or the fifth essence to be added to earth, air , fire and water is "spirit";
(or in the modern paradigm) the fifth essence besides matter, energy, space and time is "complexity".

I believe there is a programmed drive to higher complexity built in to the space-time continuum. No, it is not a violation of the Second Law, entropy is built in to the fabric of the universe, too, but as long as energy is available to drive it, things tend to become more complex on their own (while of course, increasing the overall amount of entropy).

Everywhere you look, things seem to be much more complex than they need to be. Of course, there is a lot of waste, too. Most of the Sun's energy is released into space where it does nothing but heat up the interstellar medium slightly. But a tiny bit is intercepted by the planet to drive our weather and create a highly complex biosphere and a rapidly evolving and complicated human civilization. The fusion processes in the Sun's core convert millions of tons of hydrogen every second to helium, and the tiny fraction of energy hitting the earth has given us the human brain and history.

We can use the laws of physics to reassure ourselves that energy and momentum are conserved, and everything is properly taken into account. The bookkeeping is all up to date. But nowhere in the laws of physics does it tell us that such LOCAL pockets of great complexity have to arise, especially since thermodynamics tells us the GLOBAL complexity of the universe must decrease.

It's like a soap box racer rolling down a hill, as long as it is not at the bottom, it can continue rolling, speed up, and even engage in complex maneuvers and turns, perhps even build up enough speed to make momentary U-turns uphill. The kid behind the wheel may control the process, but it's the slope of the hill that makes it possible. There is a slope of the hill in nature, too, I guess you could call it a complexity gradient, that, like entropy, has a vector pointing in the same direction as time.

Everytime I think of this I have the feeling I'm missing some great truth, perhaps a simple mathematical expression, that would bring it all together so it could make sense, be tested, and be explained to others. But unfortunately, I can't quite get it to fall together, and it slips through my fingers, always just beyond my grasp.