[openrisk]

Seek we must, but will we find something?

Complexity science is the major remaining terra-incognita of our era. The allure of seeking to break into such a genuinely new domain is strong. The intellectual (and not only) rewards would obviously be beyond compare. The dimensional extremes probed by "standard" micro and macro physics are increasingly into diminishing returns. Thousands of people, gargantuan budgets and devices etc. but in a macro sense, rather disappointing progress: Our mental toolkit and understanding of the world in 2024 is not that different from that the Einstein/Bohr era circa 1924. It has been an era of fleshing out the details, magnificent and more productive than any previous period of history, but it saturated without turning things upside-down.

All the while, complexity is all around us, even inside us. Mysterious, defying attempts at description, let alone explanation. One can setup experiments for next to nothing. Complexity is very "accessible". So why is it still a sketch of field rather than an actual field?

If the constraints are not external then they must be internal (cognitive limitations, blind spots etc). For sure we lack mathematical tools. But maybe we lack even an adequate set of relevant pre-mathematical notions, these vague but powerful concepts that precede the sharper analytical tools and elaborate equations.

One think is for sure: Very smart people have tried very hard and if you are going to see further you must (at least) climb on their shoulders :-)