the complication of simplicity

"..the familiar things and persons that surround us seem a simple affair, but the moment we try to view a part and also to gaze at the picture as a whole, then only do we begin to grasp how difficult and how complex an affair it really is" (Brunton 1941).


I am doing my honours jewellery study on Amulets and Talismans.
It is a most frustrating affair!
Each time I approach my first explanatory chapter of the subject, I am told by my lecturer that I am being too broad. Simplification is the hardest thing to do. Each time I take a closer (simplified) look at my subject, it opens up a whole universe of notions. As I break my subject down into its parts and try then to study a part, this part becomes a complicated whole that may be further divided into more parts. Nothing is really simple and yet it is all a reflection of certain basic principles. Within an atom exists a universe.