Quotes about Complexity

Life is much more than reason, so it can never be captured and explained by reason alone—crucial and valuable though reason is. Apply reason as carefully and systematically as you like, and there will always be things it cannot explain, things that simply will not fit into its categories, however hard you push, press and pull.

To be shallow is not a sign of being wicked, nor is shallowness a sign that there are no deeps; the ocean has a shore.

God created an awesome world. God intentionally loaded the world with amazing things to leave you astounded. The carefully air-conditioned termite mound in Africa, the tart crunchiness of an apple, the explosion of thunder, the beauty of an orchid, the interdependent systems of the human body, the inexhaustible pounding of the ocean waves, and thousands of other created sights, sounds, touches, and tastes—God designed all to be awesome. And he intended you to be daily amazed.

As much as we try to make sense of our lives, there are things that we simply aren't able to understand.

What exists is out of reach and very deep. Who can fathom it?

soufflés can be very tricky

It is the imperfect that astonishes and attracts us.

Art has nothing to do with clarity, does not dabble in the clear and does not make clear

All black women aren't sassy, loud, difficult, or subservient. We are, in fact, very complex and very diverse, living very complex and diverse lives. That point cannot be made enough.

A model should be as simple as it can be but no simpler

We want to complexify our lives. We don't have to, we want to. We want to be harried and hassled and busy. Unconsciously, we want the very thing we complain about. For if we had leisure, we would look at ourselves and listen to our hearts and see the great gaping hole in our hearts and be terrified, because that hole is so big that nothing but God can fill it.

You must have carbon. Arsenic, boron, and silicon are the only other elements on which complex molecules can be based, but arsenic and boron are relatively rare and, where concentrated, poisonous to life, and silicon can hold together no more than about a hundred amino acids. Only carbon yields the chemical bonding stability and bonding complexity that life requires. Given the constraints of physics and chemistry, we now know that physical life must be carbon-based.