Modernity's error : claiming to see a foundational parsimony beneath a surface plentitude

The remains of a war-shattered building , after the armies have moved on, only appears to be complex --- despite the sight of all those building blocks of the edifice tossed about hither and yonder.

For true complexity, one needs to move below the placid surface of those unchangeable-seeming and solid-appearing building blocks.

Down to the level of the atoms and below - deep down down down into a land of dozens of ever more fundamental forces and masses careening about a maybe not so empty vast vacuous space.

Seemingly every other year, a paradox is renewed as the biggest machine ever made by humanity discovers an ever smaller and ever more fundamental sub-sub-atomic building block of the universe.