Actually, the world is not complex. It is the task of trying to figure it out with words or numbers that is complex.

The world is a complex, interconnected, finite, ecological–social–psychological–economic system. We treat it as if it were not, as if it were divisible, separable, simple, and infinite. Our persistent, intractable global problems arise directly from this mismatch.

The World is a very complex system. It is easy to have too simple a view of it, and it is easy to do harm and to make things worse under the impulse to do good and make things better.

The world is incomprehensible. We won’t ever understand it; we won’t ever unravel its secrets. Thus we must treat the world as it is: a sheer mystery.

It is difficult to imagine this kind of a new world because our present world is so different. On the whole, our life is too complex, our scholarship too serious, our philosophy too somber, and our thoughts too involved. This seriousness and this involved complexity of our thought and scholarship make the present world such an unhappy one today.

Common wisdom holds that the most complicated thing in the universe (asides fom the universe itself) is the human brain. In actual fact, however, other objects are even more complex – starting with human society, especially today’s hypermodern society, a product of thousands and even billions of human brains; not to forget globalisation and the Internet.

The world is immeasurably complex and the private stock of reason is small.

The world is a complex place. In our struggles to simplify and understand, we often identify some bugbear and then make it responsible for all evils.

The world is complicated. Things are always changing. We are constantly learning, being exposed to things we didn't know or consider.

Our minds must be flexible and open enough to accommodate this.

Yet as the world becomes more intelligible, it also becomes more mysterious - not, perhaps, in the sense of being problematic and baffling, but of being immeasurably grander, vaster, more complex, and, indeed, more imaginative than we had supposed.

Because science carries us toward an understanding of how the world is, rather than how we would wish it to be, its findings may not in all cases be immediately comprehensible or satisfying. It may take a little work to restructure our mindsets. Some of science is very simple. When it gets complicated, that’s usually because the world is complicated — or because we’re complicated.

I talk a lot about this in the book. Why is it that our universe gets gradually more complex? Once you get into biology, the fundamental reason is that if you’re living in a complex environment, then the smarter you are the more successful you’ll be, because you can exploit regularities in the environment to your advantage. Eventually all the other organisms are motivated, in turn, to get smarter. As organisms get smarter and smarter, they keep creating an ever more complex environment for one another, and they all get smarter.

„Complex“ has acquired a specific connotation. It is often used when established scholars are confronted with hard but inconvenient evidence for a position not their own. ... “Complex“ is a tactic against something straightforward and simple.

The world' is man's experience as it appears to, and is moulded by, his ego. It is that less abundant life, which is lived according to the dictates of the insulated self. It is nature denatured by the distorting spectacles of our appetites and revulsions. It is the finite divorced from the Eternal. It is multiplicity in isolation from its non-dual Ground. It is time apprehended as one damned thing after another. It is a system of verbal categories taking the place of the fathomlessly beautiful and mysterious particulars which constitute reality. It is a notion labelled 'God'. It is the Universe equated with the words of our utilitarian vocabulary.