To define means to fix, and, when you get down to it, real life isn’t fixed. - Alan Watts

The natural world seems a marvel of complexity, requiring a vastly intricate intelligence to create and govern it, just because we have represented it to ourselves in the clumsy 'notation' of thought.
[...] Understanding nature by means of thought is like trying to make out the contours of an enormous cave with the aid of a small flashlight casting a bright but very thin beam. The path of the light and the series of 'spots' over which it has passed must be retained in memory, and from this record the general appearance of the cave must laboriously be reconstructed.

In the Gestalt theory of perception this is known as the figure/ground
relationship. This theory asserts, in brief, that no figure is ever perceived
except in relation to a background.

The highest that man can attain in these matters,” said Goethe, “is wonder; if the primary phenomenon causes this, let him be satisfied; more it cannot bring; and he should forbear to seek for anything further behind it: here is the limit. But the sight of a prime phenomenon is generally not enough for people. They think they must go still further; and are thus like children, who, after peeping into a mirror, turn it round directly to see what is on the other side.