Dawid Lubiszewski

Complex phenomena – like structures or processes – are intriguing scientists around the world. There are many reasons why complexity is a popular topic of research. Having that all in mind I would like to focus in this introductory article on one example of complexity, that is structural complexity where complex geometrical patterns appear as the result of the simple rules of an algorithm – known as the chaos game. Therefore the aim of this paper is an invitation to more advanced research on complexity.

The paper proposes an analysis of possible answers to non-trivial questions about the nature of the world that arises from the observation of the behavior of cellular automata. The article describes the most famous cellular automaton, the game of life. This automaton was used as an example because scientists and philosophers associate it with questions about the nature of the world. Therefore, this paper describes the possible consequences arising from the recognition that the mechanisms that underlie cellular automata are also at the heart of the natural world. These include: the possibility of reducing complex phenomena to simple ones and the predictability of the behavior of certain phenomena in general. These considerations enrich our knowledge of the basic character of nature and positively respond to the question posed in the title.