Complexity Paradox in Living Things

The Complexity Pyramid is inverted!

We think of ourselves at the top of the pyramid of creation, except for God. We have consciousness, intelligence, social order!

Yet, even the most intellectually astute, and technically sophisticated of us deal with most things in linear ways. We interact with only a few to a few dozens of individuals. We manage our schedules in a fairly simple way.

By contrast, every physical element of our body and mind is complex, sophisticated, and coordinated with other elements, by thousands to millions of times greater complexity. Our bodies are a hierarchy of complex systems.

We can understand humans or supercomputers producing cartoon graphics for movies. Science cannot understand simple cartoons (us) producing supercomputers…our complex bodies.

We have no conceptual problem with a complex society of scientists, engineers, designers developing an iPhone, a supercomputer, a SpaceX rocket, etc. Intelligence, cooperation, synthesis, should all flow down. Is that not true?

We have process and structures of technology that capture natural laws, mathematical concepts, technologies, processes and weave them together in ascending hierarchal complexity. No one person need fully understand details of all levels of these complex technological entities, because we have a collaborative structure where many experts weave together many cascading layers of knowledge and skill to achieve great accomplishments.

In contrast: nature’s sophistication and complexity stands our paltry accomplishments on their head. Physiologically, cognitively, etc., when viewed as planned and designed systems; living beings: animals, insects, etc. represent systems that far exceed human accomplishment.

The complexity of living things—all living things—is so sophisticated—at their very essence— down to the sub-cellular level, and with cascades of sophistication at every subsequently higher level of aggregation, to exceed our most sophisticated technologies.

The 20 trillion eukaryotic cells which we are made of are each as complex as a midsize city, enclosing a vast network of organelles: producing proteins via millions of ribosomes, gathering up residue and disposing of it via 100’s of thousands of lysosomes, producing energy (ATP) in thousands of mitochondria, transporting materials back-and-forth across a spatially well-defined array of cellular components, literally using an internal highway system, with transporter modules and side roads. The cell walls sense the exterior environment, provide passage for materials in and out, detect the outside environment, and respond to threats, nutrients, etc.

However, this is just one level of the physical complexity of living things. Each of the subsystems of the human body: including blood, capillaries, veins, arteries, our organs, all of our muscles, the interstitial tissue between our muscles, the bones, the eyes, the ears, are all very complex, very connected, profoundly communicating and responding to each other on millisecond timescales. I did not even mention our brains.

It is incongruous that there should be such a disparity of complexity between the support systems which compose us, and who we are and what we are doing as people within societies. The contrast is like marshaling the whole of the US military (Air Force, Army, Navy, military industrial complex, logistics and command structures, etc.) for the sole purpose of making a plate of sweet rolls, or to make a snow man, or to weed a garden.

God tells us that we humans are eternal, here in mortality, on Earth, for the purpose of testing our willingness to be obedient to God, and be good to each other, and to train us in the principles of human society, and with a potential future with Him as a peer. Does the complexity and sophistication of our bodies tell us of the eventual complexity and sophistication of our eternal lives?

One last point—there is a real disconnect from this perspective, of any concept of the origin of physical living beings, with this extreme sophistication and complexity, happening through stochastic processes without planning, engineering, and direction. Spontaneous abiogenesis cannot be true.

One might argue that a human intelligence and consciousness is so powerful and capable, with science, engineering, art, government, etc., that it stands as the pinnacle accomplishment of the universe—or of God. In that perception, I am afraid that we do not give sufficient credit, by many orders of magnitude, to the sophistication we are only recently coming to be aware of, in microbiology, physiology, and all of the branching fields of knowledge coming off of them.

I welcome insights and comments that can help all of us get our hands around this huge issue.

Complexity Paradox in Living Things

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