful study of any complex system? I would say four. Four levels of complexity. As soon as you have four "things" interacting and working toghether, you have something that exhibits characteristics that facilitate or allow more than its parts in a way that it takes on a life of its own.

Curiously, we really started digging into the forces of nature by dividing it into four types. The internet exploded when a 4-wire communication standard known as "Ethernet" became the norm. Perhaps its no co-incidence that the vast majority if tables have four legs, and cars have four wheels, and mammals four limbs. Or that the vast majority of generic computing devices, using the most universal connectivity standard, utilizes 4 connectors. Perhaps its no co-incidence that we divide a year into four seasons. Or that we, for a long time, used "four dimensions" to describe the space we inhabit. Or that we use four digits to describe the time of day.

The brain is a pattern seeker - and if you give it a pattern, it will seemingly find it everywhere (as illustrated above). But it is more than that: it connects concepts in various relationships. It builds networks. Networks of concepts. Each concept is a network of concepts. In fact, perhaps it is a network, and the world we live in merely a network of networks of networks of networks. Perhaps everything is a network. Everything can certainly be described in a network of concepts - each concept being a network of ideas and each idea being a network of observations and intuitions. I particularly like how, even molecules are modelled as networks. Especially because all networks share certain characteristics.