The tendency toward complexity and ultimate complexity

The tendency toward complexity and ultimate complexity is the cosmological and ethical theory Abdel Khader Khan explains to Lin at a quiet corner of the dock. It proposes that the universe moves from simple matter toward increasingly complex forms, and names the farthest imagined end of that movement God, or the Ultimate Complexity. Abdel Khader then makes the account a moral standard: actions that promote this movement are good, while those that impede it are evil. The theory’s force lies in its ambition to ground morality in a shared account of the universe rather than in the competing authority of religions or political causes; its unresolved difficulty is how to tell what any particular action will actually do.

A universe becoming more complex

Abdel Khader begins with a history of matter, not with a commandment. He describes the Big Bang as an expansion rather than an explosion, followed by a progression from elementary bits to particles, atoms, molecules, stars, and planets. The first stars, in turn, died and scattered new atoms, which gathered into further stars and planets. Human beings are made from those stellar remains. In this account, complexity emerges through successive combinations across immense spans of time.

He insists that these combinations are not merely random occurrences. The universe has a nature, he argues: under suitable conditions, matter comes together into more intricate arrangements. He calls this the tendency toward complexity, and presents it as a direction discernible throughout cosmic history, from near-simplicity toward the elaborate world that can be observed. The idea is not that every individual object survives or develops without interruption, but that the larger process continues to generate greater complexity.

Abdel Khader extends that direction into the future. The universe, as he understands it, has been becoming more complex for about fifteen billion years and will continue to do so over the coming billions. He calls the ultimate destination of this movement Ultimate Complexity, and chooses to call it God. The name does not require acceptance of a particular religious image: he presents God and Ultimate Complexity as alternative terms for the same far horizon of cosmic development. A hydrogen atom, a leaf, a person, or a planet may fail to reach it; in his formulation, each nevertheless participates in a universe moving toward it.

Destruction and continuity

Lin tests the theory against events that seem to run in the opposite direction. A giant asteroid could shatter the planet, and the Sun will eventually die. Such destruction would eliminate an exceptionally developed form of life and consciousness, making it a genuine loss rather than an illusion. Abdel Khader acknowledges the scale of that loss, but distinguishes the destruction of a particular complex system from the end of the cosmic process that produced it.

He reasons that the atoms composing people were made in earlier stars, and that if earthly life were destroyed, thinking beings of comparable complexity could arise elsewhere. He does not claim that identical people would be reproduced, or that individuals would survive their own annihilation. His point is that the process could continue in other worlds even when one local expression of it ends. This distinction allows the theory to admit catastrophe and extinction without treating them as proof that the universe has ceased moving toward complexity.

The distinction also marks a limit in the argument: the theory’s confidence concerns the continuing process, not the safety or permanence of any one life, planet, or achievement. Complexity can be lost in a particular place while, on Abdel Khader’s account, being generated elsewhere. The cosmic direction therefore does not promise personal rescue; it supplies the broad pattern through which he interprets both development and destruction.

From cosmology to moral judgment

The ethical claim follows from the cosmological one. When Lin suggests that whatever advances the universe’s movement must count as good, and whatever reverses it as evil, Abdel Khader accepts the inference. He defines good as whatever enhances, promotes, or accelerates movement toward Ultimate Complexity, and evil as whatever inhibits, impedes, or prevents it. The theory thus turns a description of how the universe develops into a criterion for evaluating human action.

Abdel Khader’s aim is to make that criterion as objective and widely acceptable as possible. He contrasts it with moral claims made in the name of rival nations and faiths: priests or imams may bless opposing forces as they go to war, while each side asserts divine approval. Without a shared standard, he argues, people can justify their own actions and condemn those of their opponents. A measure derived from the universe’s history might, by contrast, be available to believers of different faiths and to nonbelievers alike.

He does not present this objectivity as perfect or permanent. Human knowledge changes as evidence and insight accumulate, so a moral definition can only be objective to the best of present understanding. He compares this provisional status to measurement: standards that once seemed definitive can be replaced by more precise ones. Even the measure based on the distance light travels in a vacuum rests on a description of the vacuum that further knowledge may complicate. Morality grounded in cosmic complexity is likewise, in his account, the best available standard rather than an eternal formula immune to revision.

The argument also draws support from religious texts without making revelation its foundation. Abdel Khader invokes the Holy Koran’s instructions to study the planets and stars for truth and meaning, presenting scientific inquiry as compatible with religious teaching. His proposed criterion is not, he says, the private property of one faith or political movement; it is an attempt to find common ground in what can be learned about the universe itself.

The question the theory leaves open

Lin’s objections expose two distinct uncertainties. First, he asks why complexity, rather than some other fact about the universe, should be selected as the basis of morality. Abdel Khader acknowledges that the choice may appear arbitrary, and answers that complexity is the largest fact available to them: it spans the whole universe and its history. He remains open to a better standard in the future, but argues that no alternative presently offers the same scope across peoples, beliefs, and nonbelief.

Second, even if the broad measure is accepted, it does not immediately decide individual cases. Knowing that an action is good if it advances complexity does not establish whether a particular action will do so, or who can judge its effects. Lin raises that practical problem directly. Abdel Khader calls it the right question, but does not answer it at the dock; he says he will provide an answer at the right time. The theory therefore arrives as both a proposed moral foundation and an unfinished lesson.

The scene gives this abstract argument a social setting. Lin and Abdel Khader sit on a wooden bench among the dock’s resting fishermen, with Nazeer standing watch nearby. Three fishermen bring water, hot chai, sweets, and a chillum; the group shares the pipe while Abdel Khader continues speaking in English. They remain to listen, although Lin assumes they cannot understand him. The exchange places an expansive theory of universal order beside ordinary acts of hospitality and attention, without claiming that the fishermen’s presence proves the argument.

The conversation also matters within Lin’s relationship with Abdel Khader. Lin listens with affection and attention, yet privately wonders whether his love for the older man may cost him his life. His questions are skeptical, but the skepticism is not simple dismissal: he recognizes the force of the reasoning even as he tries to find its weak point. The dockside lesson consequently joins intellectual instruction to a bond shadowed by danger. Its central tension remains intact: a universal account of what counts as good may be imaginable, but applying it to the choices that shape human lives requires another kind of knowledge.