In his book Large graphs and graph limits, mathematician and Abel prize winner László Lovász says on page 4:
We can say that the whole universe is a single (really huge, possibly infinite) network, where the nodes are events (interactions between elementary particles), and the edges are the particles themselves.
For non-physicists this may sound strange at first sight, because one would think of the universe as a network where the nodes are particles, and the edges are interactions between them. But it is important to understand, why this change of point of view (considering interactions as nodes and particles as edges) was fruitful.
On the other hand, Lovász describes social networks, especially the acquaintance graph, traditionally: the nodes being people, and the edges being interactions or relations between people. But there are non-traditional views on social networks or societies. I vaguely remember to have read that Niklas Luhmann or Jürgen Habermas have said something like "Societies are primarily communications" and always thought of this in a graph-theoretic sense: the (primary) nodes are communicative interactions, and the (secondary) edges are people. In perfect analogy to what Lovász said about the universe.
Can anyone give me a specific quote where some philosopher or sociologist has said so, in a condensed way as Lovász did with respect to the universe?
