# Is there an application-free measure of device complexity? # Is there an application-free measure of device complexity Specifically, I’d love to be able to make an argument that goes like: “We’ve observed that in nature, self-assembly can create assemblages of complexity X — we can probably take this as some kind of limit. Using biological self-assembly we’ve been able to create assemblages of complexity Y. Macro-scale machines like a car have complexity Z and above. Z is much larger than both X and Y, which makes it hard to imagine that you could use self-assembly to make complex engineered devices.” One could imagine some generalized measure of complexity that could be applied both to a ribosome and to a car. Such a complexity measure could be used as an argument for positional chemistry because it might be that there’s a limit on the complexity that we can do with self assembly. Maybe [[28 Feb 2023]] or [[Sam Arbesman]] know? Maybe something related to [Cyclomatic complexity - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclomatic_complexity)? [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Is+there+an+application-free+measure+of+device+complexity) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Is+there+an+application-free+measure+of+device+complexity)